THE LIFE AND STRANGE SURPRISING ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE page 188

Defoe fictionalised ALEXANDER SELKIRK’S accounts of his adventures and gave birth to the famous character ROBINSON CRUSOE. He is a boy who has MADE FORTUNE TRAVELLING AROUND THE WORLD.

Crusoe becomes the slave of MOORISH PIRATES. He managed to escape and was rescued by the captain of a Portuguese ship. They went to BRAZIL and here Crusoe became OWNER of a PLANTATION. He joined an expedition to bring slaves from AFRICA but he was SHIPWRECKED in a storm. He reached a DESERT ISLAND and there he tried to recreate his previous life, by bringing European civilization and conquering nature. Indeed, he led a COMFORTABLE LIFE.

Crusoe found HUMAN FOOTPRINT: he discovered INDIAN CANNIBALS who occasionally visited the island. He met one of their prisoners and helped him: he named him "FRIDAY" according to the day he met him who became his SERVANT. He stayed on the island TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS, until an ENGLISH SHIP rescued him.

When he RETURNED TO ENGLAND he became very rich because of his incredible adventure.

CRUSOE’S ISLAND page 189-190-191

COMPREHENSION

- Crusoe needs books, pen and ink (lines 7-8).

- Without them he would lose his reckoning of time and forget the Sabbath days.

- To solve the problem Crusoe cuts every day a mark with his knife on a piece of wood, and every seven days he cuts a bigger notch.

- He still misses someone to talk to (lines 35-36), he feels alone.

INTERPRETATION

- The description in the first four lines is very detailed, as if it is a real story.

- The very beginning of the novel is very detailed too and Robinson describes everything accurately.

- Such a style conveys a direct and realistic effect.

- He uses a concrete and refined vocabulary.

- He uses long but simple sentences, in order to make the narration more direct and fluent.

- Repetitions: lines 12-14 (notch, every, day, as long again as) Long list: lines 17-28

- These features make his tale more difficult to understand, but also more interesting. The description is complex.

- The story is told in the first person and it contributes to make the story realistic, indeed it is more concrete.

-The style makes me interested in the novel.