Robinson Crusoe - Eighteenth-Century Fiction [PDF]

Robinson Crusoe. Dianne Armstrong. I n Working with Structuralism David Lodge suggests that "Heming- way's stories are remarkable for achieving a symbolist resonance without the ... The pervasive theme of cannibalism in Robinson. Crusoe is ..... that the tyrannical father will devour his individuality if he surrenders his.

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The Myth of Cronus: Cannibal and Sign in Robinson Crusoe

Dianne Armstrong

I

n Working with Structuralism David Lodge suggests that "Hemingway's stories are remarkable for achieving a symbolist resonance without the use of rhetorical figures and tropes."' So is Robinson Crusoe. In that work Defoe uses the word "cannibal" to mean "man-eating savages." His twentieth-century readers, however, may retrieve additional meanings not available to Defoe, but which bear nonetheless on the various connotations of the word in the text. While I cannot argue that Defoe's use of "cannibal" is deliberately metaphorical (studies of his work suggesting otherwise), a post-Freudian audience has at its disposal supplementary interpretations attached to the cannibalistic phenomena, recoverable through the symbolic resonance of Defoe's narrative and the mental associations which it stimulate^.^ Though the novel purports to describe events in a utilitarian language, its rhetoric is at the same time vaguely allegorical. In tracing some of the figurative meanings of '%annibal," we find that a diverse picture emerges, one which enriches our understanding of the work's many themes. Among these is the concept I Working with StNcrumlism: Essays andReviews on Nineteenth and Twentierh- Century Literntun (landon: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1981). p. 31.

2 E. Anthony James, h i e l Defoe's Many Voices: A Rhemricnl Study of Pmsc S Q and ~ Literary Method (Amsterdam: Radopi, 1972). suggests that Defoe,writing "in his own voice," "eschews imnv." and avoids "sustlined fieurative laneuas" and metaohor (D.36). An undoubted influence was:'~otesmtism. with its emkhasis on &e &essibilitv df lituGv ". i d Scri~tureto all lwhichl farored the vcrnzulm at the expense of Lam" !Mono" W Bloomficld and Leonard Newmark. A Lcnguwr Intndurmn to the Hmory ofEnglwh [New Y n k Allred A Knopf. IW31. p 29%) E I G H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y FICTION, Volume 4, Number 3, April 1992

208 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION

of parricide, inherent in the myth of Cronus, and the link with imperialism and hegemony implied in our activities against the "Other," the enemy.' Despite Robinson Crusoe's claims to achieve verisimilitude, then, the metaphorical implications of "cannibal," or cannibalism considered as a figure of speech, defeat that objective. The trope becomes a structural principle. Part of the explanation lies in the separative functions of the realist text, which David Lodge, following the Jakobsonian model of language, describes as "dominantly metonymic ... [it] necessarily selects certain details and suppresses or deletes others." The interaction between these details is "aesthetically significant ... [and carries] connotations, building up a still denser pattern of equivalences ... [which] is usually (and rather loosely) called 'symbolism' in Anglo-American criticism. Barthes calls it connotation, the process by which one signified acts as the signifier of another signified not actually named."4 Through the process Lodge describes, Robinson Crusoe becomes not simply the much-loved saga of shipwreck and survival but an archetypal story on many levels, imbued with mythic overtones. Maximillian Novak describes Defoe's era as one which "abandoned older myths and tried to shape new ones." Thus, though "the world of Defoe's fiction gives the impression of historic truth and reality, the underlying material often belongs to a world of abstract ideas, myth, and fantasy."' A significant aspect of this "underlying material" is indeed a "myth of the self," but not the new one Defoe and his contemporaries believed they were inventing. The pervasive theme of cannibalism in Robinson Crusoe is related to the myth of Cronus. In the legend Cronus (early on identified with Saturn by the Romans) must devour his own offspring to prevent their overthrowing his kingdom. As a deity Cronus is linked with fertility rites (the Roman Saturnalia) and harvest festivals. The concept central to this myth is related to the social practice of totemism, in which some totemic societies consume their totem representative-the father or creator of the tribe. 3 Cf. E. Pearlman's, "Robinson Crusoe and k Cannibals." Mosaic LO (1976). 39-55. Though his WaIment of the topic is similar to mine, his argument has a more markedly psychoanalytic bent and anives at different conclusions, including Crusoe's relationship with his father. 4 Lodge, p. 22. Kenneth Burke. A Grommr of Motives (Bmkeley: University of California Press. 1%9), explains the metaphorical extension of language as a p-ss in which "reduction (metonymy) overlaps upon metsphor (perspective) ... [and] ... likewise ... upon synecdoche (representation)." p. 507.

5 Maximillian E. Novak. Redism. Myth, ond History in DefmS Fiction (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 1983). p. 9.

MYTH OF C R O N U S I N ROBINSON C R U S O E 209

The myth is also the basis of Freud's Oedipal paradigm. In Totem and Taboo (1913)he alludes to it in his discussion of the killing and eating of the "primal father," the "feared and envied model," by his sons, whom Freud calls "cannibal savages." The "totem meal" commemorates this "criminal deed," which inaugurates "social organization ... moral restrictions and ... religion," as the sons, overcome by guilt, incorporate the father's inhibitions and establish themselves and a "son-religion" in place of the Yather-god" and the "father-religion." In Freud's hypothesis, the sons are "father-sumgates," proclaimed as "gods and king^."^ The physical body as metaphor for the social body and the congruence between the two undergird the foundations of Freudian analysis. Oedipal rebellion and the ramifications of totem kinship systems are accordingly linked to the concept of the totem meal and by extension to eating prohibitions, summarized in the taboo that one must not literally "eat" a kinsman. In her essay "Deciphering a Meal," Mary Douglas has explained how "the meaning of a meal is found in a system of repeated analogies." Fwd, she contends, is a "code," and the "messages it encodes will be found in the pattern of social relations being expressed. The message is about different degrees of hierarchy, inclusion and exclusion, boundaries In a related argument Freud and transactions across the b~undaries."~ proposes that cannibalistic desires derive from the aggressive element in the libido, "that is ... from the apparatus for obtaining mastery" associated with oral or, as it might be called, cannibalistic pregenital sexual organization. Here sexual activity has not yet been separated from the ingestion of food; nor are opposite currents within the activity differentiated. The object of both activities is the same; the sexual aim consists in the incorporation of the object-the prototype of a process which, in the form of identification, is later to play such an important psychological part? Cannibalism may manifest itself, then, as a correction for power imbalances in social position, disclosed in the effort to incorporate alien values that threaten the individual's selfhood and collective affiliation. 6 Sigmund Freud, Torem and Taboo: Some Points of Agnement beween the Mental Lives of Savages andNeumtics, uans. lames SUachey (New York: W.W. N o r m and Company, 1950),pp. 142, 152. 154,and 151.

7 "Deciphering a Meal." in Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthmpology (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 19751,pp. 249-75, at pp. 260.249. 8 Sigmund Freud, Thne Essays on the Theory of Sexualify, trans. James Svachey (New York: Basic Bmks, 1%2). pp. 64 and 25.

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Finally, another cluster of explanations of cannibalism surrounds a broad concept of human sacrifice, one undoubtedly familiar to Defoe's readers. Montaigne's Essays, translated into English in 1603, provide examples of the ways in which the word "cannibal" lends itself to connotative expansion. Several of his essays touch on its metaphoric implications. In "Of Cannibals" he excuses the excesses of a primitive society which devours its prisoners of war on the grounds that such acts of "extreme revenge" are natural among simple peoples. But we, "who surpass them in every kind of barbarity," are censored for "our ordinary vices," which are the real focus of the piece despite its exotic title. Among the signs of our depravity Montaigne identifies treachety, disloyalty, CNelty, and tyranny. Elsewhere he alludes to the ruthless practices and attitudes of so-called "civilized" nations, which include slavery, "succession" and "partition," "avarice" and ' ' e n ~ y . ' From ~ this perspective, cannibalism in its Western forms becomes a political act with no viable sanctions. Montaigne writes: I think there is more barbarity in eating a live than a dead man, in tearing on the rack and torturing the body of a man still full of feeling, in roasting him piecemeal and giving him to be bitten and mangled by dogs and swine (as we have not only read, but seen within fresh memory, not between old enemies, but between ueighbours and fellow citizens, and, what is worse, under the cloak of piety and religion), than in roasting and eating him after he is dead.1°

Some modem anthropological concepts parallel Montaigne's views. Eli Sagan, for example, cites a number of situations in which human sacrifice is an appropriate offering, such as the times "when monarchial power is transferred from one individual to another"; "in circumstances connected with the transference and casting out of sin (the scapegoat)"; and when "success in warfare" needs to be ensured. With regard to war, Sagan suggests that if "cannibalism is the elementary form of institutionalized aggression, then all subsequent forms of social aggression are related to [it] in some way" (p. 109). He cites "slavery, racism, imperial domination, destruction of infidels, fascism, the tyranny of men over women, and capitalism" as "descendents of cannibalism."" 9 The Essays of Montoigne, vol. 1, m s . E.K. T ~ c h m n n n(New York and London: Oxford University Ress. 1946). pp. 209, 210, 206. In his lnooduction to the Essays, pp. xix-xlxx, John Mackinnon Robellson records that many notsble Englishmen acknowledged Montaigne's ap peal. Indeed, his Essays were "'connedby Shakespeare even b e f m the folio of them war printed off in 1W3." Correspondingly, Robertson finds in Shakespeare's plays of the period "a multitsde of w h m s of [the Essqs'l thought and phrase," p. xliv. 10 Mantaigne. pp. 209-10. I I Eli Sagan. Cannibalism: H u m n Aggression and Cultural Fom (New York: Harper and Row, 1974). pp. 52. 109. 110.

M Y T H OF C R O N U S IN ROBINSON CRUSOE 211

Bearing these observations in mind, we turn now to Robinson Crusoe itself to ascertain the ways in which such cultural attitudes manifest themselves, and how the highly evocative material we have been examining may be detected beneath the plain veneer of Defoe's prose. The first of the general themes of devouring in Robinson C m o e has to do with Freud's thwry of the primal Oedipal conflict and the institution of kingship. By taking a closer look at Cmsoe's carefully defined relationship with his father, we can evaluate the significance of that bond for our purposes. Locke's political writings are particularly applicable here.12 The analogue for divine right, which Locke opposed in principle, is patriarchal authority, a source of profound tension in R o b i n s o n C r u s o e . " Cmsoe's running away to sea may thus be seen as an act of rebellion against paternal control and, by extension, divine authority. We learn several interesting things about Crusoe's father in the opening paragraphs. First of all, he is a "foreigner" whose real name, Kreutznaer, has been changed to Crusoe "by the usual Corruption of Words in England." Crusoe describes his father as "very ancient," "wise and grave," terms which invoke the primeval. The father's attributes distinguish him from his son, who must eventually acquire wisdom for himself.I4 I2 In the first of his Two Treatises of Government (1689). Locke contests Roben Filmer's argument in Pnrrinrcha, or thp Norural Power of Kings mened (1680). svpponing hereditary monarchies which exercised "paternal authority over their subjects by divine right." Locke's rejoinder is "anti-lheological." That is. he rebuts Filmer's absolutist tenef offering in its stead a secular principle based on a contractual agreement belween kings and their subjects. The relationship between these postulates and Defoe's novel is readily seen in Defoe's Jun Divino (1706). a verse satire which assails divine right doctrine and champions Locke's contract hypothesis. See lames Sambrook, The Eighteenth Century: The Intellectual and Culrurol Contexr of English Litemlre, 1700-1789 (London and New York: Longman. 1986). pp. 69-71. For a fuller discussion of the implications of kingship in Defoe's time, see Manuel Schonhom, "Defoe: The Literature of Polities and the Politics of Some Fictions." in English Literature in the Age of Disguise. ed. Maximillian E. Nova* (Berkeley: University of California Ress, 1977). pp. 15-56. and Oeoffrey M. Sill's response in Defoe and the ldeo of Fiction (Newark: University of Delaware Ress. 1983). pp. 158-59, 161, 166, and 167. My own analysis concerns the figurative nature of '*ingshipn in Robinson Crusw rather than its relationship to the actual political climate in Defoe's time. 13 The rationalist view was based on the idea that the Deity's pasition had "shifted fmm the base of all exisfence lo the heavens where he acted as the ov&eer of a predominantly selfregulating system" (Nova*. p. 11). In this sense, the icon of God the Father is shaped, not by a mruheistic view of his rrnsence in all Natun. but by a hierarchical assimrnent which wsitions him at the apex of the'swial scale. This theologiin turn aligns the & h l y family-with the patriarchal model. Freud argues similarly that the 'pychoanalysis of individual human beings ... teaches us with auite saeeial insistence that the god of each of them is formed in the likeness r~~ of h s father. ha1 his p m n a l relation lo God depends on hlr wlauon to his father I" the Rcsh and w i l l a e s and changes along with thal relauon, and hat ar boltom God IS nolhmg other than an exalted father" tRmm and Toboo. p. 147) ~

~

.

14 Daniel Defoe, Robinson C w o e , ed. Michael Shinagel (New York: W.W. Nonon, 1975). p. 5. References are to this edition.

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The father "designs" his son for the Law, but the son's own "Design" of going to sea leads him "saongly" to oppose his father's "Will, nay [his] Commands." A closer look at the father's choice of words, however, reveals a more pressing concern-the need to choose the mean between extremes. He tells his son that "Peace and Plenty" accompany "a middle Fortune" and exhorts Cmsoe to believe that "the middle Station [has] the fewest Disasters" (pp. 5, 6). Moreover, his talk with his son is conducted against a background of war: Cmsoe mentions that "young Desires" had prompted his eldest brother, also against his father's wishes, to join the "Low Country Wars," in which he had been killed (p. 7). But the son's "design" is not the father's. Though the senior Cmsoe warns "that if I did take this foolish Step, God would not bless me," and speaks of his son's "having Leisure to repent, and none to assist me," Cmsoe nevertheless "resolv'd to run quite away from him" a few weeks later,, "to prevent any of my Father's farther Importunities" (p. 7). The imagery of the father's advice may be related to the ideas embodied in Freud's theory of Oedipal conflict and in the Cronus myth from which it takes inspiration. We observe that the father implores his son to avoid excess, to seek the mean. The repeated use of "mean" in all its variant forms--"middle" being the most frequent--engages it with those words which oppose it in both form and content. Thus "Temperance," "Moderation," "Peace," which echo the ideal "Middle," are played War. off against "Pride," "Ambition," "Envy," "Passion," "Lust"-and The opposition of the father's "Design" and the son's "Design" is a form of war, and in this sense the war between father and son is reified in the vocabulary of their conversation. We could conjecture, after Freud, that what the father subconsciously fears is filial transgression-the danger to his pre-eminence incarnate in his son's "young Desires." At the same time, the son's plea for autonomy, which challenges the father's omnipotence, is also a veiled sexual threat. Locke's political tracts suggest that it was widely held in Defoe's time that the father's authority maintained family integrity and, by extension, all analogous social institutions. It is probably on these grounds that Freud equates the rebellion of the sons with the dissolution of social controls. As we might expect, the father's injunctions are followed by a threat-that God (for whom he is the surrogate on earth) will not favour his son. The break between father and son is significant, then, because it involves much more than a dispute over how the son is to make his way. The son, on the other hand, in a mythical and psychological sense fears that the tyrannical father will devour his individuality if he surrenders his own "desires" to the patriarch's plans for his life. His father, is, after all,

M Y T H OF C R O N U S I N ROBINSON CRUSOE 213

a "foreigner," literally and in the figural sense of having a separate and hence an alien identity. The cannibal paradigm, then, is bidirectionally implicit in this episode. That is, the father seeks to avoid the threat of his son's rebellion against his control, while the son dreads his own dissolution in the father's despotic insistence on his own values.

85 The opening episode is significant in another respect. Its cannibalistic features constitute the model for all Cmsoe's human ties. Cmsoe eventually "usurps" his father's position, but since he does not do so directly we might say his becoming "king" of his island, "Lord of the Manor," is a symbolic concomitant of his father's "monarchy." It is notable, at any rate, that when Cmsoe surveys his island "domain," he does so with a "secret Kind of Pleasure" (p. 80). perhaps one infused with guilt.I5 The first sign that he will indeed become the "cannibal-king" that his father metaphorically represents is his engagement in slavery, a practice, as we have seen, that both Montaigne and Sagan associate with figurative devourment. (Interestingly, Cmsoe himself is held for some time as the captive slave of Moors, a proof "that now the Hand of Heaven had overtaken me," p. 17). He sells his faithful boy Xury, though he does not really "own" him (p. 29). and later on, as a plantation owner, he buys both a "Negro Slave and an European Servant" (p. 32). Shortly afterward, he agrees to a "secret" proposal made by some fellow merchants and planters to traffic in slaves for the Brazilian plantations, a scheme he considers profitable. But though theoretically (in his sojourn as planter) he has stepped into the father's role and become the "cannibal-king" who appropriates the lives of his fellow men, he is not freed immediately from the demands of the paternal relationship. The first inkling we have that the repressed father-son conilict has returned is "this terrible Dream" which comes to him when he is first marooned. In it a man descends from a "great black Cloud ... his Countenance ... most inexpressibly dreadful." The apparition carries "a long Spear or Weapon in his Hand, to kill me" (p. 70). The phallic weapon is an obvious manifestation of Oedipal strife, but such fears of pursuit and vengeance trouble Cmsoe in the early years of his island residency. His side of the island becomes a fortress of 15 That Cmsoe does feel guilt is evident enough. He is continually reminded of his father's admonition that he will repent in the early years covered by his narrative. In his tint starm at sea, for instance, he considers how '>usfly I was ovemkrn by the Iudgmem of Heaven for my wicked leaving my Father's House, and abandoning my Duty ... to Cod and my Father" (p. 9). He speaks of the "evil Influence" which impelled him to ship to sea (p. 15). But Cmsoe's resolutions last about as long as his distress; his origind resolve always "wears off." and so he backslides.

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sorts (as several critics have pointed out), for he frequently feels himself "hunted" (and "haunted"). Ironically, he is also a hunter himself. The contemplation of food and strategies for obtaining it occupy a significant part of his daily routine. No traveller in any eighteenth-century text, as Paul Korshin has observed, is as "obsessed with food"; Robinson Cmsoe is preoccupied with it as soon as he enters captivity.16 Everett Zimmerman has spoken of cannibalism as a form of dematerialization.'' The risk of being so reduced drives Cmsoe to extreme measures to protect himself. Cannibalism in all its forms becomes the force which threatens to engulf the life he has painstakingly created on the island, just as it had previously imperilled his individuality. For his "enemies" are not only present in dreams-they are everywhere. In one episode he battles hares who eat up his corn crop. Having driven these off, he is confronted with birds who are "just as likely to ruin me now." Eventually, he realizes "that in a few Days they would devour all my Hopes, that I should be starv'd, and never be able to raise a Crop at all" (p. 92, emphasis added). Crusoe solves the problem by treating the birds as criminals: he kills three of them, "and sem'd them, as we serve notorious Thieves in England, (viz.) Hang'd them in Chains for a Terror to others" (p. 92). Again the devouring theme is prominent in this passage, and metaphorically the cannibal birds are criminal, but, more important, Crusoe. is depicted as both magistrate and enforcer. Indeed, he so characterizes himself in a passage ostensibly praising God's blessings, but really lauding his own glorious kingship "of the whole island." He comments wittily: "I had the Lives of all my Subjects at my absolute Command. I could hang, draw, give Liberty, and take it away, and no Rebels among all my Subjects" (p. 116). In this jest we observe that the son's "kingship" has figuratively replaced his father's patriarchal rule, even surpassing him in power. For there is no filial threat to Cmsoe's dominion-no human "Rebels" at least.Is 16 ''Gulliver at T a b l e a lecture given at the Califomia State University, Northridge. 8 December 1989. 17 Defoe and rke Novel (Berkeley: University of Califomia Press, 1975). p. 32. 18 At first glance, this development could be siud to represent a twist on the Freudian idea that the primal father's power is supreme, not to be exceeded by his sons', whose collective guilt and remorse prevent their acquiring the absolute prerogative of the father. (In Freud's words, "it became impossible for an ideal to emerge which embodied the unlimited power of the primal father" [Totem and Toboo, p. 1481.) But the point of Freud's paradigm is that unconditional "kingship" or sovereignty in a fallen state, figuratively speaking. is illusory. Dirussing the limitations on Cmsoe's island authority, Geoffrey Sill points out that "sovereignty is predicated on his acceamee of the station aawinted for him bv God ( 0 . 161). As we shall see. CNSO~

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Crusoe is even careful to keep his domesticated animals separated from the feral, "or else they would always run wild when they grew up"-as he did himself. He keeps his tamed flocks on "some enclosed Piece of Ground, well fenc'd either with Hedge or Pale, to keep them in so effectually, that those within might not break out or those without break in" (p. 115). On a microanalytic level this passage might be said to contain a major concern in the novel, that is, "breaking out" and "breaking in." Crusoe is like both God and his father, since he would restrict the freedom of his "subjects" in order to "tame" them. By the same token, these attitudes accord well with Crusoe's initial reactions to his own fate as a type of incarceration; he even speaks of the island as a prison, from which it seems "only God himself" can deliver him (pp. 77, 75). He resembles his own herd, enclosed and "kept," as it were, as "food" for him "to take ... as I wanted" (p. 116). But if Crusoe in much of the novel is hunted, why, we may ask, is this the case? Is it a coincidence that he fancies himself "like one of the ancient Giants, which are said to live in Caves ... where none could come at them; for I perswaded my self while I was here, if five hundred Savages were to hunt me, they could never find me out" (p. 140)? Is it by chance that he compares himself to an "ancient Giant" reminiscent of the Cyclopes, or yet again of the Titans, who aided Cronus in the overthrow of his own father Uranus? Theories of human sacrifice which advance the "criminal" as victim enable modem readers to appreciate Cmsoe's sensation that he is being hunted. Cmsoe is a criminal, at least in his own eyes, since he violates the laws of "civilized" society.19 He speaks of his condition, indeed, as "a just Punishment for my Sin ... a Punishment for the general Course of my wicked Life." In short, as scapegoaUcrimina1, he is man reduced to the "Principles [or "State"] of Nature" (as he recognizes, pp. 71, 93)Locke's "superior" man prior to the contract state-but here, ironically, "a meer Brute" upon whom "the Hand of God" has fallen (p. 71).20 19 Kenneth Burke finds that "at the very least the dethmnement of 'causality' is the rejection of a term essentially ancesfrai or parenrol, as is similarly the case with the dethmnement of reason and the s m n g stress upon derivation that goes with it" (p. 183). Also see Freiherr von Samuel Pufendorf, Ofrhe Inw ofNarure and Nations, 4th ed.. trans. Basil Kennett (London: J. and 1. Knapten, 1729). especially the chapter an "Paternal Power." in which he systematizes the duties of fathers in "civil states," "invested with ... Sovreignty" as family heads. The parent's chief duty is to educate and socialize his child, so that he becomes "a useful Member of human Society" (6, ii. $iv, p. 601). The breaking of what Pufendarfcalls "the natural peace ... instituted and established by bare Nature, without the Intervention of any human Deed stems from "the gnat Wickedness of Men, their unbridled Lust of Power, and their Desire of encroaching on the Rights and Possessions of others" (2, ii, $xi, p. I IS; six, p. 114). As I have noted. CNSW refers to his own "Breach of my Duty to God and my Fathei' early in his narrative (p. 9). 20 Defoe's "State of Nature" has a Hobbesian "ng. His man as " m r brute" concept certainly

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Just after his third year on the island Cmsoe contemplates escaping from it, and it is at this time that he first mentions that he had heard "that the People of the Carribean Coast were Canibals, or Man-eaters." He fears death at their hands, and subsequently "wish'd for my Boy Xury, and the long Boat" (p. 98). His thinking at this stage is one of the many such cruces where the word "cannibal" turns in on itself to become a mirror image. Cmsoe's use of the word is coupled with the allusion to his captive boy whose life he has taken possession of, as he wishes to do with others to whom he can "give Liberty or take it away." On the anniversary of his fourth year on the island, we find Crusoe counting his blessings: In the first Place, I was remov'd from all the Wickedness of the World here. I had neither the Lust of the Flesh, the Lust of the Eye, or the Pride of Life ... I might call my self King, or Emperor over the whole Country which I had Possession of. There were no Rivals. I had no Competitor, none to dispute Sovereignty of Command with me. (p. 101) Echoes of his father's warnings abound in this speech, namely against the "lust" and "pride" which Crusoe self-righteously denies having?' Unconsciously, however, it would seem Crusoe can now call himself "King" in his father's place because none disputes his sovereignty; he has no "rivals" for power. But the appearance of "the Print of a Man's naked Foot on the Shore" is synecdochic in the same way that the "Hand of G o d is, and inspires Crusoe with a corresponding terror. He stands "like one Thunder-struck, or as if I had seen an Apparition." The mysterious sight sends him "Home to my Fortification ... temfy'd to the last Degreenz2and causes bears little resemblance to the free being posited in both Locke and Rousseau's philosophies. As Maximillian E. Novak remarks about Defoe's own ideas of cannibalism, his "description of the hunger of [a maid] leaves no doubt that be regarded necessity as a force abave all human morality or virtue," Defoe ond the Nature of Man (London: Oxford University Ress. 1963). p. 72. The punitive "Hand of God" is capable of becoming beneficent (Robinson Cmoe, p. 102). however; one more instance in which the novel's lexicon doubles back upon itself. Ultimately, "we are d l the Clay in the Hand of [a capricious] Potter" (Robinson C-, p. 164). 21 David Blewett points out the essential incongruity of Crusoe's statement in his ' m e Retirement Myth in Robinson C w o e : A Reconsideration," SIudies in the Literory l m o g i ~ l i o n15 (Fall, 1982). 37-50.

22 C r u ~ e ' sparmt is iconic in the same sense as the foalprint. Crusoe writes (hat "poor Poll may be alive there still (ie. on the island), calling after Poor Robin C m o e to this Day. I wish no English Man the ill Luck to come Lhere and hear him; but if he did, he would certainly believe it was the Devil" (p. 141). In other words, the parrot, like the footprint, repRsents an absence which cannot be accounted for. By reversing the logic of this idea, we have Robinson Crusoe as the one for whom the "Devil" parmt calls, or the absent "Devil" of whom the p m t s p e a k s the text is ambiguous. The parrot, like the footprint, and like "The Hand of God," is the sign

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I

M Y T H O F C R O N U S I N ROBINSON CRUSOE 217

his religious backsliding: "Fear banish'd all my religious Hope; all that former Confidence in God which was founded upon such wonderful Experience as I had had of his Goodness, now vanished (p. 122). It is now God who becomes the invasive patriarch, the "cannibal-king"; Cmsoe returns to his former abject state as the hunted criminal, the rival sovereign. He muses that "I was not to dispute his Sovereignty, who, as I was his Creature, had an undoubted Right by Creation to govern and dispose of me absolutely as he thought fit; and who, as I was a Creature who had offended him, had likewise a judicial Right to condemn me to what Punishment he thought fit" (p. 123). Significantly, it is within the larger context of cannibalism that the footprint icon appears. The footprint causes Cmsoe to think about his "Danger from the Appearance of Savages," hut at the same time his life is as much in jeopardy from what he assumes is his own presumption of God's will (p. 123). The "criminal" theme resurfaces as Cmsoe figuratively envisions himself as the human sacrifice to appease an omnipotent and vengeful God, whom he has offended. Eventually, however, as is typical of Cmsoe's shifting emotional states, his fear of God is replaced once again by an "Uneasiness" that the Savages will reappear. l b o years after first sighting the footprint, he relates his "Dread and Terror of falling into the Hands of Savages and Canibals," the "constant Snare of the Fear of Man." He believes himself "surrounded with Danger, and in Expectation every Night of being murther'd and devour'd before Morning" (p. 128). Curiously, the "Hand of God" has been transposed here into the "Hands of Savages and Canibals." Both uses of "Hand are metonymic and metaphorical at the same time, defining as they do a deterministic view of life. And so, when he comes upon the human remains of a cannibal feast, Crusoe can equate the Savages with "the Horror of the Degeneracy of Humane Nature; which though I had heard of often, yet I never had so near a View of before" (p. 129). He thanks God that his own "Lot" is a civilized one, "where I was distinguish'd from such dreadful Creatures as these" (pp. 129-30). But Cmsoe is mistaken. He is one of "these." For the hunted becomes the hunter when, in his third dream, he dreams of killing all the savages (p. 132). But he retreats from the idea of himself as "Judge and Executioner" (p. 134). His sympathy with the savages rests on their not knowing cannibalism "to be an Offence ... in Defiance of Divine Justice, as we do in almost all the Sins we commit." Cmsoe then takes of an absence, in this case Crusoe's. That slate of invisibility. by association, links with that of athe-with cannibals. God.

218 E I G H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y FICTION

the opportunity to excoriate the imperialist deeds of so-called civilized nations who act out a metaphorical canniblism in their murder of the innocents (p. 134). He is grateful to God for delivering him from this "Blood-Guiltiness" (p. 135). In this passage we see Cmsoe's unfolding recognition that he is implicated in mankind's crimes against humanity, his awareness that his is not an egocentric or exceptional existence but one joined in empathy to the human community. Had this discovery been his last, I would argue that Cmsoe had reached his fullest capacity for self-scrutiny. But his thoughts of murdering the Savages recur, until he concludes that if he carries them out "I should be at length no less a Murtherer than they were in being Man-eaters; and perhaps much more so" (p. 144). Still, it is ultimately "Self-preservation in the highest Degree" (p. 156) which is at the root of Cmsoe's human ties. The link between cannibalism and the capitalist individualism defined by Ian Wattu is clear enough in these episodes: the Self supersedes "Other." For that is Cmsoe's greatest fear-that his identity will be "swallowed up" in some other corpus, father, god, savage. Cmsoe's relationship with the cannibal Friday is characteristic. He gladly accepts Friday as slave (p. 159), and because he is a slave, Friday is not a rival, a second cannibal-king. He makes "all the Signs to [Cmsoe] of Subjection, Servitude, and Submission imaginable, to let me know, how he would serve me as long as he liv'd" (p. 161). Cmsoe even names him, thus ensuring his control over Friday's identity, and he renames himself "Master." At last Cmsoe has a hue "subject" for his kingdom, and an official title to indicate his kingly status. Indeed, he becomes Friday's figurative "Father," and Friday becomes the Child whose "very Affections were ty'd to me ... and I dare say, he would have sacrific'd his Life for the saving mine upon any occasion whatsoever" (p. 163). Friday as "child/subject" is no threat, obviously, to the father-king. If necessary, he will give his life for his father's, which C N S O himself ~ can never do. In short, as we are God's "Creatures" as Crusoe has earlier told us, Friday becomes Cmsoe's (p. 166), thus reconstructing the relationship between father and son, king and subject which constitutes the basis of the cannibal metaphor. But Friday's relationship with his father works in a way that is exactly the opposite of Robinson Cmsoe's with his. Crusoe is amazed at Friday's reactions to his father's deliverance from death, at his "filial Affection." Friday's attempts to nourish his father, however, strike Cmsoe as "the Extravagancies of his Affection" (p. 185). The irony is plainly visible: 23 See The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defm, Richardson and Fielding (Bekeley: Unkenity of California Ress, 1964).

M Y T H O F C R O N U S IN ROBINSON CRUSOE 219

the barbarian acknowledges his parent by rejoicing that his father has been recovered and their tie re-established, while the "civilized man has tried to "supplant" his parent by rupturing the bond between them. Ultimately Crusoe becomes not only "Lord of his mock estate when he saves some prisoners of the savages but also its "Lawgiver," and so his transformation into the "true" King-not the spurious one-is complete. In ensuing scenes he is treated as a god-figure, echoing the Cronus myth in yet another permutation. The savages believe his gun is "Fire from the Gods" (p. 189). And the captain of a ship whose crew has mutinied (itself another revolt against a father figure) does not know if he is "talking to God, or Man!" (p. 198). Patriarchal authority resonates in other ways throughout this passage. Like Crusoe's own father, and like God the Father, the Captain expostulates with his men "upon the Villany of their Practices with him, and at length upon the farther Wickedness of their Design, and how certainly it must bring them to Misery and Distress in the End, and perhaps to the Gallows" (p. 208). And like Cmsoe in his submission to God's will, the men repent and ask their captain's pardon, vowing to "own him for a Father to them as long as they liv'd (p. 209). There is one more incident of a cannibalistic nature: the seemingly tangential account of Crusoe's meeting with the wolves during his final journey on the Continent, and his frequently mentioned fear of being devoured. This set piece may seem added on for sensational effect, but it fits the cannibal themes of the novel as a whole. J. Paul Hunter explains the incident as a victory over bestiality: "The beasts subdued by Cmsoe are standard biblical symbols of evil, forces which God's elect (lambs) must overcome during their pilgrimage." Hunter's discussion of cannibalism postulates a "natural man" and his "natural depravity" in an "unregenerated state," a position which leads to the assumption that the "conversion experience" will enable Crusoe to "gain control over his nat~re."~'Such a supposition rests on a literal view of cannibalism rather than a figurative one-a divergent position, plainly, from my The irony of Cmsoe's returning to "civilization" and being beset by dangers which were never that apparent throughout his stay on the island 24 J. Paul Hunter, The Relucronr Pilgrim: Defoe's Emblemalic Method and Quesr for

Form in

Robinson Crusoe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966). pp. 198. 100-31.

25 Hunter and Sill share the belief that Cmsoe undergoes a pilgrimage of same son (in Sill's view, the "stages of human and socieral evolution." p. 168). Indeed. Cmsw is Sill's "model for mankind," Defw's "model of moral resmint" (p. 169). Similarly, Hunter's case for Cmsoe as a postlapsarian Jonah (p. 137) is related to the Puritan typology which forms the basis for his interpretations. From my standpoint, Cmsoe as Jonah is yet another illusmtion of the capacity of k f o e ' s materials for embodying a cannibalistic trope to which twentieth-century readers may attach memilung.

220 EIOHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION

has been frequently noted. The change in location also reinforces the ubiquity of cannibal references. Cmsoe attempts to surmount both kinds of "danger3'-the spiritual and the physical. Ultimately they blend in the tangible shapes of savages and wolves, men and animals, replicated in Cmsoe's fears when he manages his escape. from captivity among the Moors that he will land on "the truly Barbarian Coast ... where we could ne'er once go on shoar but we should be devour'd by savage Beasts, or more merciless Savages of humane kind" (p. 21). But he can only save himself from the physical, not the spiritual or emotional, variety of cannibalism. Man is indeed a "meer Brute" in the many connotations of that noun in the novel, a realization which undermines Locke's belief that the "Law of [human] Nature" is clearly superior. By the same token, Cmsoe's "rise" in estate is not a victory over the imperfections of his human nature; on the contrary, he is nowhere closer to savagery than when he is "Lord" on his lonely island. Cmsoe's island life may very well recapitulate human history, but if so the chronicle is a regressive one, as the metaphoric resonance of "cannibalism" demonstrates. Like the myth of Cronus which it imitates, Robinson Crusoe shows that our collective "sin" is "hubris." For our representative man, the long journey to such a recognition begins when he flouts the familial, the social, and finally, the divine order. But then again, we share Cmsoe's "crime." In the expanded sense of the word, human nature is, in essence, "cannibalistic." Between the savages and Robinson Cmsoe, Cmsoe and the wolves, there are only degrees of devourment, revealed in the novel by the capacity of discourse to escape its denotative context.26 University of Southern California

26 Raymond F. Hilliard's "Chrissa and Ritual Cannibalism." PMlA 105 (October, 1990). 108397, appeared as my own article was in Ihe final stages of preparation. His position joining the symbolic implications of cannibalism with anthropological theory strikingly resembles mine, though it does not bear directly on my concerns.

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