I had heard so much about Robinson Crusoe that I was really looking forward to a compelling read about human resilience and high drama. But to my greatest surprise, I found this book started off with some quite uninteresting topics (to the modern reader of course). Crusoe doesn’t have any exciting adventures until quite far into the book and the initial three hundred or so pages are, for the greater part, an account of goat husbandry and the difficulties of making ink and paper etc. It’s when his “Man Friday” is rescued from some cannibals that the book really begins to pick up some pace and catches the reader’s imagination. Their relationship is utterly compelling and Crusoe is forced to be open-minded, having no other companions around him except his parrot. He is, subsequently, able to understand the dignity of the ’’savage’’ and look upon him eventually as an equal in some ways although still a servant.
I enjoyed the fact that Defoe questions our relationship with those we believe are beneath us. This is an especially relevant parallel in a modern capitalistic society where money, status and class seem to go hand-in-hand although they are not necessarily related. All in all, although not an earth-shattering read, Defoe has given us an eternal book, which seems to hit upon issues that are still relevant (and will always be) in the modern world.