I got my copy from Standard Ebooks, which is a site making excellent ebooks of public domain books. I’m finding them to be better than anything I’d find on the Kobo store other than Penguin Classics.
Apparently, there is an argument that this is the very first English novel. Whether it is or not seems to depend on how you define a novel, since there were several earlier fiction books published. Due to its age, sometimes I found the prose hard to parse, which could keep me at a distance from the events. Most of the time that wasn’t the case, though.
At the beginning of the book, Crusoe’s father is telling his son how he believes the “middle-state” is the most comfortable place to be. He explains how you don’t have the constant worry of having enough money to live, but also don’t have the pride and ambition of the upper classes. He tries to talk his son out of going on adventures, but of course, is not listened to.
I thought this was going to be an adventure novel like Treasure Island. There are sections which are, but a lot of the focus is on religion and provenance. After a fever and a revelation, the main character comes to realise that he is happier with what little he has on the island and learns to not focus on what he doesn’t have. If anything, it feels like that message may be more relevant today than it was at the time.
I thought Friday would feature in the book a lot more, since he was one of the only things I knew about it. He actually comes in about three-quarters through the novel. Crusoe teaches him English, to not be a cannibal, and Christianity. It’s all very dated and pretty uncomfortable, I think. We never really learn who he is as a person, and he is strangely happy to just become a servant. In fact, a lot of the characters become servile to this strange hermit very quickly.
I’m not sure the message of Christianity really tallies up with the chapters where the main characters are murdering a lot of people, owning slaves, and at the end tormenting a bear for laughs. I’m a non-believer, but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t Jesus’s message.