On an Island or in a Whatever Place

While most Crusoe stories are set on an island, some of them are set somewhere else. For instance, in Life of Pi, the setting is in a lifeboat floating on the sea.

Although Pi finds a little island during his sea voyage, he does not stay there because it is not a normal island but a cannibal one. Put succinctly, diverse settings broaden the imagination of geographical references in Robinsonade.

In James Gould Cozzens’s Castaway (1934), the setting shifts from the island in

Defoe’s version to a modern department store. This department store defamiliarizes our common understanding of it, for it does not embody the glorious side of a capitalistic world but rather encapsulates the image of the remains of a consumer society. In this department store, neither with bright light nor with massive crowds, there are only two men inside. Compared with Defoe’s Crusoe, who is good at making tools and farming, his counterpart named Mr. Lecky in this novel is much less

productive. In fact, he produces nothing; he lives on canned food and depends on the merchandise in the department store to maintain his life. When strolling the store, Mr.

Lecky meets nobody but an idiot who reflects his “own brutish, inarticulate nature—the id . . .” (Cowart 155). This idiot is his only companion throughout his entire journey in the department store, but Mr. Lecky shoots him. Unlike Defoe’s Crusoe, who befriends the Other represented by Friday, Mr. Lecky refuses to accept the Other and regards the Other as a potential danger. However, the end of the novel seems to suggest that the idiot is Mr. Lecky’s another self, his reflection. When Mr.

Lecky looks at the idiot who is already dead, he feels that the face of the idiot gives him a sense of “familiar strangeness” (Cozzens 115). Mr. Lecky is a lonely and disoriented modern man, walking aimlessly in the remains of the world.

Similar to Castaway, J. G. Ballard’s Concrete Island (1973) is also set in a city and presents the dark side of modern space. Like Defoe’s Crusoe, the protagonist Robert Maitland, a thirty-five-year-old architect, is marooned on an island. However, he is not stranded on a natural island but on a concrete island within the highway traffic system after his car crashes through an embankment. He is seriously injured and overlooked by other passing drivers. Compared with Defoe’s Crusoe, who recovers quickly and has weapons to protect himself from people’s attacks, Maitland appears to be powerless and vulnerable. He is captured by Jane Sheppard, a prostitute, and Proctor, a muscular but child-like idiot. After being taken care of by Jane and

overseen by Proctor for some time, he gradually realizes that they, in fact, want to strand him on the concrete island, instead of helping him to leave. Proctor is the reinvented figure of Friday. Unlike Friday, who is submissive to Crusoe’s order, Proctor takes advantage of his power over Maitland, whose leg is seriously impaired, to limit his action. Proctor wants Maitland to be his friend and stay with him on the island forever. Near the end of the novel, Proctor, who was an acrobat in his youth, dies during his performance in front of Maitland. Because of this, Maitland has the chance to run away from this bleak island and be rescued.

Tom Godwin’s The Survivors (1958) is a sci-fi Robinsonade, whose setting is not on an island but on a planet in outer space. The novel describes how human beings are deserted by the Gerns and strive to live in unfavorable conditions on an

“Earth-like” planet called Ragnarok. To build an alien empire and expand their colonies, the Gerns attack a spaceship that travels from Earth to Athena. The human beings on the spaceship are divided into the Acceptables and the Rejects. The former are forced to become slaves working for the Gerns on Athena; the latter are sent to the planet Ragnarok. Ragnarok is unfavorable for human beings because its gravity is one point five times greater than Earth’s gravity. Moreover, on this planet human beings must face fatal fevers and fight aggressive creatures. Although many people die under such difficult conditions, they still strive to survive through several generations.

Playing the role of Crusoe, these human beings are like explorers. They not only accustom themselves to a new environment but also tame wild creatures and work with them to be eventually revenged on the Gerns.

III. Conclusion

This survey on Robinsonade explores the literary constellation of Crusoe and Friday in modern and contemporary literature. These two literary figures have been

revised and reinvented; therefore, the relationship between them has been transformed and reinterpreted. Moreover, the setting of an island has also been shifted in different contexts. The rewritings of Robinson Crusoe not only reimagine the Other and reshape the relationship between the self and the Other, but also respond to our times concerning the question of living together with other groups, as well as offering the possibilities of other worlds.