Los Angeles daily herald., 1888-03-04
ROBINSON CRUSOE.
Criticisms on DefOe's Fa.
nous Book.
FULLOFGLARING ABSURDITIES
A Nineteenth Century lcOnOclast
HumOrOusly DispOses Of Cru
soc and His Man Friday.

L
Critical estimates frequently perpet
uate themselves, not by new and orig
inal indosement, but by the force G
authority; and since our literary opin
ions are too often derived at secont
hand. it is always in order to revis
them. In our iconoclastic age, whei
it is no sacrilege to reduce Homer t.
myth and Shakespeare to dummy
we may be pardoned for destroying i,
one fell blow the fame of Daniel De
foe as a realist. We shall consider &
few of the defects OF his masterpiece.
In drawing the character of Robin
son Crusoe, Defoe studiously avoids
investing him with the offensive
omniscience Of the heroes Of modern
fiction. This is laudable. But when
castaway in desperate straits hap
pens to find all he wants in the hull
of ship, we may rejoice at his luck
OF, in fiction, at the special providences
of the author; but we respectfully fail
to discover in the castaway hero tri.
umphant over hostile environment by
force of his individuality. If Crusoe
is made to excite the sympathy and
interest of ordinary folks by his char
acter as a plain, average man, he is
allowed to hover too lovingly around
the wreck-returning to it and draw
ing from it's stores long after it has
broken up in many retrospective
parenthesis. Then in identifying the
salvage Defoe does omit such ar
ticles as furniture and pottery, which
Crusoe himself is to supply; but even
here the novelist probably stays his
generous hand because he felt that a
solitary man must be employed, if
only to preserve his sanity; and the
prescribed antecedents of Robinson
Crusoe precluded the idea of his
working from force of habit or love OF
toll, and hence some simple necessa-
ries within the range of amateur man.
ufacture were withheld as an incent-
i've to labor. OF course it was highly
probable that potte and ships fur
niture should be found in
the wreck. but something had
to be omitted for the forego-
ing reasons, and Defoe knew that
Crusoe would attempt furniture and
pottery when he would despair of
manufacturing guns, ammunition
tools, compasses and perspective
glasses. The question Of mechanical
genius took precedence over one OF
probability. Defoe did not want to
have a raving lunatic on his hands.
His powers were not equal to a dozen
chapters ON the metaphysics of lu-
macy. His Concord vocabulary was
small. Going into other details,
it is also obvious that Defoe has
no respect for chronological pro-
prieties. For when Friday-nol
yet fully emerged from savagery-
finds that the victim saved from the
-cannibalistic picnic is his father, he
manifests great JOY by uncouth cares
ses and prolonged gymnastics. In
deed, so overpowering is his burst OF
filial affection that he forgets to pause
and make few natural inquiries
about mis- mother, whereas all authori-
ties agree that the savage tribes are
singularly apathetic toward aged
parents, who are generally maltreated
and compelled to do all the work.
According to the returned mission
ary, the sprightly cannibal youth,
on attaining his majority, licks
his father and converts him into a
newer of wood and drawer OF water,
while a mothers fostering care is
requited by enforced service at the
washsub, where, as it merely happens,
her labors are light On the first fest
i've occasion, too, he is proud to toast
his granddam, and on spit at that
for he declines to maintain superau.
nuated live stock for sentimental
reasons. Coming back to the case in
hand, then, we must insist that had
Friday acted in consistency with his
nature he would not have cried
out to Crusoe SO promptly and
rapturously that the rescued man was
his father-he would have mentioned
the fact some day in casual converse
ton. Possibly, however, Friday was
: overjoyed at the prospect of puttine
his work off, as of yore, on the ole
man, who, so far as the text shows
displayed no unusual emotion at find
ing his son. We can merely mention
few other inconsistencies. The
Spaniard, who is so exhausted
from the cruelties of the canni
balls that after long res
he is unable to climb over Crusoe's
ladder, ''few upon his murderers like
a fury" and slew many of them.
This is shameful, belittling of canni-
balistic prowess. Again, if cit was
impossible for the cannibals to con-
ceive that a man could dart fire and
speak thunder and kill at distance u
how was it that those escap
ing in the canoe, worked hard to gel
out of gunshot?" Defoe rejects 8
probable denouement for his story by
rescuing his hero and Friday and
bringing them to Europe. Like Lear
Crusoe was artistically doomed to sinh
beneath the buffetings of fortune ano
Friday, at last, should have been cu'
off suddenly when he was playing 6
practical Joke on the "Pyrenear
3 Bear" an animal OF whose
habits Defoe forgets that Friday
} was necessary ignorant, and which
that parsonage seems to have re-
regarded as species of coon. Surely
here was the appropriate juncture al
which to lose Friday, his death by {
chance arrow in the Secont
Book is undramatic and uncalled for
The last outrage upon verisimili
tude which we shall notice is the Incl
dent in which Crusoe, after disap
pearance Of twenty-eight years, writes
to the overseer of his Brazilian estate
and for reply receives an enormous
fortune in cash. Now, if the over
seer had replied that he could not re
call anyone named Cruso, or if th'
local postmaster had written to sa.
that the overseer had ahsconded tt
the Argentine Republic year
before. the incident would have beol