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Shortly into this section, which closes just over twenty-seven years after Crusoe’s being cast away, Crusoe saves a savage otherwise destined to be sacrificed to cannibals. The savage has escaped his war captors. This section closes eighteen months later with Crusoe and Friday, the saved savage, who becomes Crusoe’s dedicated servant, rescuing Friday’s father, as well as one Spaniard, from being beheaded and sacrificed to the same tribe that planned to sacrifice Friday. “At length he came close to me, and then he kneel’d down again, kiss’d the ground, and laid his head upon the ground” Crusoe says, describing Friday’s first actions, “[a]nd taking me by the foot, set my foot upon his head; this it seems, was in token of swearing to be my slave for ever” (149).
In his long while spent with Friday, Crusoe builds a tent for Friday inside one of Crusoe’s two walls, near Crusoe’s tent and cave. Crusoe teaches Friday English, farming, and cooking, and the two develop a close working relationship. Most importantly, Crusoe teaches Friday about the Christian God—who is superior, Crusoe says, to Benamuckee, Friday’s God. Crusoe teaches Friday about Christian scriptures, and the evils of the Devil, essentially making a Christian of Friday. Crusoe learns that Friday must come from Trinidad, and that Friday’s people helped seventeen bearded Spaniards who had shipwrecked there survive on Friday’s island.
Crusoe plans to escape his own island for Friday’s homeland, where Crusoe hopes he can some way connect with the Spaniards. Crusoe shows Friday the boat Crusoe made, but it’s too small, so Crusoe shows Friday the larger boat Crusoe was never able to launch. This boat is big enough but too far from shore, so the two make another. While making the boat, Friday fears Crusoe plans to send Friday away. Crusoe assures Friday this is untrue. Before their boat is completed, nearly thirty savages arrive in canoes for another sacrificial ceremony. Friday wants to attack, as it’s the same tribe his nation has warred with. Crusoe arms he and Friday, but before attacking, Defoe pauses narrative action with more of Crusoe’s inner explorations. Crusoe decides that while Friday has lawful reason to attack the tribe, Crusoe has none. Crusoe decides to only observe the sacrifice from a point on the hill and decides to let God direct the scene as God will. When Crusoe observes a fellow whiteman, he acts. Crusoe and Friday fire at the tribe, killing twenty-one men. Defoe includes a chart detailing the injuries.
The section opens with Crusoe’s continued interior explorations concerning the savages’ cannibalism, and God’s providence. These explorations are woven in throughout the section, as Crusoe questions his own actions and the savages lifestyle: “As we are all the clay in the hand of the potter, no vessel could say to him, What hast though form’d me thus” (153).
Here, Crusoe becomes most moved by the concept of deliverance from evil. Crusoe dreams that one morning, while leaving his castle, he spots two canoes, and eleven savages coming to land with a prisoner, who escapes and seeks shelter in Crusoe’s abode. Pages later, the dreams comes almost true, when Crusoe spots two canoes, and half-eaten bodies torn to shreds. When one man attempts escape, Crusoe watches, believing his dream come true. The escapee eludes his captors, reaching the creek Crusoe first used to sail his provisions from the wrecked ship to shore. Crusoe sees a chance to intercede when the man reaches land, and Crusoe positions himself between the man and the captors. Crusoe shoots one of the captors, who is too slow with his own bow-and-arrow. This is how Crusoe meets Friday. Crusoe and Friday bury the men in the sand.
In addition to providing the first human meeting for Crusoe in twenty-six years, allowing Crusoe the chance to speak to another person at last, these pages provide the first real plot for escape from the island, if Crusoe can make contact with the Spaniards on Friday’s main island. The pages also include a detailed description of Friday’s countenance and appearance: “His face was round and plump; his nose small, not flat like the Negroes […] his fine teeth set well, and white as ivory” (150). Friday’s dedication to a new Christian God moves Crusoe, who reflects, “the same plain instruction sufficiently serv’d to the enlightening this savage creature, and bringing him to be such a Christian, as I have known few equal to him in my life” (162).
Crusoe and Friday nurse Friday’s Father and the Spaniard they saved from being devoured by savages. This section closes as Crusoe and Friday overtake an English ship anchored two leagues offshore. Crusoe and Friday save bound prisoners, who turn out to include a captain mutinied from his English ship, about to be marooned on the island by the sailors who executed the mutiny. With the captain’s help, and by Crusoe remaining out of sight, never naming or showing himself as Governour, the captain convinces the prisoners their lives depends on the Governour’s onion—Crusoe himself, who dresses in his goat-skin, with two pistols in his belt, and sword on his side.
The captain tells the men they are hunted by an army of fifty, though it is really an army of eight that includes Crusoe, Friday, the captain, captain’s mate, and other prisoners. Crusoe executes a complex plan for overtaking the ship, which includes luring men from the ship on the small boat, locking some away in Crusoe’s cave, and deceiving other of the ship’s men, who return, in a second boat, to shore in search of their fellow lost Englishmen. To do so, Friday and the ship’s mate play a game similar to Marco Polo, as the two yell out to the search team, which yells back. Friday and the mate draw the search team in circles further into Crusoe’s wooded enclosure, and the team is taken prisoner. The scene overtaking the ship provides much dramatic tension and rising action as these pages pitch to a close. The moment Friday and the Captain spot the captain’s boat-swain—a mutineer—coming towards them (in an effort, it seems, to make a deal), the boat-swain is killed. The captain assures other sailors they face possible death by law if tried in England, promising that a sailor named Atkins will be hanged regardless.
Just before the midpoint in this section, Crusoe spots a ship offshore. The vessel, which turns out to be English, Crusoe first believes to be Friday’s father and the Spaniard returning from Friday’s Island. Crusoe sent them off after the Spaniard explained the poor treatment of sixteen other Spaniards he wrecked with, who are now living on Friday’s home island. Crusoe sends the Spaniard and Friday’s father with the understanding that if Crusoe saves the Spaniards, they must devote themselves to him until they all reach a safe coast. The Spaniard assures Crusoe the men will consent, as now they are left with few resources and are at the whim of the savages. Crusoe weaves together the idea of providence and deliverance in these pages. The Captain of the previously-mutinied ship believes God stranded Crusoe on this island so one day he may deliver the Captain to freedom from the mutiny:
Much reason have we to depend cheerfully upon the Maker of the world, that he does not leave his creatures so absolutely destitute, but that in the worst circumstances […] sometimes are nearer their deliverance by the means by which they seem to be brought their destruction (185).
These pages follow the book’s larger narrative structure, in which Crusoe touches on a subject then, pages later, explores it further, often with that subject manifesting in physical ways in the novel. Crusoe further details improvements to his homestead, his experience farming, and the joys and fears of protecting of his home. There is a simple back-to-nature element at play here.
Yet these pages also offer major dramatic changes as Crusoe encounters his first human being in twenty-plus years, then overtakes a mutinied English ship, which had sailed from Jamaica, and on which Crusoe plans to leave the island. After spending much time deciding he has no business judging the ways of the savages, and dreaming that one needs Crusoe’s help to save the savage from being devoured, Crusoe spots canoes offshore. Crusoe chances to observe from the hill the same moment a man attempts escape from being eaten. That man is Friday. In this way, Defoe continues to pause forward motion by using Crusoe’s inner explorations to serve as both exit and entry from one plot point to the next.
Crusoe continues to domesticate his tent and cave, which Crusoe now refers to as his “castle.” He improves his bower, the smaller tent and walled-in residence Crusoe calls his “country seat.” Meanwhile, Crusoe’s thoughts waver from his deep-seated faith in God’s providence to suspending those beliefs, wanting only his own deliverance. Just as Crusoe seems to doubt divine providence, circumstances change, driving the narrative forward and providing Crusoe ample experience to once again believe in God’s Providence.
Defoe grinds down Crusoe’s faith as low as it can go without being totally destroyed, before building Crusoe’s self-esteem up again. This method of illustrating a character’s change becomes a classic realist novel technique. Just as Crusoe suspends his optimistic feelings in God, God’s providence seems to provide another situation from which Crusoe can draw conclusions in favor of God. Note the contrast in Crusoe, who condemns the Spaniards for enslaving Indians, and the Crusoe who plans to, then does, take one of the so-called savages as his own slave. Crusoe is critical of the Spaniards, and Inquisition, yet believes it his duty to teach Friday of the savagery of Friday’s ways and the heavenly-appointed ways of Crusoe’s Christian God. Note in these pages an essential change in Crusoe’s psychology. Crusoe in this section refers to his superiority, claims which increase in appearance after Crusoe saves Friday. Crusoe refers to his tent and cave as his castle, and considers himself king of the island. While Crusoe the character may believe this, it raises the question whether the author, Defoe, intends at least small and subtle degrees of irony here.
As these pages close with Crusoe now having ample manpower and a ship for escape, these pages set the scene for Crusoe’s eventual launch from the island and the novel’s end.
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