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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!dartvax!karl
From: karl@dartvax.UUCP (S. Delage.)
Newsgroups: net.books
Subject: Robinson Crusoe should have drowned.
Message-ID: <2273@dartvax.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 4-Aug-84 21:19:32 EDT
Article-I.D.: dartvax.2273
Posted: Sat Aug  4 21:19:32 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 5-Aug-84 08:28:40 EDT
Organization: Dartmouth College
Lines: 22


Robinson Crusoe doesn't have much to do with the sea. In fact, as
far as I could tell, it is an excellent advertisement for 
not wanting to live in those times, and not much else.

What is the first things Crusoe does when he gets on the island?
Starts building a wall, to keep savages out. Tries to find guns,
so if they get past his wall, he can shoot them. Praises God for
His mercifulness and bounty, when he had never been religious
before.

The religion goes to amazing lengths towards the end of the book,
when he meets up with the so-called heathen Friday, a cannibal who
takes to Christianity, and servility, like he was born to it. The
thought that perhaps Friday was not destinied to be a servant
never entered Crusoe's mind -- presumably as it never entered
Defoe's.

Lots of English classes read it. Without them, one would think it
would have been out of print for several hundred years.

dartvax!karl                 karl@dartmouth