Unsatisfactory Departure

The thing that stood out to me the most when reading Robinson Crusoe was the fact that Crusoe seemed fairly unsatisfied with his escape from the island. First of all, his return journey through the Mountains of Europe is fraught with danger as he is attacked by a bear and hundreds of wolves, and finds the mutilated corpses of men who had been eaten by wolves. Seeing as the island Crusoe was trapped on did not have any dangerous wild animals, his experiences in Europe were arguably more dangerous than anything he encountered on the island. These adventures in the wilds of Europe go against the expectations of the reader; I personally was expecting most of the danger to be over with Crusoe’s escape from the island, but this was obviously not the case. The comfortable life I was expecting him to immediately start living with his new large fortune did not happen.

Another reason Crusoe was not completely satisfied with his escape is that he didn’t have any close relationships with people in Europe to go back to. All of his family is dead other than two sisters, and he does not seem particularly interested in forming new relationships. He does actually marry someone and have three children with her; however, his new family is obviously not very important to him. He never even bothers to tell the reader his wife’s name, and he mentions her death only casually and as a reason for him to go abroad again. His children are completely forgotten after their first mention, and I was left wondering who took care of them after their mother died and Crusoe went off travelling again. With no close relatives and a family he obviously doesn’t care about, I felt like Crusoe was just as isolated back in England as he had been on the island for all those years.

Finally, the novel ends with Crusoe revisiting the island, which is now inhabited and prosperous. I almost got the impression that Crusoe would have been happier if he had stayed on the island, with its women and young children and sense of adventure. The people on the island, indeed, seem much less alone than Crusoe in his lonely life. I thought the fact that the novel ends with Crusoe’s visit to the island years later is a powerful image of how important the island continued to be important to Crusoe even years after he left it, and how Crusoe’s life had not improved that much since leaving.