L'arcinota storia del naufrago Robinson fornisce al lettore molta materia di riflessione. In primo luogo pone più volte l'accento sulla personale responsabilità delle proprie scelte, a fronte di un destino sempre sconosciuto che, nel suo misto di sorte e provvidenza, solo un attenta valutazione può consentir di vagliare e solo un atteggiamento improntato alla giusta misura, affrontare. In secondo luogo consente di gettar uno sguardo sull'uomo ricondotto allo stato di natura e alla quotidiana lotta per la sopravvivenza e consente di ragionare su quali siano le reali necessità della vita e quali quelle puramente futili o accessorie. Una storia, insomma, che pone ognuno di noi a riconsiderar il senso della propria esistenza e il suo rapporto con un eventuale creatore e con la Provvidenza che ne diviene la più limpida manifestazione.

La historia y la trama es interesante. En esta obra, el tema principal es la supervivencia y es una historia de como una persona puede superar las adversidades. Es un buen ejemplo para que seamos agradecidos con lo que tenemos; porque, a pesar de que "nada sea perfecto" hay situaciones en las que podríamos sufrir realmente hambre, sueño, enfermedades y todo tipo de adversidades.
Por otra parte, el libro tiende a ser aburrido por las anotaciones, diarios, enumeración de objetos, comida o demás; y hay momentos donde queremos saltarnos partes porque no queremos conocer tantos detalles que parecen "innecesarios".

Tengo en cuenta el valor histórico y literario de esta novela de aventuras, considerada la primera novela inglesa, pero, sencillamente, no es para mí. No conecté con la historia ni con el protagonista. No me entretuvo ni me conmovió sino en el inicio del libro y en algún momento puntual (como, por ejemplo, cuando Crusoe se queda horrorizado después de haber visto una huella en la arena que cree que pertenece al diablo). En todas sus páginas fui consciente del artefacto y del artificio. Ojalá Defoe hubiera ahondado más en la psicología de su náufrago y menos en sus tareas de supervivencia. Qué aburrimiento. ¡Qué decepción!

Eh, it's a bit boring. A guy writes about his time on an island for twenty years, that's essentially it. But it's okay, he somehow practically builds a paradise villa, has a zoo, a bakery, numerous crops, an entire ships worth of supplies, he has more food on that island than I probably have in my entire house!

As a novel Robinson Crusoe is not the easiest to read, three hundred years separate us, their world and ours will never connect too much has passed for that, however we are the same species with faults and all human . The well known story shows survival is the ultimate prize for the vast majority of creatures called people of the Earth. A lone and lonely man shipwrecked by an intense storm in a hostile foreign environment, far away from his own land in fearful existence as any normal being would be, living from day to day escaping and hiding from cannibals.. A nearby island they come, feasting on captured rival tribes these natives of the Caribbean Sea of the late 1600's never could imagine what will occur in the future here while eating in their banquet and devouring the victims , the creamy-white sands don't stay that color . Today millions of tourists travel to the gorgeous beaches as the Sun's bright rays shine on these happy men and women from cold places seeking relaxation. On the other hand Mr. Crusoe complains of being soaked by the rains...Until Friday shows up his parrot with a limited vocabulary and spicy dialogue I'm sure, being a gentleman the narrator fails to bring to light and you can't consider his other pets the cats , dogs and especially the numerous goats they communicate very little except for dinner (let me be very clear on this they eat, not Mr. Robinson...mostly). Some of the best action scenes are not on the isle but off the island either a long distant from shore or the Atlantic, Arabs of North Africa kidnap the sailor making him a slave but ships sink, pirates are greedy, and while digging for useful items on his beach still the tide flows in, hanging to a piece of wood which was once a ship, yet finding rum has its compensations ...this because our friend ignored his father's warning, leaves anyway the comfortable home at 18 for adventure and suffers for his mistakes...The battle with hungry wolves in the mountains of northern Spain is the best... the frozen ground saturated with blood and angry desperate beasts kill or die their only option. Dislike or enjoy ...a book which changed literature and for the second time shadows of the Earth arose and I touched.

This is one of those books that really serves to remind a modern audience of why we should kill [censored to protect sensitive Republican ears]. Robinson Crusoe is the story of a young man with atrociously bad luck who, unfortunately for any shipmates he ever has, suffers from an extreme case of wanderlust. Every ship he gets onto sinks, but he just keeps getting onto them. Even after he's got a nice, successful plantation of his own, he decides he's just GOT to get on ANOTHER ship to -- get this -- procure himself some slaves. It crashes of course, and he gets stranded alone on an island.

Not to worry, though -- he's got a bible, and he successfully becomes a religious zealot while alone with nothing better to do. It's too bad that his only book couldn't have been a copy of Don Quixote or something because maybe then he'd have become a more interesting storyteller. But no, like so many people who have terrible luck, he turns to "god" and starts counting his "blessings," more-or-less out of a lack of anything better to do.

Then, after he's been alone for 24 years, he sees a footprint in the sand, and he totally freaks, and he becomes convinced it must belong to the devil. Ummm, ok. So I'm sitting there thinking, "Maybe it's your own footprint." But it takes this genius a whole day of scaring himself before he comes up with that explanation. Anyway, it turns out not to be his footprint at all, it actually belongs to the "savages" (Carribean Indians) who apparently visit the island sometimes in order to cook and eat their prisoners, which, for the record, was not actually a common practice among Indians in the Americas. And here's the part where you really hate white people. He then saves one of the prisoners from being eaten and makes him into his slave, who he renames "Friday," teaches English, and converts to Christianity. Friday, instead of kicking this pompous jerk's posterior from here to next Friday after repaying whatever debt he owed Robinson for saving his life, is a faithful slave in every way for the remainder of the book. Friday speaks in a pidgin English, which is probably realistic enough for a man who learned English late in life from one solitary individual, but Robinson has an offensive habit of translating easy-enough-to-understand things that Friday says to us, the idiot readers ("At which he smiled, and said - 'Yes, yes, we always fight the better;' that is, he meant always get the better in fight"). Also, during Friday's religious education, he asks Robinson why god doesn't just kill the devil and end evil, and because there is actually no good answer to such a question for a religious person, Robinson simply pretends not to hear him and wanders away. What a jack*ss! Luckily, Robinson Crusoe's religious conversion doesn't last forever. As soon as he's back in civilization and making money hand over fist, he pretty much gives it up.

Speaking of which, what was with the end of this book? He gets rescued, he goes home, but there's no emotional payoff, and instead he goes on about his European adventures with Friday. We don't care about the wolves and dancing bear! We want to know, did you learn anything from your years away? Do you feel like you missed out? Was anyone happy to see you? Did they have a funeral for you while you were missing? What did your mother do when she saw you again? Robinson Crusoe is a man without any of the human characteristics that make people interesting to read about when they get into difficult situations. He has no regrets, no personal longings, and he never reflects on his life before he was on the island during his decades on the island. I understand that this is just an "adventure novel" but people actually still read this tripe and consider it a classic!

Part of the story I never knew before: Crusoe’s defying his parents to go see the world, his time in Brazil before his shipwreck, and his trip back to England after his rescue. I was also very struck by the difficulty of shifting money from place to place and having someone to trust with finances. Not that our big banks have proven to be eminently trustworthy, but at least they have made international commerce less of a crap shoot than it used to be.

A novel created over 300 years ago, which still unconditionally excites its readers. I myself read it several times as a child and was amazed by the resourcefulness and survival skills of Robinson Crusoe, stranded on a lonely island after a fierce storm and shipwreck.

Now and then it's good to go back and read a book written three hundred years or so ago. The mind-shift necessary you need to make to enjoy the book keeps your brain limber, cleans the mental attic of the literary clutter that has accumulated- that a book needs to be fast-paced, that the dialogue needs to be witty and revealing, that long descriptions are boring. So you read a book that doesn't meet any of the standards someone has told you a good book should meet and you still enjoy it because somehow you allowed yourself to enter and accept the author's and the book's world. I say this because I think Robinson Crusoe is a book that doesn't quite transcend its time, like say Don Quixote, a book that is both of its time but also magically contemporary. Robinson Crusoe's world is the world of 18th century England, a world where a person's highest achievement is the use of reason to make life more comfortable. Crusoe's challenge is twofold. Externally, he needs to use his reason to survive. Internally, he must use his reason to conquer fear and despair. This account of Robinson Crusoe's internal journey was an unexpected pleasure. It is a journey that we can all identify with - the journey from anger at our hardship to resignation and acceptance to tranquillity and peace to end finally in gratitude for life itself, despite the hardship, which is as good a way as any to define joy. Crusoe is aided in this journey by the Bible he rescued and by prayer, but really the mental transformation is more the result of reason, of the ability of Crusoe to direct his thoughts, through constant practice, in one particular direction and away from another. Defoe's gods are, when all is said and done, reason and will. There were a lot of things about this book that I would "fix" if I were an editor and this came across my desk in 2014. I would throw in some kind of sexual desire or sexual fantasies of some kind of which there are unrealistically none in this book. I would have Defoe admire trees and plants and animals a little more for their beauty and less for their potential use as shelter or food. Of course Friday would be treated as an equal to Crusoe and not as a servant. But this book was written in 1719 and not 2014. It belongs there so when you read it let yourself go, surrender yourself to that time and those thoughts and enjoy and take simply what the book gives.

4 Stars for Robinson Crusoe (audiobook) by Daniel Defoe read by Jim Weiss.

This is hard one for me to rate. It’s definitely a classic. It’s inspired by a true story and greatly embellished by the author. It’s the kind of story that could have happened to any couture at any time in history. But this story is about an English sailor that was stranded in 1703 and the book was published in 1719. It seems like it was such a different world then but maybe not much has changed if find yourself castaway on an island and the local people think that you might be tasty.

(I read this book as part of a reading project I have undertaken with some other nerdy friends in which we read The Novel: A Biography and some of the other texts referenced by Schmidt.)

If you've seen the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks, you know the story here. Except instead of a volleyball named Wilson, there's an actual guy named Friday. And a parrot. But otherwise, it's pretty much the same story.

I expected this to be a lot more snooze-worthy than it actually was. It has it's moments where things could happen a bit more quickly, but the story overall reads very fast. I mean, this guy is stuck on an island for almost 30 years. It's not like there's a lot to really talk about. He discusses the usual sorts of problems, like the fact he may run out of ink, so he needs to only write about the most important aspects, like how much he loves the Bible and raisins. So basically it's like The Martian but with raisins instead of potatoes. And also Robinson Crusoe is better just because it is.

Once Crusoe gets off the island (which isn't really a spoiler, I mean we all know the story, right?), things get a bit drab because he goes back to London, talky-talky, some other stuff, Friday sees snow for the first time, some other stuff, a bear. I mean, Defoe should just have let the story end with Crusoe sailing off into the sunset, allowing his readers to be satisfied that he survived, and forgetting all that annoying practical stuff at the end.

As someone who likes a good Pro-Con list, I loved that Crusoe actually took time (and ink) to write up a brief Pro-Con list when he first got to the island. You would think that of all the cons (and I think we all agree there would be many), the biggest pro would be "Well, I didn't fucking die." He does mention something to that effect, but still managed to come up with a bunch of other pros. Basically Crusoe is a dick who can't just be happy to be alive. Freaking malcontent.

It's an inspiring story, though, because I know if I landed on an island all by myself, I'd die within like two days because I wouldn't know how to make food of any sort. Here Crusoe does some farming, which is fine and reasonable, but then somehow also manages to turn that bounty into actual things. Like bread. That's awesome. I understand this was in the early 18th century when people had actual skills and knowledge, but I don't really think that much about it until confronted with the idea that I would be completely worthless on an island. Also Crusoe mentions how hot it was. Yeah, you could expect to see me crying in the shade in less than 30 seconds. I don't like the heat. At all.

Let's just hope if I am ever confined to an island, my man Friday comes equipped with some cooking gear and skills (and a fan). Because let's be honest, I would also suck at hunting. I could do it, I'm sure, but I like animals so much I would just want to prance around the island like Cinderella with my menagerie of new animal-friends, and hope one of them knows how to sew me some clothes like a good Disney animal does.

I'm glad to have read this. I'm sure I've read some version of this story as a child, but this is the real deal, complete with the annoying capitalization of Nouns that Defoe liked to rock. I remember that from Moll Flanders when I read that around college-time. Good ol' Moll will be coming up shortly, by the way. It deserves a re-read by me now as a less-jerky reader.

Mais do que um clássico, é parte do imaginário cultural ocidental, não existindo quem não conheça a história, de tanto ser reproduzida e recontada nas mais variadas formas. É o primeiro romance realista, lançado em 1719, escrito por um jornalista que baseado em casos reais, de pessoas perdidas em ilhas do Pacífico, resolveu ficcionar uma história escrita. Apesar de toda a sua relevância, sobreviveu mal ao tempo sendo hoje um livro que, apesar de clássico, serve melhor o público infantil.

As minhas maiores reticências face a Robinson Crusoé começam pela ausência de pano psicológico, e não falo de desvelações profundas sobre o sentir do personagem, mas tão só a simples descrição do isolamento humano. Isso é algo que não existe em Robinson Crusoé, nunca ele se sente só, tem sempre algo para fazer, construir, conquistar. Apesar de ter consigo um cão e gatos, nunca estes são descritos, nem sequer servem para falar do estado de alma de Robinson. Aliás, tudo isto é por demais perturbador quando ao naufragar na ilha, o personagem não tem qualquer curiosidade em ir ver se está realmente numa ilha ou península, em ver se existem outras pessoas ali perto, passando meses sem nunca dar a volta a ilha, limitando-se a um pequeno cantinho da mesma. São 28 anos vividos na solidão que poderiam bem ter sido vividos numa qualquer encosta de montanha, a dois ou três quilómetros da civilização. Intui-se muito rapidamente que o autor está a escrever com base em relatos, e não em qualquer experiência verdadeiramente vivida e sentida.

Do mesmo modo as descrições sobre caça e comida roçam o ridículo, com Robinson a referir a necessidade de investir todos os dias 3 horas em caça, trazendo animais de grande porte, como Lamas (apesar de ter situado a ilha no Atlântico), passando a ideia que não vive ali apenas um ser humano mas uma família numerosa. É verdade que ninguém naquela altura pensava nos animais que se caçavam ou nas árvores que se cortavam, como se os recursos do planeta fossem infinitos, mas é angustiante ler os hábitos que o escritor incute no personagem, como se o ser humano fosse não apenas insaciável, mas superior a qualquer outro animal no planeta.

Todo o livro está pejado de um discurso profundamente colonialista, egocentrado, com o europeu hábil e astuto capaz de transformar o ecossistema em que vive graças à sua enorme inteligência, por oposição aos nativos que não passam de sub-humanos, canibais, sem conhecimento de Deus e por isso incapazes de ir além pela fraqueza de espírito. A tudo isto serve muito bem a presença dos portugueses que estão quase todo o livro presentes no desenvolvimento de Crusoé, espelhando historicamente aquilo que fomos durante tempo demais.

Dito tudo isto, é um pequeno livro que interessará ao público mais jovem pelo seu lado aventureiro, desde logo pela ideia romântica de se viver isolado do mundo numa ilha, mas também pelo ficcionar de vários episódios rocambolescos — com piratas, canibais, e motins. Nesse sentido o modo como o personagem de Crusoé recorre aos conhecimentos que detém para edificar as suas casas e cultivar cereais acaba sendo o que de melhor se retira. Embora, seja aconselhável uma conversa com os leitores, no sentido de providenciar um olhar crítico sobre muito do que ali se vai desenrolando.


Publicado no VI (https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.pt/...).

I know we shouldn't judge the books of yore by today's standards but...I am being tested.

This doesn't just have the bigotry from days past, although yes oh man it has that. We're talking giving native people new names (colonizing even the idea of a first name!), acquiring slaves with the same ease and casualness as I place daily orders on food-delivery apps, racism in every other sentence. We're following a MISSIONARY here, for god's sake.

But not only that: this is the slowest plot of all time.

Imagining an era in which this would have been a guilty pleasure read makes me want to dedicate my life to discovering a time machine so we can bring 18th century people back with us and show them rom coms starring Meg Ryan.

Honestly, my conspiracy theory is that this book is only still around because the first edition said it was BY Robinson Crusoe, so everyone thought it was real. The only excuse for this book's popularity is people thinking it actually happened. Like reading the newspaper, or watching a documentary narrated by a celebrity with a soothing British accent.

But even more boring.

Bottom line: Not for me! Don't really know who it could be for.


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pre-review

i can't wait for two months from now when i can't remember anything about this book.

review to come / 2 stars

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currently-reading updates

well. it's time.

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tbr review

i have never in my life had any interest in reading this book, but i saw a perfect condition used copy of the penguin clothbound edition and bought it immediately.

two things can be true.