The life and amazing adventures of robinson crusoe summary. The Life and Amazing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe

Robinson was the third child in the family. Therefore, he was spoiled and not prepared for any craft. As a result, his head was filled with "all sorts of rubbish", in particular, dreams of travel. His older brother died in Flanders during a battle with the Spaniards; The middle brother also went missing. And now at home they don't even want to hear about letting Robinson sail. His father begged him to think of something more mundane and stay with them on dry land. These father's prayers made Robinson forget about the sea only for a while. But a year later he sails from Hull to London. His friend's father was a ship's captain and he had a chance at a free ride.

Already on the first day, a storm broke out and Robinson began to regret a little about what he had done.

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After some time, a stronger storm hits them, and despite the experienced personnel, this time the ship cannot be saved from the wreck. The drowning people are saved by the boat of a neighboring ship, and already on the shore Robinson again reflects on the events as signs given to him from above and reflects on returning home. In London, he meets the captain of the ship, which is supposed to go to Guinea, where Robinson will soon go. Upon returning to England, the captain of the ship dies and Robinson must go to Guinea himself. It was an unsuccessful trip - corsairs attacked the ship in Turkey and Robinson turns from a merchant into a slave who does all the dirty work. He had long lost hope of salvation. But one day he gets the opportunity to run away with a guy named Xuri. They escape on a boat that they have prepared for the future (crackers, tools, fresh water and weapons).

Robinson got on the ship, which soon suffered twice from a storm. And if the first time everything more or less worked out, then the second time the ship was wrecked. On a boat, Robinson reached the island, on which he did not leave the hope that he was not the only one who survived. But time passed, and apart from the remnants of his friends, nothing sailed to him. Following the disappointment, he is taken by surprise by cold, hunger and fear of wild animals.

Soon, Robinson, having assessed the complexity of the situation, from time to time began to sail to the sunken ship and get the necessary building materials and food from there. He is learning to tame a goat (he used to only hunt her and eat meat. Now he also drinks milk). Later, the idea came to him to engage in agriculture.

That life of Robinson can be the envy of any modern resident of the metropolis: fresh air, natural products and no pollution. But Robinson is not a primitive man, he is helped by his knowledge from a past life. He begins to keep a calendar - he makes marks on a wooden pole (the first was made on 09/30/1659).

This is how Robinson lived, slowly settling on the island, and as soon as he began to look at all the lands with his master's eye, he noticed a trace of a human foot in the sand! In a flash, our hero returns to his home and begins to strengthen it, looking for new building materials. For some time he decides to sit out in safety, but then he goes on a "tour" and again sees the traces and remains of a cannibal dinner. Horror seizes him for almost two years and he lives without escape only on his half of the island.

One night he sees a ship and starts to light a fire. But already in the morning he sees that ship broken on the rocks.

He saw how one savage was sentenced to death and felt the duty to save him. After being rescued, he names the savage Friday and decides to tame him. He teaches Friday three main words: master, yes and no. The next arrival of the cannibals gave them another man - a Spaniard and Friday's father.

After, a ship arrives to punish the captain, assistant and passenger. Robinson and Friday rescue the punished and seize the ship on which they get to England.

Robinson's 28-year stay on the island ended in 1686. Returning home, Robinson Crusoe found that his parents had long since died.

Peace is not for Robinson, he barely hatches in England for several years: thoughts about the island haunt him day and night. Age and prudent speeches of his wife for the time being keep him. He even buys a farm, intends to take up rural labor, to which he is so accustomed. The death of his wife breaks these plans. Nothing else keeps him in England. In January 1694, he sails on the ship of his nephew, the captain. With him is faithful Pyatnitsa, two carpenters, a blacksmith, a certain "master for all sorts of mechanical work" and a tailor. The load he takes to the island is hard

Even to enumerate, everything seems to be provided, right down to “brackets, loops, hooks”, etc. On the island, he expects to meet the Spaniards, whom he missed.
Looking ahead, he tells about life on the island everything that he learns later from the Spaniards. The colonists live unfriendly. Those three inveterate ones that were left on the island did not come to their senses - they are loafing, they are not engaged in crops and a herd. If they still keep themselves within the bounds of decency with the Spaniards, then they exploit their two compatriots mercilessly. It comes to vandalism - trampled crops, destroyed huts. Finally, the Spaniards also lose patience and this trinity is expelled to another part of the island. Do not forget about the island and the savages: having learned that the island is inhabited, they run into large groups. There are bloody battles. Meanwhile, the restless trio begs the Spaniards for a boat and visits the nearest islands, returning with a group of natives, in which there are five women and three men. The British take women as wives (religion does not allow the Spaniards). The common danger (the biggest villain, Atkins, shows himself excellently in a fight with savages) and, perhaps, the beneficial female influence completely transforms the odious Englishmen (there are two of them left, the third died in the fight), so that by the time Robinson arrives, peace and harmony are established on the island .
Like a monarch (this is his comparison), he generously endows the colonists with inventory, provisions, clothes, settles the last differences. Generally speaking, he acts like a governor, which he might well have been, if not for his hasty departure from England, which prevented him from taking out a patent. No less than the well-being of the colony, Robinson is concerned with establishing "spiritual" order. With him is a French missionary, a Catholic, but the relationship between them is sustained in the educational spirit of religious tolerance. To begin with, they marry married couples living "in sin." Then the native wives themselves are baptized. In total, Robinson stayed on his island for twenty-five days. At sea they meet a flotilla of pirogues full of natives. A bloody slaughter flares up, Friday dies. There is a lot of blood shed in this second part of the book. In Madagascar, avenging the death of a rapist sailor, his comrades will burn and cut out an entire village. Robinson's indignation turns thugs against him, demanding to land him ashore (they are already in the Bay of Bengal). The captain's nephew is forced to yield to them, leaving two servants with Robinson.
Robinson meets with an English merchant who tempts him with the prospect of trade with China. In the future, Robinson travels by land, satisfying natural curiosity with outlandish customs and views. For the Russian reader, this part of his adventures is interesting because he returns to Europe through Siberia. In Tobolsk he met exiled "state criminals" and "not without pleasantness" spent long winter evenings with them. Then there will be Arkhangelsk, Hamburg, The Hague, and, finally, in January 1705, after ten years and nine months of space, Robinson arrives in London.

The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (Summary) - Daniel Defoe

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The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (Summary) - Daniel Defoe

Everyone knows Daniel Defoe's novel about Robinson Crusoe. Even those who have not read it remember the story of a young sailor who ends up on a desert island after a shipwreck. He has lived there for twenty-eight years.

Everyone knows a writer like Daniel Defoe. "Robinson Crusoe", the brief content of which makes you once again convinced of his genius, is his most famous work.

For more than two hundred years, people have been reading the novel. Lots of parodies and sequels. Economists build models of human existence based on this novel. What is the popularity of this book? The story of Robinson will help answer this question.

Summary of "Robinson Crusoe" for the reader's diary

Robinson was the third son of his parents, he was not prepared for any profession. He always dreamed of the sea and travel. His older brother fought the Spaniards and died. The middle brother is missing. Therefore, the parents did not want to let their youngest son go to sea.

The father with tears asked Robinson to simply exist modestly. But these requests only temporarily reasoned with the 18-year-old guy. The son tries to win the support of his mother, but this idea is unsuccessful. For another year, he tries to take time off from his parents, until in September in 1651 he sails to London, because of the free passage (the captain was the father of his friend).

Robinson's Sea Adventures

Already on the first day, a storm broke out at sea, Robinson repented in his soul for disobedience. But this state was dispelled by drinking. A week later, an even more severe storm hit. The ship sank and the sailors were picked up by a boat from a neighboring ship. On the shore, Robinson wants to return to his parents, but "evil fate" keeps him on the chosen path. A summary of "Robinson Crusoe" for the reader's diary shows what a difficult fate fell to Robinson.

In London, the hero met the captain of a ship going to Guinea, and is going to sail with him, he becomes a friend of the captain. Robinson very soon regrets that he did not become a sailor, so he would have learned to be a sailor. But he gets some knowledge: the captain is happy to work with Robinson, trying to pass the time. When the ship returns to die, Robinson sails themselves to Guinea. This expedition is unsuccessful: their ship is captured by Turkish pirates, and our hero turns into a slave of the Turkish captain. He forces Robinson to do all the homework, but does not take it to the sea. In this part, the novel "The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe", a summary of which describes the whole life of the protagonist, shows the determination and leadership of a man.

The owner sent a prisoner to fish, and one day, when they were at a great distance from the shore, Robinson persuades the Xuri boy to escape. He prepared for this in advance, so there were crackers and fresh water, tools and weapons in the boat. On the way, the fugitives get their own living creatures, peaceful natives give them water and food. They are later picked up by a ship from Portugal. The captain promises to take Robinson to Brazil for free. He buys their boat and the boy Xuri, promising to return his freedom in a few years. Robinson agrees with this. A summary of "Robinson Crusoe" for the reader's diary will further tell about the hero's life in Brazil.

Life in Brazil

In Brazil, Robinson receives their citizenship, working on his own plantations of tobacco and sugar cane. Plantation neighbors help him. Plantations needed workers, and slaves were expensive. After listening to Robinson's stories about trips to Guinea, the planters decide to bring slaves to Brazil secretly by ship and divide them among themselves. Robinson is offered to be a ship's clerk in charge of buying Negroes in Guinea. "The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe", a brief summary of this work, further reveals the recklessness of the protagonist.

He agrees and sails from Brazil on September 1, 1659, 8 years after leaving his parental home. On the second week of the voyage, a severe storm began to batter the ship. He runs aground, and on the boat the command is given into the hands of fate. A large shaft overturns the boat and, miraculously saved, Robinson falls on land. The summary of "Robinson Crusoe" for the reader's diary further talks about Robinson's new home.

Miraculous Rescue - Deserted Island

He alone escapes and mourns for his dead friends. The first night, Robinson sleeps in a tree, afraid of wild animals. On the second day, the hero took from the ship (which brought closer to the shore) a lot of useful things - weapons, nails, a screwdriver, a sharpener, pillows. On the shore, he puts up a tent, transfers food, gunpowder into it and makes a bed for himself. In total, he was on the ship 12 times, and always took something valuable from there - tackle, crackers, rum, flour. The last time he saw a pile of gold and thought that in his condition they were not at all important, but he took them anyway. The novel "The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe", a summary of its further parts will tell about the further

That night the storm left nothing of the ship. Now Robinson was waiting for the construction of safe housing overlooking the sea, from where rescue could be expected.

On a hill, he finds a flat clearing and pitches a tent on it, enclosing it with a fence of trunks driven into the ground. This house could be entered by a ladder. In the rock, he broke a cave and used it as a cellar. All the work took him a lot of time. But he quickly gained experience. Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" summary of this novel further tells of Robinson's adjustment to a new life.

Adjusting to a new life

Now it was up to him to survive. But Robinson was alone, he was opposed by the world, unaware of his condition - the sea, the rains, the wild deserted island. To do this, he will have to master many professions and interact with the environment. He noticed and learned everything. He learned to domesticate goats, make cheese. In addition to cattle breeding, Robinson took up farming when grains of barley and rice sprouted, which he shook out of the bag. The hero sowed a large field. Next, Robinson created a calendar in the form of a large pillar, on which he put a notch every day.

The first date on the pillar is September 30, 1659. From that moment on, his every day counts, and much becomes known to the reader. During Robinson's absence, the monarchy was restored in England, and Robinson returns to the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688, which brought William of Orange to the throne.

Diary of Robinson Crusoe, summary: continuation of the story

Among the not very necessary things that Robinson took from the ship were ink, paper, three Bibles. When his life improved (three cats and a dog from the ship still lived with him, then a parrot appeared), he started a diary to ease his soul . In his diary, Robinson describes all his affairs, observations regarding the harvest and the weather.

The earthquake forces Robinson to think about new housing, as it is dangerous to stay under the mountain. The remains of a ship after the crash sail to the island, and Robinson finds tools and building materials on it. A fever knocks him down, and he reads the Bible and heals as best he can. Tobacco-infused rum helps him recover.

When Robinson recovered, he explored the island, where he lived for about ten months. Among unknown plants, Robinson finds melon and grapes, and then makes raisins from the latter. The island also has a lot of living creatures: foxes, hares, turtles, as well as penguins. Robinson considers himself the owner of these beauties, because no one lives here anymore. He puts up a hut, strengthens it and lives there, as in a country house.

Robinson works for two or three years without straightening his back. He writes all this in his diary. So he recorded one of his days. In short, the day consisted of Robinson reading the Bible, hunting, sorting, drying, and cooking the game he caught.

Robinson tended crops, harvested crops, cared for livestock, made gardening tools. All these activities took a lot of time and effort from him. With patience, he brought everything to the end. I even baked bread without an oven, salt and yeast.

Building a boat and walking in the sea

Robinson did not stop dreaming about the boat and the departure to the mainland. He just wanted to get out of bondage. Robinson cuts down a large tree and cuts a small boat out of it. But he never manages to lower it into the water (since it was far in the forest). He endures failure with patience.

Robinson spends his leisure time on updating his wardrobe: he sews a fur suit for himself (jacket and trousers), a hat and makes an umbrella. Five years later, Robinson builds a boat and launches it into the water. Having got out into the sea, he travels around the island. The current carries the boat to the open sea, and with great difficulty Robinson returns to the island. This is how he describes the adventures of Robinson Crusoe. The summary of this novel shows the loneliness of the hero and his hope for salvation.

Traces of savages in the sand

Because of fear, Robinson does not go to sea for a long time. He masters pottery, weaves baskets and makes a pipe. There is a lot of tobacco on the island. On one of the walks, a man sees a footprint in the sand. He is very frightened, returns home and does not go out for three days, thinking whose trace it is. The hero is afraid that they might be savages from the mainland. Robinson thinks that they can destroy the crops, disperse the cattle, and eat it itself. When he leaves the "fortress", he makes a new pen for the goats. The man again discovers traces of people and the remains of a feast of cannibals. The guests were back on the island. For two years, Robinson remains on one part of the island in his home. But then life returns to normal. This will be discussed in the next part of the article with a summary ("Robinson Crusoe"). Daniel Defoe describes all the affairs of the hero in small details.

Saving Friday - a savage from nearby lands

One night a man hears a shot from a cannon - the ship gives a signal. The whole night Robinson burns a fire, and in the morning he sees the fragments of the ship. From anguish and loneliness, he prays that someone from the team will be saved, but only the cabin boy's corpse comes ashore. There were no survivors on the ship. Robinson still wants to get to the mainland and wants to take some savage to help. For a year and a half, he comes up with plans, but cannibals scare Robinson. Once he manages to meet a savage whom he saves. He becomes his friend.

Robinson's life becomes more pleasant. He teaches Friday (as he called the rescued savage) to eat broth and wear clothes. Friday turned out to be a good and loyal friend. This is stated in the novel "The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe", a summary of which can be read in one breath.

Escape from imprisonment and return to England

Visitors are coming to the island soon. A team of rebels on an English ship brings the captain, assistant and passenger for reprisal. Robinson frees the captain and his friends, and they pacify the rebellion. The only desire that Robinson voices to the captain is his delivery to England with Friday. Robinson stayed on the island for 28 years and returned to England on June 11, 1686. His parents were no longer alive, but the widow of his first captain was still alive. He learns that an official from the treasury took his plantation, but all the income is returned to him. A man helps his two nephews, prepares them for sailors. Robinson marries at 61 and has three children. This is how the amazing story ends.

The ship, on which Robinson Crusoe set off on a journey, crashed during a storm: ran aground. The entire crew was killed, except for one sailor. This was Robinson Crusoe, who was thrown by a wave onto a desert island.

On behalf of the protagonist, the events in the novel are narrated. It tells how Robinson Crusoe was able to save the things he needed from the ship, how he was struck by the thought: if the crew had not been afraid of the storm and left the ship, everyone would have remained alive.

First of all, I put on the raft all the boards that I found on the ship, and on them I put three sailors' chests, breaking their locks before that and emptying them. Having carefully weighed which of the things I needed, I selected them and filled all three boxes with them. In one of them I put food supplies: rice, crackers, three heads of Dutch cheese, five large pieces of dried goat meat, which was the main food on the ship, and the remains of grain for chickens, which we took with us and have long since "ate. This there was barley interspersed with wheat; to my great regret, later it turned out that rats spoiled it ...

After a long search, I found our carpenter's box, and it was a precious find, which I would not have given at that time for a whole ship of gold. I put this box on the raft without even looking into it, because I knew approximately what tools it contained.

Now I had to stock up on weapons and ammunition. In the wardroom I found two wonderful hunting rifles and two pistols, which I transported to the raft, along with several powder flasks, a small bag of shot and two old rusty swords. I knew that there were three barrels of gunpowder on the ship, but I did not know where our gunner kept them. But, having searched well, I found all three: one was wet, and two were completely dry, and I dragged them onto the raft along with weapons ...

Now it was up to me to inspect the surroundings and choose for myself a convenient place to live, where I could store my property without fear that it would be lost. I did not know where I was: on a continent or on an island, in a settled or uninhabited country; I didn’t know if the predatory beasts were threatening me or not…

I made another discovery: not a patch of cultivated land was visible anywhere - the island, by all indications, was uninhabited, maybe predators lived here, but so far I have not seen one; but there were many birds, however, completely unknown to me ...

Now I was more worried about how to protect myself from savages, if any, and from predators, if they are found on the island ...

At the same time, I wanted to meet several conditions that are extremely necessary for me: firstly, a healthy area and fresh water, which I have already mentioned, secondly, a shelter from the heat, thirdly, safety from predators, both bipedal and and four-legged, and, finally, fourthly, the sea must be visible from my dwelling, so as not to lose the opportunity to be freed if God sent a ship, because I did not want to give up the hope of salvation ...

Before pitching the tent, I circled in front of the recess a semicircle, ten yards in radius and therefore twenty yards in diameter.

Into this semicircle I pounded two rows of strong stakes, driving them so deep that they stood firmly, like piles. I sharpened the upper ends of the stakes ...

I did not break through the doors in the fence, but licked over the palisade with the help of a short ladder. Having entered my room, I took the ladder and, feeling securely fenced off from the whole world, I could sleep peacefully at night, which, under other conditions, it seemed to me, would be impossible. However, as it turned out later, all these precautions against imaginary enemies were not needed ...

My situation seemed to me very sad. I was thrown by a terrible storm on an island that lay far from the destination of our ship and several hundred miles from the trade routes, and I had every reason to believe that the sky judged so, and here, in this solitary and loneliness, I would have to end my days. Plentiful tears streamed down my face as I thought about it...

Ten or twelve days passed, and it occurred to me that, in the absence of books, pen and ink, I would lose count of the days and finally cease to distinguish weekdays from holidays. To prevent this, I set up a considerable pillar on the place of the coast where the sea had thrown me, and, having written in letters on a wide wooden board the inscription: "Here I stepped ashore on September 30, 1659," I nailed it crosswise to the pillar.

On this quadrangular pillar I each made a notch with a knife; every seventh day, made twice as long - this meant Sunday; On the first day of each month, I marked even longer Zarubin. So I kept my calendar, marking days, weeks, months and years.

It is also impossible not to mention that we had two cats and a dog on the ship - I will tell in due time an interesting story of the life of these animals on the island. I brought both cats ashore with me; as for the dog, he jumped off the ship himself and came to me on the second day after I carried my first load. He has been my faithful servant for many years...

As already said, I took pens, ink and paper from the ship. I saved them as much as I could and, as long as I had ink, carefully wrote down everything, and it happened, when he was gone, I had to abandon the notes, I did not know how to make ink for myself and could not think of something to replace it with ...

The time came when I began to seriously reflect on my situation and the circumstances in which I found myself, and began to write down my thoughts - not to leave them to people who will have to experience the same as me (there are hardly many such people ), but to express everything that tormented and gnawed at me, and thereby at least lighten my soul a little. And how hard it was for me, my mind slowly overcame despair. I did my best to console myself with the thought that something worse could have happened, and opposed good to evil. Quite rightly, as if profits and expenses, I wrote down all the troubles that I had to experience, and next to it - all the joys that fell to my lot.

I was thrown on a terrible, deserted island and I have no hope of salvation.

I would be singled out and separated from the whole world and doomed to grief.

I am aloof from all mankind; I am a hermit, banished from human society.

I have few clothes, and soon I will have nothing to cover my body with.

I am defenseless against the attack of people and animals.

I have no one to talk to and comfort myself.

But I am alive, I did not drown like all my comrades.

On the other hand, I am distinguished from our entire crew by the fact that death spared only me, and the one who so strangely saved me from death will rescue me from this bleak situation.

But I did not starve to death and perish in this deserted place where a person has nothing to live from.

But I live in a hot climate where I would hardly wear clothes if I had one.

But I ended up on an island where you can not see such predatory animals as on the shores of Africa. What would happen to me if I was thrown there?

But God worked a miracle, driving our ship so close to the shore that I not only managed to stock up on everything necessary to meet my daily needs, but also have the opportunity to provide myself with food for the rest of my days.

All this irrefutably testifies that it is unlikely that there has ever been such an evil situation in the world, where next to bad there would not be something good, for which one should be grateful: the bitter experience of a person who has suffered the most misfortunes on earth shows that we always have consolation, which in the account of good and evil must be credited. "

The attention of Robinson Crusoe was interested in savage cannibals who brought captives to the Robinson Island for a sacrificial rite. Robinson decided to save one of the unfortunates so that this person would become a consolation in his lonely life, and also, perhaps, a guide for crossing to the mainland.

One day, fortune smiled on Robinson: one of the captive cannibal savages ran away from his executioners, who were pursuing the prisoner.

I became convinced that the distance between them was increasing, and that when he managed to run like that for another half an hour, they would not catch him.

They were separated from my castle by a cove, which I have already mentioned more than once at the beginning of the story: the same one where I moored with my rafts when transporting Property from our ship. I clearly saw that the fugitive would have to swim across it, otherwise he would be caught. Indeed, he, without hesitation, threw himself into the water, although there was just a tributary, swam across the bay in some thirty strokes, climbed out to the opposite shore and, without slowing down, rushed on. Of the three pursuers, only two threw themselves into the water, and the third did not dare, because, apparently, he did not know how to swim. He stood hesitantly on the shore, looked after the other two, and then slowly walked back.

So a friend appeared in Robinson, whom he named Friday in honor of the day of the week when the event of the release of the prisoner took place.

He was a good guy, tall, immaculately built, with even, strong arms and legs and a well-developed body. He looked to be twenty-six years old. There was nothing wild or cruel in his face. It was a manly face with a soft and gentle European expression, especially when he smiled. His hair was long and black, but not curly like sheep's wool; the forehead is high and wide, the eyes are lively and shining; the color of the skin is not black, but swarthy, but not that nasty yellow-red color of the Brazilian or Virginian Indians, but rather olive, very pleasant to the eye, although it is difficult to describe. His face was round and full, his nose was small, but not at all flattened, like the Negroes. In addition, he had a well-defined mouth with thin lips and regular shape, white, like ivory, excellent teeth.

No one else, perhaps, had such an affectionate, such a faithful and devoted servant as my Friday: no anger, no stubbornness, no self-will; always kind and helpful, he leaned against me as if he were his own father. I am sure that if it were necessary, he would give his life for me. He proved his loyalty more than once, and so: soon the slightest doubt disappeared from me, and I was convinced that I did not need a warning at all.

However, Robinson Crusoe was a protective person: he did not immediately rush to the boat that moored from the ship to the shore.

Among the 11 people, three were prisoners, whom they decided to land on this island. Robinson learned from the prisoners that it was the captain, his assistant and one passenger; the ship is captured by the rebels, and the captain entrusts Robinson with the role of leader in the fight against the rebels. Meanwhile, another boat landed on the shore - with pirates. During the fight, some of the rebels die, while others appear to the Robinson team.

So for Robinson opened the opportunity to return home.

I decided not to let the five hostages who were sitting in the cave anywhere. Twice a day Friday gave them food and drink; two other prisoners brought food to a certain place, and from there Friday received them. I appeared to those two hostages accompanied by the captain. He told them that I was a confidant of the governor, I was instructed to look after the prisoners, without my permission they had no right to go anywhere and at the first disobedience they would be shackled and put in a castle ...

Now the captain could equip two boats without hindrance, repair a hole in one of them and pick up a team for them. He appointed his passenger as commander of one boat and gave him four people, and he himself, with his assistant and five sailors, got into the second boat. They timed it so accurately that they arrived at the ship at midnight. When it was already possible to hear them from the ship, the captain ordered Robinson to call the crew and say that they had brought people and a boat and that they had to look for them for a long time, and also tell them something, just to divert their attention with conversations, and meanwhile stick to board. The captain and the first mate ran on deck and knocked down the second mate and the ship's carpenter with the butts of their guns. With the support of their sailors, they captured everyone on deck and on the quarterdeck, and then began to lock the hatches to detain the rest below ...

The captain's mate called for help, despite his wound, burst into the cabin and shot the new captain in the head; the bullet hit the mouth and exited the ear, killing the rebel on the spot. Then the entire crew surrendered, and no more blood was shed. When it was all over, the captain ordered seven cannon shots to be fired, as we agreed in advance, to inform me of the successful completion of the case. Waiting for this signal, I swung around on the shore until two in the morning. You can imagine how happy I was when I heard it.

Having distinctly heard all seven shots, I lay down and, tired with the anxieties of that day, fell asleep soundly. I was awakened by the sound of another shot. I immediately jumped up and heard someone calling me: "Governor, Governor!" I immediately recognized the captain's voice. He stood above my fortress, on a hill. I quickly went up to him, he squeezed me in his arms and, pointing to the ship, blew:

“My dear friend and savior, here is your ship!” He is yours with everything they have on them and with all of us.

So I left the island on December 19, 1686, according to the ship's records, having stayed on it for twenty-eight years, two months and nineteen days. I was freed from this second captivity on the same day that I had fled on a longboat from the Moors of Sale.

After a long sea voyage, I arrived in England on June 11, 1687, having been absent for thirty-five years.

A gunner is a person who maintains cannons.

Translation by E. Krizhevich

When an almost sixty-year-old well-known journalist and publicist Daniel Defoe(1660-1731) wrote in 1719 "Robinson Crusoe", he least of all thought that an innovative work was coming out from under his pen, the first novel in the literature of the Enlightenment. He did not expect that it was this text that descendants would prefer out of 375 works already published under his signature and earned him the honorary name of "the father of English journalism." Literary historians believe that in fact he wrote much more, only to identify his works, published under different pseudonyms, in a wide stream of the English press at the turn of the 17th-18th centuries is not easy. Behind Defoe at the time of the creation of the novel was a huge life experience: he comes from a lower class, in his youth he was a participant in the rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth, escaped execution, traveled around Europe and spoke six languages, knew the smiles and betrayals of Fortune. His values - wealth, prosperity, personal responsibility of a person before God and himself - are typically puritanical, bourgeois values, and Defoe's biography is a colorful, eventful biography of the bourgeois of the era of primitive accumulation. He started various enterprises all his life and said about himself: "Thirteen times I became rich and again poor." Political and literary activity led him to a civil execution at the pillory. For one of the magazines, Defoe wrote a fake autobiography of Robinson Crusoe, the authenticity of which his readers should have believed (and believed).

The plot of the novel is based on a true story, told by Captain Woods Rogers in an account of his journey, which Defoe could read in the press. Captain Rogers told how his sailors removed a man from an uninhabited island in the Atlantic Ocean, who had spent four years and five months alone there. Alexander Selkirk, a violent mate on an English ship, quarreled with his captain and was put on the island with a gun, gunpowder, a supply of tobacco, and a Bible. When Rogers' sailors found him, he was dressed in goatskins and "looked wilder than the horned original owners of this attire." He forgot how to speak, on the way to England he hid crackers in the secluded places of the ship, and it took time for him to return to a civilized state.

Unlike the real prototype, Defoe's Crusoe has not lost his humanity in twenty-eight years on a desert island. The story of the affairs and days of Robinson is permeated with enthusiasm and optimism, the book exudes an unfading charm. Today, "Robinson Crusoe" is read primarily by children and adolescents as a fascinating adventure story, but the novel poses problems that should be discussed in terms of the history of culture and literature.

The protagonist of the novel, Robinson, an exemplary English businessman who embodies the ideology of the emerging bourgeoisie, grows in the novel to a monumental depiction of the creative, creative abilities of a person, and at the same time his portrait is historically completely specific.

Robinson, the son of a merchant from York, dreams of the sea from a young age. On the one hand, there is nothing exceptional in this - England at that time was the leading maritime power in the world, English sailors plied all the oceans, the profession of a sailor was the most common, considered honorable. On the other hand, Robinson is drawn to the sea not by the romance of sea voyages; he does not even try to enter the ship as a sailor and study maritime affairs, but in all his voyages he prefers the role of a passenger paying the fare; Robinson trusts the traveller's unfaithful fate for a more prosaic reason: he is drawn to "the rash venture to make a fortune by scouring the world." Indeed, outside of Europe it was easy to get rich quick with some luck, and Robinson runs away from home, defying his father's admonitions. Father Robinson's speech at the beginning of the novel is a hymn to bourgeois virtues, to the "average condition":

Those who leave their homeland in pursuit of adventure, he said, are either those who have nothing to lose, or the ambitious who yearn for the highest position; embarking on enterprises that go beyond the framework of everyday life, they strive to improve their affairs and cover their name with glory; but such things are either beyond my powers, or humiliating for me; my place is the middle, that is, what can be called the highest stage of a modest existence, which, as he was convinced by many years of experience, is for us the best in the world, the most suitable for human happiness, freed from need and deprivation, physical labor and suffering falling to the lot of the lower classes, and from luxury, ambition, arrogance and envy of the upper classes. How pleasant such a life is, he said, I can already judge by the fact that all those placed in other conditions envy him: even kings often complain about the bitter fate of people born for great deeds, and regret that fate did not put them between two extremes - insignificance and greatness, and the sage speaks in favor of the middle as a measure of true happiness, when he prays heaven not to send him either poverty or wealth.

However, young Robinson does not heed the voice of prudence, goes to sea, and his first merchant enterprise - an expedition to Guinea - brings him three hundred pounds (it is characteristic how accurately he always names sums of money in the narrative); this luck turns his head and completes his "death". Therefore, everything that happens to him in the future, Robinson considers as a punishment for filial disobedience, for not obeying "sober arguments of the best part of his being" - reason. And on an uninhabited island at the mouth of the Orinoco, he falls, succumbing to the temptation to "get rich sooner than circumstances allowed": he undertakes to deliver slaves from Africa for Brazilian plantations, which will increase his fortune to three or four thousand pounds sterling. During this voyage, he ends up on a desert island after a shipwreck.

And then the central part of the novel begins, an unprecedented experiment begins, which the author puts on his hero. Robinson is a small atom of the bourgeois world, who does not think of himself outside this world and regards everything in the world as a means to achieve his goal, having already traveled three continents, purposefully following his path to wealth.

He is artificially torn out of society, placed in solitude, placed face to face with nature. In the "laboratory" conditions of a tropical uninhabited island, an experiment is being carried out on a person: how will a person torn from civilization behave, individually faced with the eternal, core problem of mankind - how to survive, how to interact with nature? And Crusoe repeats the path of humanity as a whole: he begins to work, so that work becomes the main theme of the novel.

The Enlightenment novel, for the first time in the history of literature, pays tribute to labor. In the history of civilization, work was usually perceived as a punishment, as an evil: according to the Bible, God placed the need to work on all the descendants of Adam and Eve as a punishment for original sin. In Defoe, labor appears not only as the real main content of human life, not only as a means of obtaining the necessary. Even Puritan moralists were the first to talk about labor as a worthy, great occupation, and labor is not poeticized in Defoe's novel. When Robinson finds himself on a desert island, he does not really know how to do anything, and only little by little, through failure, he learns to grow bread, weave baskets, make his own tools, clay pots, clothes, an umbrella, a boat, breed goats, etc. It has long been noted that it is more difficult for Robinson to give those crafts with which his creator was well acquainted: for example, Defoe at one time owned a tile factory, so Robinson's attempts to mold and burn pots are described in detail. Robinson himself is aware of the saving role of labor:

"Even when I realized all the horror of my situation - all the hopelessness of my loneliness, my complete isolation from people, without a glimmer of hope for deliverance - even then, as soon as the opportunity opened up to stay alive, not to die of hunger, all my grief was like a hand took off: I calmed down, began to work to satisfy my urgent needs and to save my life, and if I lamented about my fate, then least of all I saw heavenly punishment in it ... "

However, in the conditions of the experiment started by the author on the survival of a person, there is one concession: Robinson quickly "opens up the opportunity not to starve to death, to stay alive." It cannot be said that all his ties with civilization have been completely cut. First, civilization operates in his habits, in his memory, in his life position; secondly, from the plot point of view, civilization sends its fruits to Robinson surprisingly timely. He would hardly have survived if he had not immediately evacuated all food supplies and tools from the wrecked ship (guns and gunpowder, knives, axes, nails and a screwdriver, sharpened, crowbar), ropes and sails, bed and dress. However, at the same time, civilization is represented on the Isle of Despair only by its technical achievements, and social contradictions do not exist for an isolated, lonely hero. It is from loneliness that he suffers the most, and the appearance of the savage Friday on the island becomes a relief.

As already mentioned, Robinson embodies the psychology of the bourgeois: it seems quite natural for him to appropriate everything and everyone for which there is no legal property right for any of the Europeans. Robinson's favorite pronoun is "my", and he immediately makes Friday his servant: "I taught him to pronounce the word" master "and made it clear that this is my name." Robinson does not question whether he has the right to appropriate Friday for himself, to sell his friend in captivity, the boy Xuri, to trade in slaves. Other people are of interest to Robinson insofar as they are partners or the subject of his transactions, trading operations, and Robinson does not expect a different attitude towards himself. In Defoe's novel, the world of people, depicted in the story of Robinson's life before his ill-fated expedition, is in a state of Brownian motion, and the stronger its contrast with the bright, transparent world of an uninhabited island.

So, Robinson Crusoe is a new image in the gallery of great individualists, and he differs from his Renaissance predecessors by the absence of extremes, by the fact that he completely belongs to the real world. No one will call Crusoe a dreamer, like Don Quixote, or an intellectual, a philosopher, like Hamlet. His sphere is practical action, management, trade, that is, he is engaged in the same thing as the majority of mankind. His egoism is natural and natural, he is aimed at a typically bourgeois ideal - wealth. The secret of the charm of this image is in the very exceptional conditions of the educational experiment that the author made on him. For Defoe and his first readers, the interest of the novel lay precisely in the exclusivity of the hero's situation, and a detailed description of his everyday life, his daily work was justified only by a thousand miles distance from England.

Robinson's psychology is fully consistent with the simple and artless style of the novel. Its main property is credibility, complete persuasiveness. The illusion of the authenticity of what is happening is achieved by Defoe using so many small details that no one seems to have undertaken to invent. Taking an initially improbable situation, Defoe then develops it, strictly observing the limits of likelihood.

The success of "Robinson Crusoe" with the reader was such that four months later Defoe wrote "The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe", and in 1720 he published the third part of the novel - "Serious reflections during a life and amazing adventures of Robinson Crusoe". Over the course of the 18th century, about fifty more "new Robinsons" saw the light in various literatures, in which Defoe's idea gradually turned out to be completely inverted. In Defoe, the hero strives not to become savage, not to be simple himself, to tear the savage out of "simplicity" and nature - his followers have new Robinsons, who, under the influence of the ideas of the late Enlightenment, live one life with nature and are happy to break with an emphatically vicious society. This meaning was put into Defoe's novel by the first passionate exposer of the vices of civilization, Jean Jacques Rousseau; for Defoe, separation from society was a return to the past of mankind - for Rousseau it becomes an abstract example of the formation of man, the ideal of the future.