Literary Journal #13 - Robinson Crusoe

For a long period of time (by "long," I'm talking about years), I imagined myself living alone on an abandoned island in the middle of the pacific ocean. I cannot deny one of the reasons I had that fantasy was watching a movie called "Cast Away." For those of you who've never heard of it, it is a movie where a Fedex employee gets into a plane crash and lands on an uninhabited island. I, strangely, felt bad when the character escapes the island at the end of the movie. All he faces are sad news left by his beloved ones. I actually didn't even understand why he tried to escape the island. Of course, he would have missed his family and friends, and even any other human being. But wasn't he at least free from everything he didn't want to deal with in the bigger society?

Anyway, I find a lot of similarities between Daniel Defoe's 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe and the movie "Cast Away." Since most people know the plot of the book, I would rather focus talking about the themes and motifs than summarizing the story.

Well, John Donne said no man is an island, and I'm quite sure the intended theme of this book is not too far from that. But is it really? During his stay on the island, Crusoe found his faith in God and became very religious. People might say that's because he had nothing to rely on and was afraid of the wild and dangerous environment he was surrounded by, but couldn't it be because Crusoe really had time to think about himself and the reality of the world while separated from the human society? Living in the modern world, where everyone checks their friends Facebook status every 15 minutes on iphone and watches movies on Netflix instead of going to the theatre, I often feel blinded. Yes, the human society and the technology has given me better chances to succeed in whatever I have been doing and make my life easier, but sometimes I feel like most people forget about the essence of human life and nature. Although humans are so-called "social animals" who make connections with other humans for many different reasons, but life is a solitary action which lasts from the birth of a human being to his/her death. And often most of us forget to look for the reason of our existence but rather try to interpret the result of our existence. In that sense, Robinson Crusoe, who -though it was not intended, saved his own life and pulled out what is deep inside of his human nature- is a true hero for me.