The Religious Dimension of Daniel Defoes Robinson Crusoe Essay

The Religious Dimension of Robinson Crusoe Robinson Crusoes discovery of the work ethic on the small island goes hand in hand with a uncanny awakening. Robinson Crusoe is not a very arduous religious thinker, although religion is part of his education and transformation. He claims he reads the Bible, and he is prepared to quote it from time to time. But he doesnt lodge over it or even get involved in the floor or character attractions of the stories. The Bible for him appears to be something worry a Dale Carnegie vade mecum of maxims to keep the work on schedule and to stifle any realistic complaints or longings for a different situation. Still, the religious dimension is central to Robinson Crusoe. Robinson Crusoes interpretation of his animation links the financial success directly and repeatedly with his growth in religious awareness. This is not an intellectual conversion but, hardly put, an awareness that he has, in some ways, received Gods grace and is under His car e. The growing profitability of his efforts is proof of such a spiritual reward. This awareness fills him with a sense of guilt for his former behavior and a great desire to be relieved of that guilt. The desire to be relieved from that feeling of guilt, in fact, is much stronger than Robinson Crusoes desire to be delivered from the island. Now I looked back upon my past life with such horror, and my sins appeared so dreadful, that my soul sought nothing of God but deliverance from the stretch along of guilt that bore down all my comfort. As for my solitary life it was nothing I did not so much as beseech to be delivered from it or think of it it was all of no considerations in semblance to this and I added this part here to ... ... The inhabitants of the New World were there to be ignored, like Fridays father, used as servants, like Friday, or killed, like the cannibals. The important part of the Puritan encounter with the New World was what Robinson Crusoe shows us, the spiri tual testing of the solitary Protestant spirit, a life-long ordeal in which he achieved success (or the closest thing to a manifestation of success) by stamping his pass on on the new land, staking out territory as his property by dint of backbreaking toil, without any concessions to anyone or anything, least of all to the land or to its original inhabitants. That was the Puritans calling that was the reason God has hardened us on this earth to put to our personal uses the material and mountain available, to ignore what does not fit in with such projects, and to remove readily and ruthlessly anything that stands in our way.