In examining Robinson Crusoe in the pages before the introduction of Friday, Defoe asks the reader to look, albeit not directly, at issues that feel current and relevant. These issues explain the novels enduring popularity as it offers a frame work that the modern reader finds familiar. Robinson Crusoe has become an icon for a life of self-reliance, simplicity and hard work. Many contemporary readers struggle with these concerns and, though they may be in a small town or in the middle of NYC, the overriding feeling of exertion that accompanies day-to-day life remains the same. The current success of books that focus on a life of simplicity or entire magazines that are dedicated to living modestly are an indication that modern life’s constant striving for acquisition pulls at our conscience.
This theme of insatiability has been explored in stories since the beginning of time. Adam and Eve wanted more out of life than the Garden of Eden; Gilgamesh searched tirelessly for eternal life; Pandora couldn’t stop herself from opening the box. In Rasselas, Samuel Johnson argues quite convincingly for man’s inability to be content. Man seems destined to maroon himself, either literally or figuratively, in his/her quest for more. Humans seem unable to stand still and live with what is given. The search for the next acquisition, the next step, the next accomplishment holds more pull than accepting what has been set in front of one.
Whether Defoe offers an answer, aside from the ever-popular solo island living, is for the reader to ponder. A life of minimalism offers advantages. Being grateful for what you have and being in the moment are popular themes in today’s vernacular and, while formal religion may be less popular now, the solace that Crusoe finds in his religion can be paralleled to today’s focus on spirituality in its many forms. Crusoe certainly seems to offer a picture of a mentally and physically healthier lifestyle and, while twenty-odd years on an island may not be anyone’s prescription for contentment, Defoe gives credibility to the argument that happiness or self-confidence is not a self-induced feeling but rather the result of mastery and accomplishment.
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I think you hit on many key themes both about the novel itself and its remarkable influence on our culture. I would only add that while the theme of insatiability is certainly timeless, traditionally it could be taken as straightforwardly sinful, especially in Catholicism, but to a large degree in Milton also. While Defoe/Crusoe pays lip service to the "sin against his father" theme, I think we can question how thoroughly he repudiates the questing spirit that drove him onto the water.
I have been trying to make the argument that Crusoe marks a shift in attitudes--contentment comes from "mastery" certainly, and from simplicity, but in a lifestyle that is defined, and almost circumscribed, by specifically middle-class (and anti-aristocratic) fixations: industriousness, temperance, delayed gratification, careful savings and, as we will see also in Richardson, this obsessive need to enumerate all of one's goods. (and to add one more cultural reference point: how does Defoe differ from, say, Montaigne, who might be said to preach an aristocratic version of simplicity, self-mastery and self-knowledge?)
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