I recently finished Robinson Crusoe for the first time and I have been left... confused. I'm going to track this train of thought from its beginning several months ago to where I stand today.
The Voyage Out There
Some while ago, I don't recall when, I was in a used bookstore with some spare store credit when I spied Kim by Rudyard Kipling on the shelves. In the previous year I had been working my way through a scattered array of Nineteenth Century literature, with a large portion of my time devoted to George Eliot and with lesser to Thomas Hardy (I can't say I have the same regard for the latter as I do for the former). So seeing another book on the shelf from that era, but admittedly knowing absolutely nothing about it other than, "Oh, I recognize that author" I got it for a few dollars.
The result was much more satisfying than I had thought it would be. Kipling was the Jungle Book guy, the one who patronized India for its exoticness while coining the phrase, "White man's burden." But Kim completely destroys any simple caricature that those few pieces of information would impart. Not only is it an almost overwhelming portrayal of India, imparting a full sense of the lively, sweating chaos that the subcontinent seems to consist of, but it conveys Kipling's deeply meditative view on how to unite the best of East and West within Kim's own soul (and Kipling's too, as he was raised in India). The culmination of Kim's story, and Kim's quest, is not a physical adventure but a spiritual insight; the sudden coming to suchness after Kim's delirium combined with the transformation of the old lama from doddering fool to genuine master in our perception lets us know that there are depths to this world which we do not normally plumb, and which the East has perhaps more experience than us. So whatever one thinks of Kipling's belief in the English Empire, it has to be balanced with the reminder that he was the man who also wrote these lines in The Buddha at Kamakura:
The grey-robed, gay-sashed butterflies
That flit beneath the Master’s eyes.
He is beyond the Mysteries
But loves them at Kamakura.
Informed by this direction, after Kim I moved on to some Robert Louis Stevenson. I admit, I did so precisely to avoid thinking too much, as I was in a bad way back during Christmas Break in December. Treasure Island, which promised an engaging adventure without being too challenging, seemed the perfect answer to my ills (I tried to also use The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in a similar way, but while that has some humor in my shaky-state its darker aspects cut me to the quick). It's really ironic in retrospect that I went from one author, who I had chalked up as a lightweight but discovered better, to another, in hopes that he would be a lightweight and who once again surprised me.
As one of the introductions to my books noted, Stevenson is a master at creating the mental sense of a place with very few physical details; he need only remark on a few objects, a few rushed images, and we fill the rest in as we do our blind spot. This skill, it was suggested, was not unrelated to the development of the state of his craft at the time, reacting to the extreme detail of the mid-century novel as well as the advance of photography. That is, before the novelist had to be both writer and painter, for the reader was entranced not just by the events but the background and props that they were set in. But just as painting began to suffer after the invention of the camera, the Western aspiration to perfect visual verisimilitude suddenly brought up against a device it could not match, so too was there a turn away from the objective external world in literature. As such, Stevenson set his novels at a brisk pace, capturing only what the reader needed to know what it would feel like to be there, moving from action to action rather than thought to thought as his means of expression (and as such, his books have been some of the most amenable to being turned into movies).
However, as this same introduction (or perhaps another, I forget) noted, during much of the Twentieth Century Stevenson has been regarded as belonging to an inferior tradition of English literature. Because he expressed himself through adventure rather than introversion, and so was more popular, he was regarded as falling far below those who placed their grappling with the meaning of life front and center (I am not sure why Austen was spared this critique). Yet I must say that I find this reading of him unfair after having finished a sampling of his works (Treasure Island, The Curious Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Kidnapped, and Master of Ballantrae). He doesn't telegraph to the modern reader his intent through neurotic introspection, but there is an issue which does occupy him, and which has faced certain writers since the Oresteia: how to be a good man in a civil society.
Beyond the adventure, Treasure Island is about Jim coming into manhood; with his father dead and soon leaving behind his mother (there are few women in Stevenson novels), Jim must chart the course himself without any guidance from these natural sources. In the process he is put into a position where on one hand he has examples in Dr. Livesey, Squire Trelawney, and Captain Smollett, while on the other finds himself temptingly close to the immortal Long John Silver. Frankly, Silver is the best character in the book, as well as my favorite character from the Stevenson I have read, and even knowing he was a rogue beforehand I could feel his charismatic pull. There is something about him that Stevenson has captured, that while he ultimate condemns Silver because he lacks honor and loyalty, qualities which Stevenson holds in high esteem, there is no shortage of courage, self-possession, command of others, inventiveness, and ability to take the initiative either. There is only that black spot of duplicity, and should it have not been revealed before Silver was ready Jim would have been easily convinced. I think Stevenson finds himself in sympathy too, and though he uses Silver as a negative example the villain is still mercifully allowed to escape the gallows in the end.
Jekyll and Hyde continues this struggle along with the admiration of the darker half of masculine virtue. At first I only admired the book's atmosphere, easily the best of his works that I read, oozing as it was London fog out of every page, but on reflection I realized that my first rejection of its simple split between Good and Evil in the Soul didn't grasp Stevenson's larger project. It took at least another few books to reflect on it more, but the problem I realized was again much the same. It wasn't that Jekyll was good and Hyde was evil. In fact, Jekyll continues to be a multifarious person without Hyde. Rather it is that Hyde embodies something in Jekyll that when turned loose without his guidance is utterly abominable... yet which is also undoubtedly energetic, powerful, and even virile (it seems to be alluded that Hyde was a regular patron of brothels). As such, while Stevenson once again casts opprobrium on this villain, one can't end the novel without the feeling that Jekyll without Hyde was a flimsy person, and that so much of what made the former admirable had a curious, deep connection with the latter.
Kidnapped, coming next both in chronology and my own reading, and while predictably at first my impression was unfavorable it was also the novel where I finally began to realize what Stevenson was about, and ultimately grew to be my favorite of the four. It was a return to a coming of age story, with young David replacing young Jim, but with the moral and narrative greatly deepened by the introduction of Alan Breck. While Silver was simply a pirate, a warning that what may look like self-determined manliness can be dangerously self-serving and duplicitous, Alan Breck is much more difficult to judge. It is not merely that he represents a negative contrast to David's civilized society but that he represents a different set of values altogether. It was the Scottish Highlander in Stevenson, the one who scorned the placid lowlanders, the one who had contributed to Silver and Hyde, now finding himself brought into the flesh as a positive figure instead. And when given a voice he had a lot to say. Ingeniously hidden as simple banter and moments of action, David and Alan spar over what it means to be a good Christian, the place of loyalty and violence, and how much role honor ought to play in a man's life. It is the first time that I felt like Stevenson failed to come to a conclusion. Though there are repeated jabs at the "civilized" English readership of the book, Alan Breck is still a bit of a wild man and a fop. David, and the reader, do not want to become him in the end... but unlike the previous foils, we've come to appreciate him too. Again, Stevenson shows wisdom in where to end with the two main characters' parting, as all the rest is unimportant.
Finally, I have less to say about Master of Ballantrae, as honestly this book felt just too contrived. The devil-may-care attitude Stevenson had used to force his plots through coincidence and circumstance fails him here; before they felt like natural accidents, here there was no right reason for James Durie to survive the duel or for Henry Durie's long slide into madness be consummated in a theatrical winter showdown in Canada. Yet once again we do see the same pattern laid before us: James is a psychopath, but a literate, capable, courageous psychopath while Henry is a good man, but a plodding, uninspiring, somewhat pitiable good man. But it just... doesn't quite work; James in particular fails the book, for he needed to be larger-than-life, like a malevolent Edmond Dantès, but had not the personal charm of Silver, the demonic stature of Hyde, or the redeeming affability of Alan Breck. With this, Stevenson's last novel, I feel that he never really figured out how core problem to harmonize the two halves. Unlike Delacroix who, in his final massacre, comes to admit that the Romantic barbarian has his limits, Stevenson seems in rebellion to his increasingly urbanized industrial world until the very end.
Finally The Island
This was a long preamble to get to the core of this essay, which is perhaps appropriate for Robinson Crusoe, but this is what has been on my mind. Reading that Kipling and Stevenson came in the adventure tradition that had originated in English literature back with Defoe, I decided to break with my Nineteenth Century restriction and go further backward in search of the source.
To start off, I must say I had no idea the book contained anything other than a desert island; it's the only part you ever hear about, but it ends up that Crusoe came from somewhere. So much for spontaneous generation. I think this surprise enhanced my enjoyment of these parts, moving as they did with a surprising swiftness yet keeping me engaged throughout. It was reminiscent of the Stevenson comments I made above, that though almost no detail is given nonetheless the episodes stand out with plenty of vividness in my mind.
However, they also left me confused based on what I knew of Defoe. I intentionally avoid learning too much about an author before seeing what their novels have to say for themselves, but I did have a professor friend tell me that Defoe's beliefs were atypical for the time. Yet as I read it seemed as though the adventures were almost overbearingly moralized, with every twist and turn of Crusoe's (mis)adventures used to pontificate about the God-enacted ramifications of his acts. By the halfway point of the book, after Crusoe had reached the island, I was struggling, as I was not only disinterested in these thoughts but I guess my inner Boy Scout had withered too much to take joy in a story of survivalism for its own sake. Then the natives arrived and the whole tenor and meaning of the book changed for me:
"...I was yet out of their Power, and they had really no Knowledge of me, and consequently no Design upon me; and therefore it could not be just for me to fall upon them. That this would justify the Conduct of the Spaniards in all their Barbarities practis'd in America, and where they destroy'd Millions of these People, who however they were Idolaters and Barbarians, and had several bloody and barbarous Rites in their Customs, such as sacrificing human Bodies to their Idols, were yet, as to the Spaniards, very innocent People; and that the rooting them out of the Country, is spoken of with the utmost Abhorrence and Detestation, by even the Spaniards themselves, at this Time; and by all other Christian Nations of Europe, as meer Butchery, a bloody and unnatural Piece of Cruelty, unjustifiable to either God or Man..."
At first I was uncertain what was happening as Crusoe was contemplating killing the cannibals for their acts. It started out with good Christian moral superiority, but quickly gave way to reflection, and a rapid slide into reflecting on how terribly Europe had used the peoples of the New World. Not only had I not expected such a thing in this book, I admit I had not expected such a thing from any book in 1718. It made me realize that even with all my resisting of what I feel is the senseless devaluation of the European tradition I had still succumbed in some ways to the pervasive narrative that it is only in the last 50 years or so that any thoughts of this type had arisen. The passage continues:
"...I was perfectly out of my Duty, when I was laying all my bloody Schemes for the Destruction of innocent Creatures, I mean innocent as to me: As to the Crimes they were guilty of towards one another, I had nothing to do with them; they were National, and I ought to leave them to the Justice of God, who is the Governour of Nations, and knows how by National Punishments to make a just Retribution for National Offenses..."
I have a note to myself underneath this quote in my phone, left there for the record: "Well, he started in a way that seemed reasonable, noting that there was a cultural difference to admit, and that they needed to also be seen in that light, but concludes Old Testament-style that God will judge the whole nation (what of the Spaniards above?)." Yes, indeed, what of the Spaniards?
"This frequently gave me occasion to observe, and that with wonder, that however it had pleas'd God, in his Providence, and in the Government of the Works of his Hands, to take from so great a Part of the World of his Creatures, the best uses to which their Faculties, and the Powers of their Souls are adapted; yet that he has bestow'd upon them the same Powers, the same Reason, the same Affections, the same Sentiments of Kindness and Obligation, the same Passions and Resentments of Wrongs, the same Sense of Gratitude, Sincerity, Fidelity, and all the Capacities of doing Good, and receiving Good, that he has given to us; and that when he pleases to offer to them Occasions of exerting these, they are as ready, nay, more ready to apply them to the right Uses for which they were bestow'd, then we are; and this made me very melancholly sometimes, in reflecting as the several Occasions presented, how mean a Use we make of all these, even though we have these Powers enlighten'd by the Great Lamp of Instruction, the Spirit of God, and by the Knowledge of his Word, added to our Understanding; and why it has pleas'd God to hide the like saving Knowledge from so many Millions of Souls, who if I might judge by this poor Savage, would make a much better use of it than we did."
Now I was just off-balance due to what felt like a deck swaying underneath me between a curiously modern outlook and sudden retreats to traditional thought, because after this Crusoe (Defoe?) would go on to backtrack and affirm the inscrutability of the Almighty's plan which like Job we ought to be simply submit no matter how senseless and unjust it appeared. This went on for a few pages until finally Crusoe and Friday got into religion:
"...I took it by another handle, and ask'd him who made the Sea, the ground we walk'd on, and the Hills, and Woods; he told me it was one old Benamuckee, that liv'd beyond all: He could describe nothing of this great Person, but that he was very old; much older he said than the Sea, or the Land; than the Moon, or the Stars: I asked him then, if this old Person had made all Things, why did not all Things worship him; he look'd very grave, and with a perfect Look of Innocence, said, All Things do say O to him: I ask'd him if the People who die in his Country went away any where; he said, yes, they all went to Benamuckee; then I ask'd him whether these they eat up went thither too, he said yes.
From these Things, I began to instruct him in the Knowledge of the true God..."
It was then that it clicked. Reading it I saw the whole slew of parallels that had been created up to this point. In nearly everything Crusoe had demonstrated an awe-inspiring degree of hypocritical behavior, accepted for the original readers because he was European. He escapes from hated slavery under the Moors only to promptly treat Xury as a servant and sell him to the Portuguese captain (who is also held up as a bastion of Christian virtue). He interacts reasonably with the natives of Africa who never offer him any harm, and indeed are generous with provisions, but later thinks nothing of signing up to be part of a team to enslave them as well. On enslaving Friday he assumes with total superiority that it shall be Friday who learns English, who becomes Christian, and who will, in short, be civilized. Even in the dialogues Crusoe titles himself "Master" not "Me" or "Crusoe" when talking. It really is an amazing failure of Christian sentiment across the board, hidden in plain sight. But the question remained: was this Crusoe or Defoe?
This is what the above paragraph finally pushed me into answering, and the point was that it was Crusoe, and the readers, being mocked. The statement of all things saying "O" (prayer) to him was too broadminded a sentiment to be accidental; to a modern reader it veritably spoke of what we seem to have enshrined now. And of course the "joke" about the eaters and the eaten going to the same place, a straight thrust at the harsh Christian dissonance between seeing all men as brothers and also believing that the rest of the world apparently went to hell after they were done being brothers. Then Defoe just gets more and more brutal:
"[Friday] listned with great Attention, and receiv'd with Pleasure the Notion of Jesus Christ being sent to redeem us, and of the Manner of making our Prayers to God, and his being able to hear us, even into Heaven; he told me one Day, that if our God could hear us up beyond the Sun, he must needs he a greater God than Benamuckee, who liv'd but a little way off, and yet could not hear, till they went up to the great Mountains where he dwelt, to speak to him; I ask'd him if he ever went thither, to speak to him; he said no, they never went that were young Men; none went thither but the old Men, who he call'd their Oowocakee, that is, as I made him explain it to me, their Religious, or Clergy, and that they went to say O, (so he called saying Prayers) and then came back, and told them what Benamuckee said: By this I observ'd, that there is Priestcraft, even amongst the most blinded ignorant Pagans in the World; and the Policy of making a secret Religion, in order to preserve the Veneration of the People to the Clergy, is not only to be found in the Roman, but perhaps among all Religions in the World, even among the most brutish and barbarous Savages.
I endeavour'd to clear up this Fraud..."
And continuing for another page:
"I found it was not so easie to imprint right Notions in his Mind about the Devil, as it was about the Being of a God...
But, says he again, if God much strong, much might as the Devil, why God no kill the Devil, so make him no more do wicked?
I was strangely surpriz'd at his Question, and after all tho' I was now an old Man, yet I was but a young Doctor, and ill enough qualified for a Causist, or a Solver of Difficulties: And at first I could not tell what to say, so I pretended not to hear him, and ask'd him what he said? But he was too earnest for an Answer to forget his Question; so that he repeated it in the very same broken Words, as above. By this time I had recovered my self a little, and I said, God will at last punish him severely; he is reserv'd for the Judgement, and is to be cast into the Bottomless-Pit, to dwell with everlasting Fire. This did not satisfie Friday, but he returns upon me, repeating my Words, RESERVE, AT LAST, me no understand; but, Why not kill the Devil now, not kill great ago? You may as well ask me, said I, Why God does not kill you and I, when we do wicked Things here that offend him? We are preserv'd to repent and be pardon'd: He muses a while at this; well, well, says he, mighty affectionately, that well; so you, I, Devil, all wicked, all preserve, repent, God pardon all. Here I was run down again by him to the last Degree, and it was a Testimony to me, how the meer Notions of Nature, though they will guide reasonable Creatures to the Knowledge of a God, and of a Worship or Homage due to the supreme Being, of God as the Consequence of our Nature; yet nothing but divine Revelation can form the Knowledge of Jesus Christ, and of a Redemption purchas'd for us, of a Mediator of the new Covenant, and of an Intercessor, at the Foot-stool of God's Throne; I say, nothing but a Revelation from Heaven, can form these in the Soul, and that therefore the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; I mean, the Word of God, and the Spirit of God promis'd for the Guide and Sanctifier of his People, are the absolutely necessary Instructors of the Souls of Men, in the saving Knowledge of God, and the Means of Salvation."
At this point I was straight grinning. I don't find the modern criticism of Christianity interesting because it is tired and obvious, and usually undertaken with a distinct desire to feel superior to others and the past, but this was just funny. Crusoe, after reflecting on how old men go up to mountains only to relate unlikely doctrines, admits himself he is an old man, and continues to observe with the best of irony that only through unreasonable methods that his own doctrine could exist. But more than this, it is coupled with what I believe is a piece of Defoe's real Christian sympathies: that he can envision a God that even forgives the Devil, and how much deeper a sentiment that is than the cosmic us-vs-them drivel Crusoe is trying to feed Friday. It made me reflect on the ship from the wreck, and how Crusoe admits that he would have had to "live as a savage" had he not had those trappings of civilization. It is not a clear superiority anymore, and rather a reflection that we inherit what we have, and while that gave Europeans greater means in some ways has not so positioned them superior in all regards.
Again, this is an old discussion at this point, and while anti-Europeanism is running rampant in the university departments, the truth is that it is those very European-created institutions that helped bring about these realizations. It just shocked me that, once again, here was somebody 300 years ago already making the same observations, but with far more wit and far less arrogance.
So where's my confusion? My confusion lies in the rest of the book, for after what appeared to be a very elevated critique the rest of the book concludes with a shockingly traditional reward. That is, having learned his lesson from his exile, Crusoe goes on to be rich and prosperous... by abusing his plantation full of slaves. The moment that we've all been waiting for when he rejoins European civilization only to see it from the outside is entirely ignored and instead he re-acclimates with the greatest of ease. Friday faithfully follows him, but almost disappears into the background (only to show up to sport with a wild bear for our amusement). Crusoe calls himself "Job" and it appears that Defoe has taken this to heart... down to the part where it feels like the last bit of the story is tacked on by an outside agent who was not half as reflective as the primary author. I don't seriously suggest this, of course, but it leaves me completely perplexed as to how Defoe's Puritan sentiments could so amazingly override the rest of his judgement after the insight he had demonstrated up to this point. Which brings me to my own conclusion.
What a Long, Strange Voyage
I am finishing this essay here some weeks after completing the book and being part way through Moll Flanders (always need more than one book from an author to calibrate), and what I have come to the conclusion of is that Defoe doesn't have an answer... and neither does anyone else.
When I read Elliot and Hardy they both differed from the Christian norm of their times. Elliot had her powerful moral sentiments that she was trying to square with a modern world, looking for where to find truth and value in an increasingly rationalistic outlook. Hardy was happy to just declare there was no God. But what they both shared was that their stories take place entirely in Europe, and though they may be critical it is a sort of criticality that is strongly shaped by looking at it from within. There is no sense that they are really concerned with its implications for anywhere else.
By comparison, what I notice in Defoe, Stevenson, and Kipling is that they, in some sense, look at European civilization from without. It's why they write adventure stories; it's not because they're just "popular" authors, but because adventures are the only way to bring the reader to a place they don't know and so make the fish realize it was always swimming in European/Western water. We need to be in a place that we suddenly realize, viscerally, does not play by the rules that we are used to. I suspect this is why I have felt that these writers are at times extraordinarily sharp - they are just so frustrated with the complacency of their peers, even the well-educated ones. This trend would seem to fit my future reading as well: the same introduction that identified Defoe as a forerunner listed Conrad, London, and Hemingway as the successors. All of them, once again, known for their adventures in faraway, strange places, and also often relegated to second-rate because of their choice of genre, as they puzzle over Europe from without.
Another aspect that I wonder about is the emphasis on details, or the lack thereof, and how this relates to the modern Western mind. As I mentioned when Crusoe was going around places familiar to Europeans, locales for which they had set pieces, the description was sparing. When he reached the island, though, it became soaked with detail, for having brought us to a fantastic place we now have to be made it is a believable perspective. I have a deeper inkling that somehow this detail-orientation is necessary, a sort of wrestling with what is real. Living just before the Enlightenment, Defoe it would seem is also thoroughly enmeshed in the growing empiricism of England. Yet here Defoe wants to write a spiritual story, a sort of modern Pilgrim's Progress except with a lot more wrong turns. And here we get to the confusion again... because I can't tell what in this book is metaphorical and what is not, and after some reading it appears everybody else is in the same boat.
My guess is that Defoe doesn't have it worked out himself. The inconsistency of his message is neither caving into public pressure nor an excessively elaborate statement but simply that despite his leap to realizing that European man regarded all nations (and in Moll Flanders, all women) as his footstool, he is still operating off of a form of Christianity that needs a just God in a material world. Defoe sees all of humanity as being worthy of salvation, and in no way inferior innately inferior to European man, but he doesn't know why the Europeans do have the upper hand. There are physical facts that have become increasingly important and they are obscuring any way to clearly interpret the physical world in a spiritual manner. Where's the punishment for cannibalism? Where's the punishment for the Spaniards? On a smaller scale, is getting a parrot that keeps repeating, "Poor Crusoe" representative of how early on he learned to pity himself with a voice in the back of his head (Crusoe remarks that he taught other parrots to speak, but none were as a faithful companion as this one)? Or did Crusoe just get a parrot because they're on tropical islands procuring one is possible? It's like there's a link between all this, that having left the Christian sphere, and no longer playing by its rules, Defoe in accurately describing the place does not know how to make it play by God's rules either. The result is a half-baked parable, one that dearly wants to assert a rational-moral Christianity without the devil or other accessory doctrines, but cannot bring itself to reward Crusoe until he is back in Europe where such things hold once again. Until then he can only describe what happens, having Crusoe draw lessons from it but unable to have them truly manifest outside the mind.
For now, I am reading Moll Flanders and will also try A Journal of the Plague Year, but given my general understanding of both I am not sure if they will aid me much in resolving this issue. Does this combination of exotic locales, looking at Europe from without, and descriptive styles that are spare or detailed as the need to involve the viewer allows part of a trend? I will simply have to keep it in mind, testing some of my expectations against these future authors as well to see if I have a good idea on my hands.
Until then, I'll wonder about parrots.
(p.s. I realized after writing this that Kim ends with an adventure for Kipling himself. That is, while the bulk of the book is exotic enough to a European, the foray up toward Tibet is exotic even for Kipling, and the mental "sliding back into place" after he has come down from those heights is a very personal reflection too.)
