Robinson Crusoe

I am going to analyse an extract by Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, in particular the passage which describes Friday's physical features and Crusoe's attitude to him: Right from the start you have Crusoe's description of Friday's physical features. He is "comely handsome fellow"  and "perfectly well made" and so on, that implies only positive physical features. In addition he is compared to a European, "especially when he smiled". He is very far from the general physical features of native Americans or "the negroes".

At that period England was the strongest country of the world and a lot of colonialists were sent to make England bigger and stronger. People in England were very curious to know about the word and the adventures of these colonialists. As a consequence a lot of books were written to describe the world from the English point of view and like anybody else Daniel Defoe wrote a story full of adventures. So he uses only good words to describe Friday. The function has two aspects:  the first is to underline English superiority and the expansion of English colonialism. The second function is to let the natives look like European and to underline that their behaviours are not bad, so the European will not be afraid of them. The extract is also organised into three parts. The first is about Friday's physical description. The second about his actions and the third part is about his relationship with Crusoe. Last but not least all the text is filtered by Crusoe's superiority and the simple language used to describe Friday underlines it.