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Robinson Crusoe Summary (Part 2)
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Crusoe spends his time bettering his
day to day life on the island. He improves his dwelling, figures
out the best way to hunt the mountain goats, and builds tools.
At one point he discovers that some seeds of barley and rice
that he had carelessly thrown aside were sprouting. Crusoe takes
the growth of the crops as an act of fate and feels that God has
helped him, until he realizes they come from some seeds he had
carelessly discarded. He harvests the seeds of these sprouts to
later plant a crop. A sudden earthquake hits the island,
collapsing part of Crusoe's cave, scaring him and convincing him
that he ought to move his dwelling. Before he can begin this new
project Crusoe falls sick, remaining so for more than ten days.
Lost in fever, he has a dream, perhaps partly inspired by his
fear of the earthquake. In this dream a great fiery man descends
from the sky, holding in his hand a terrible weapon, and says to
Crusoe, "Seeing all these things have not brought thee to
repentance, now thou shalt die." |
This dream forces Crusoe to consider his life and realize that all
of his prayers to God were merely the products of distress rather
than any real religious faith. Beginning to feel his sickness
return, he searches for some tobacco he had salvaged from the ship
and comes upon a Bible that had incidentally occupied the same
seaman's chest. Crusoe picks it up and begins to read. Slowly
Crusoe regains his strength. In that time he continues to muse on
the Bible and his religious understanding deepens and grows. He
realizes that everything is caused by God. Embedded in this
realization is the understanding that all of the good that has
happened to him was at God's wish. He realizes that though the rice
and barley grew where they did because he unthinkingly dropped the
seeds in that place, it is through a miracle of God that things grow
at all. Crusoe realizes that the bad that has happened to him is a
result of his reckless actions that gave no consideration to God. He
begins to yearn for deliverance from sin rather than from a
deliverance from affliction, accepting that the affliction
is something he brought upon himself. Crusoe's newfound spiritual
life is a great comfort to him. Reading the Bible, praying, and
offering glory to God become profound parts of each of his days. |
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Once his strength returns, Crusoe continues
improving his material life on the island. He discovers limes and
grapes and learns to dry the grapes into raisins. He builds baskets
to transport things. He builds a second dwelling in the middle of a
beautiful glade. Through trial and error he discovers the proper
growing season and begins to sow his rice and barley. He explores
the island, traveling to the side opposite his dwelling and seeing
the mainland in the distance but out of reach. So passes his second
year. The next 13 years on the island go by without incident, though
through hard work Crusoe's life changes dramatically. Crusoe
unstintingly continues to make improvements on the island,
increasing his crop of corn and barley, teaching himself to bake
bread, hitting upon a means of making sturdy clay pots. He also
manages to catch and domesticate a number of goats. He begins to
question lust and the constant quest to attain excessive fortune
and station in life. Crusoe has not, however, lost his desire to
explore. He painstakingly builds a boat for the purpose of
navigating the island. He begins the journey and almost gets rushed
out to sea on a strong current. While struggling to escape the
current and watching the island shrink from sight, Crusoe has
the thought that his island of captivity, as he watches it perhaps
slipping from his grasp, seems to him a place of joy.
Everything changes in the moment when, exploring a beach on the
opposite side of the island from his house, Crusoe notices a
solitary footprint. His comfortable isolation on the island suddenly
ripped from him, Crusoe is overcome by fear. He loses all his former
confidence in God, locks himself up in his dwelling for almost a
week, and decides to destroy all signs of his habitation on the
island. In the next few days, however, he begins to rethink his
fear. His confidence in God returns with the recognition that
because he can not understand God's design it was not for him to
question the ways in which God worked. Rediscovered faith aside,
Crusoe does not merely abandon himself to his fate. He refortifies
and better disguises all signs of his habitation. He plants more
corn and barley than necessary in order to build up a store in case
disaster strike. Likewise, he splits his flock of goats in two in
case one of his flocks is found.
Click here for part 3 of the summary
of Robinson Crusoe |
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