Friday, August 7, 2015

Analysis #2: Robinson Crusoe Novel


CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION


I.1.  Background

Thank God we pray to the presence of the Almighty God for the mercy, grace was able to complete our paper is about “Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Dafoe”.

Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published on April 25, 1719. The first edition of this work the protagonist is credited as the author of Robinson Crusoe, causing many readers to believe that she is a real person and the right books incidents journey. The book was published with the full title of Life and Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Surprizing, Of York, Mariner.

Taken as non-fiction, the details of Robinson Crusoe is given at the beginning of the novel. The story since then has been considered based on the true story of Alexander Selkirk, Scotland outcast who lived for four years in the Pacific island called "Mass a Tierra", now part of Chile, which renamed Robinson Crusoe Island in 1966. The novel tells the story of a person who spread Christianity in island that he never visited. This analysis based on Religious Institution of British Institution, including the manifest and latent functions as the basic of analysis of this novel.

I.2.  Biography of  Dafoe



Daniel Foe, born circa 1660, was the son of James Foe, a London butcher. Daniel later changed his name to Daniel Defoe, wanting to sound more gentlemanly.

Defoe graduated from an academy at Newington Green, run by the Reverend Charles Morton. Not long after, in 1683, he went into business, having given up an earlier intent on becoming a dissenting minister. He traveled often, selling such goods as wine and wool, but was rarely out of debt. He went bankrupt in 1692 (paying his debts for nearly a decade thereafter), and by 1703, decided to leave the business industry altogether.

Having always been interested in politics, Defoe published his first literary piece, a political pamphlet, in 1683. He continued to write political works, working as a journalist, until the early 1700s. Many of Defoe's works during this period targeted support for King William III, also known as "William Henry of Orange." Some of his most popular works include The True-Born Englishman, which shed light on racial prejudice in England following attacks on William for being a foreigner; and the Review, a periodical that was published from 1704 to 1713, during the reign of Queen Anne, King William II's successor. Political opponents of Defoe's repeatedly had him imprisoned for his writing in 1713.



Defoe took a new literary path in 1719, around the age of 59, when he published Robinson Crusoe, a fiction novel based on several short essays that he had composed over the years. A handful of novels followed soon after—often with rogues and criminals as lead characters—including Moll Flanders, Colonel Jack, Captain Singleton, Journal of the Plague Year and his last major fiction piece, Roxana (1724). In the mid-1720s, Defoe returned to writing editorial pieces, focusing on such subjects as morality, politics and the breakdown of social order in England. Some of his later works include Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business (1725); the nonfiction essay "Conjugal Lewdness: or, Matrimonial Whoredom" (1727); and a follow-up piece to the "Conjugal Lewdness" essay, entitled "A Treatise Concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed."

Defoe died on April 24, 1731. While little is known about Daniel Defoe's personal life—largely due to a lack of documentation—Defoe is remembered today as a prolific journalist and author, and has been lauded for his hundreds of fiction and nonfiction works, from political pamphlets to other journalistic pieces, to fantasy-filled novels. The characters that Defoe created in his fiction books have been brought to life countless times over the years, in editorial works, as well as stage and screen productions.[1]

I.3.  Summary

Robinson Crusoe is the son of a middle-class English family. Although his father desires that he go into business and live a quiet life, the young man has such longing for the sea that he finds it impossible to remain at home. He takes his first voyage without his parents’ knowledge. The ship is caught in a great storm, and Crusoe is so violently ill and so greatly afraid that he vows never to leave land again should he be so fortunate as to escape death.
When he lands safely, however, he finds his old longing still unsatisfied, and he engages as a trader, shipping first for the coast of Africa. The ship on which he sails is captured by a Turkish pirate vessel, and he is carried as a prisoner into Sallee, a Moorish port. There he becomes a slave. His life is unbearable, and at the first opportunity he escapes in a small boat. He is then rescued by a Portuguese freighter and carried safely to Brazil, where he buys a small plantation and begins the life of a planter.


When another English planter suggests that they make a voyage to Africa for a cargo of slaves, Crusoe once more gives in to his longing for the sea. This voyage is destined to bring him his greatest adventure of all, for the ship breaks apart on a reef near an island off the coast of South America. Of all the crew and passengers, only Crusoe survives, the waves washing him ashore. He takes stock of his situation and finds that the island seems to be completely uninhabited, with no sign of wild beasts. In an attempt to make his castaway life as comfortable as possible, he constructs a raft and sails it to the broken ship to gather food, ammunition, water, wine, clothing, tools, sailcloth, and lumber.

He sets up a sailcloth tent on the side of a small hill and encircles his refuge with tall, sharp stakes; he enters his shelter by means of a ladder that he draws up after him. Into this area he brings all the goods he has salvaged, being particularly careful with the gunpowder. His next concern is his food supply. Finding little food from the ship that has not been ruined by rats or water, he eats sparingly during his first days on the island. Among the things Crusoe has brought from the ship are a quill and ink, and before long he begins to keep a journal. When he considers the good and evil of his situation, he finds that he has much for which to thank God.

He begins to make his shelter permanent. Behind his tent he finds a small cave, which he enlarges and braces. With crude tools, he makes a table and a chair, some shelves, and a rack for his guns. He spends many months on the work, all the time able to feed himself with wildfowl and other small game. He also finds several springs that keep him supplied with drinking water.




For the next twenty-four years, he spends his life in much the same way as in his first days after the shipwreck. He explores the island and builds what he is pleased to call his summer home on the other side. He is able to grow corn, barley, and rice, carefully saving the new kernels each year until he has enough to plant a small field. He learns to grind these grains to make meal and bakes coarse bread. He catches and tames wild goats to supply his larder and parrots for companionship. He makes better furniture and improves his cave, making it even safer from intruders, whom he still fears, although he has seen no sign of any living thing larger than small game, fowl, and goats. He also has time to read carefully the three Bibles he retrieved from the ship. At a devotional period each morning and night, he never fails to thank God for delivering him from the sea.

In the middle of Crusoe’s twenty-fourth year on the island, an incident occurs that alters his way of living. About a year and a half previously, he had observed some savages who had apparently paddled over from another island. They had come in the night and gorged themselves on some other savages, obviously prisoners. Crusoe had found the bones and the torn flesh the next morning and had since been terrified that the cannibals might return and find him. Finally, a band of savages does return. While they prepare for their gruesome feast, Crusoe shoots some of them and frightens the others away. Able to rescue one of the prisoners, he at last has human companionship. He names the man Friday after the day of his rescue, and Friday becomes his faithful servant and friend.

Over the course of time, Crusoe is able to teach Friday to speak English. Friday tells him that seventeen white men are prisoners on the island from which he had come. Although Friday reports that the men are well treated, Crusoe has a great desire to go to them, thinking that together they might find some way to return to the civilized world. He and Friday build a canoe and prepare to sail to the other island, but before they are ready for their trip, another group of savages comes to their island with more prisoners. Crusoe discovers that one of the prisoners is a white man and manages to save him. He also rescues another savage, an old man who turns out to be Friday’s father; there is great joy at the reunion of father and son. Crusoe cares for the old man and the white man, who is a Spaniard, one of the seventeen of whom Friday had spoken. A hostile tribe has captured Friday’s island, and now the white men are no longer safe.

Crusoe dispatches the Spaniard and Friday’s father to the neighboring island to try to rescue the white men. While waiting for their return, Crusoe sees an English ship one day at anchor near shore. Soon he finds the captain of the ship and two others, who have been set ashore by a mutinous crew. Crusoe, Friday, and the three seamen are able to retake the ship, and Crusoe is at last delivered from the island. He dislikes leaving before the Spaniard and Friday’s father return, and he determines to go back to the island some day and see how they had fared. Five of the mutinous crew choose to remain on the island rather than be returned to England to be hanged. Crusoe and Friday then sail to England. Crusoe returns to his homeland after an absence of thirty-five years, arriving there, a stranger and unknown, in June of 1687.

His adventures are not over, however. When he visits his old home, he finds that his parents have died, as have all of his family but two sisters and the two children of one of his brothers. Having no reason to remain in England, he goes with Friday to Lisbon to inquire about his plantation. There he learns that friends have saved the income of his estate for him and that he is now worth about five thousand pounds sterling. Satisfied with this accounting, Crusoe and Friday return to England, where Crusoe marries and had three children.

After his wife dies, Crusoe sails again in 1695 as a private trader on a ship captained by his nephew and bound for the East Indies and China. The ship puts in at his castaway island, where he finds that the Spaniards and the English mutineers have taken native wives from a nearby island; consequently, the population is greatly increased. Crusoe is pleased with his little group and holds a feast for them. He also presents them with gifts from the ship.

After Crusoe has satisfied himself that the island colony is well cared for, he and Friday sail away. On their way to Brazil, savages attack their ship, and Friday is killed. From Brazil, Crusoe travels around the Cape of Good Hope and on to the coast of China. At one port, after the sailors on his ship take part in a massacre, Crusoe lectures them so severely that the crew members force the captain, Crusoe’s nephew, to set him ashore in China, as they can no longer tolerate his preaching. There Crusoe joins a caravan that takes him into Siberia. At last, he reaches England again. Having spent the greater part of fifty-four years away from his homeland, he is finally glad to live out his life there in peace and in preparation for that longer journey from which he will never return.[1]

I.4.  Assumption
The novel has something to do with religious institutions. Because this novel "Robinson Crusoe" describes about the religious movement in the 18th century with the spread of Christianity in the island.

I.5.  Theory of Frame

I.5.a  Definition of Institution
           An institution is any structure or mechanism of social order governing the behaviour of a set of individuals within a given community; may it be human or a specific animal one. Institutions are identified with a social purpose, transcending individuals and intentions by mediating the rules that govern living behavior. The term institution is commonly applied to customs and behavior patterns important to a society, as well as to particular formal organizations of government and public services. Institutions are one of the principal objects of study in the social sciences, such as political science, anthropology, economics, and sociology. Institutions are also a central concern for law, the formal mechanism for political rule-making and enforcement.[2]

I.5.b.   Definition of Religious Institution
Religious  Institution  is a social institution that answers questions and explains the seemingly inexplicable. Religion provides explanations for why things happen and demystifies the ideas of birth and death. Religions based on the belief in a single deity are monotheistic. Those that encompass many deities are polytheistic.[3]

I.5.c.  Manifest Function
The manifest function of Religious institution are :
ü   Provide answers for human problems (meaning and purpose of life, death, after death etc). All religions have certain notions and beliefs that provide answers to the above questions. These beliefs are based on the faith that life has a purpose, and there is someone or something that controls the universe. It defines the spiritual world and gives meaning to the divine. Because of its beliefs concerning people’s relationships to a beyond, religion provides an explanation for events that seem difficult to understand.

ü   Provide comfort, assurance, and release from anxiety is perhaps Religion can be a source of comfort in troubled times, as well as a foundation for self-esteem, feeling unconditionally valued, loved, and cared for. Those who feel this way have an amazing sense of security. Their belief that God will intervene when needed gives them a sense of peace and calm, and their identification with particular biblical figures can help them interpret and guide their lives.

ü   Reinforce the mores and help maintain social control means religious beliefs can influence the conduct of those who believe in them. It keeps people ‘in line’ through folkways and mores. It provides a foundation for mores of society. Religious sanctions are sought for certain desirable patterns of behaviour to persist in society in the forms of mores. 

I.5.d.  Latent Function
The latent function for Religious institution are :
ü   Preserve of the culture, sometimes powerfully, so Marx saw religion as the enemy of the revolution. But it happened it can be a revolutionary force.
ü   Influence the development of the other institutions
ü   Be the sociability and entertainment

I.6  Literary Review
*      Based on Karl Marx opinion Robinson Crusoe is a standard-bearer for the darker elements of imperialism. 
*      According to The American Heritage Robinson Crusoe is an English sailor , a shipwrecked and cast ashore alone on an uninhabited island.
*      Ellis, Frank H, in her journal Twentieth Century Interpretations of Robinson Crusoe (1969) mentions that  Robinson Crusoe  is one of a handful of literary characters whose names immediately conjure up specific images in the minds of most people, even those who have not read the books in which these characters appear.

I.7  Purposes

The purpose of this paper is to know and retell about The Analysis Of Religious Institution Of Robinson Crusoe By Daniel Defoe.  And help us to understand about the novel based on true story in England  "Alexander Selkirk", Scotland outcast who lived for four years in the Pacific island called "Más a Tierra". And the last purpose is to know the religious movement in the 18th century. This paper presents research findings on the analysis of religious institution of  Robinson Crusoe novel by Daniel Defoe.

CHAPTER II

II.1.  THE ANALYSIS OF RELIGIOUS INSTITUTION OF ROBINSON CRUSOE by DANIEL DEFOE

I use the concept of religious institution based on Mr. Agus Research that tells us that latent function and manifest function, each of them has 3 main points, I will explain it the detail:
Latent Function covers:
1.                               Preserve of the culture, sometimes powerfully, so Marx saw religion as the enemy of   
                     the revolution. But it happened it can be a revolutionary force.
2.                               Influence the development of the other institutions
3.                               Be the sociability and entertainment

Manifest Function covers:
1.                                Provide answers for human problems (meaning and purpose of life, death, after death 
                      etc).
2.                                Provide comfort, assurance, and release from anxiety
3.                                Reinforce the mores and help maintain social control.


I use the concept above as my base analysis for this novel and I try to show and explain in detail the which quotation that contains the concept above. The analyze of the novel of “Robison Crusoe” in this case it looks based on the religious institution that focus on structure and the development of religious institution. I just focus on the religious institution. It closed to the religious movement in that century. The novel of Robinson Crusoe represents such strategies as propaganding for Christianity, this is seen implicitly through some events that we may conceive as signs for spreading Christianity. The first one can be deduced from the way Robinson Crusoe sells Xury to the Portugues captain, although Xury is not Robinson’s slave but they were both slaves to the Moor, Robinson sells Xury in return of converting him into a Christian after ten years working with the captain. This event shows that Robinson is seeking to spread Christianity by any means and he prefers to convert Xury to a Christian than taking money from the Portuguese captain. This implies that anyone who is not a Christian is still a slave and uncivilized. Another incident is when Robinson Crusoe arrives at the island and fixes a Cross on the ground. The Cross works as symbol of Christianity and Christian beliefs.  As the quotation from the novel :

He offered me also sixty pieces of eight more for my boy Xury, which I was loth to take; not that I was unwilling to let the captain have him, but I was very loth to sell the poor boy's liberty, if he turned Christian; upon this, and Xury saying he was willing to go to him, I let the captain have him.”(Robinson Crusoe, 60)

Manifest function Analysis:
Manifest function of religious institution related with the novel “Robinson Crusoe” is the provide comfort, assurance, and release from anxiety. It's like when Robinson  comes to realize the spiritual deliverance from sin is more important than physical deliverance from the island. A little later, when he is about to thank God for bringing him to the island and so saving him, he stops, shocked at himself and the hypocrisy of such a statement. As the quote below :

"Sincerely gave thanks to God for opening my eyes, by whatever afflicting providences, to see the former condition of my life, and to mourn for my wickedness, and repent" (Robinson Crusoe,110).

Another manifest function of religious institution related with the novel “Robinson Crusoe” is provide answer for human problems. It likes when Robinson process of conversion begins, it follows a typical pattern. After his dream and the beginning of his regeneration, Crusoe reviews his life  and his understanding and sense of God deepen. But reason alone is not sufficient to result in conversion, and Crusoe turns to the Bible; studying it reveals God's word and will to him, and he finds comfort, guidance, and instruction in it. For the first time in many years he prays, and he prays, not for rescue from the island, but for God's help. And after thinking about his life, he kneels to God for the first time in his life and prays to God to fulfill his promise. His next step toward conversion is asking for God's grace.  Such as the following quotation:

"Lord be my help, for I am in great distress" (Robinson Crusoe, 88).
"that if I called upon Him in the day of toruble, He would deliver me" (Robinson Crusoe, 91).

"Jesus, Thou Son of David, Jesus, Thou exalted Prince and Saviour, give me repentance!" (Robinson Crusoe, 93). 

Another manifest function analysis of this novel, we can see the quotation below:

“Thus fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself.” (Robinson Crusoe). 

The quotation above can be used as the answer of human problem. Sometimes we are too afraid of the danger, the concequences of the danger that we will have, but it just will make us more terrified and can bring us the the worse effect than the danger itself. So dont need to worry much of the danger we face, focus on trying and let us see what will come.

Latent Function Analysis:
Latent function of religious institution related with the novel “Robinson Crusoe” is influence the development of the other institution. In this novel we can see a political institution, when many people have pointed out that Robinson Crusoe's experiences on the island seem to be a reflection of the growth of civilization and society. Considering the prominent role that religion plays in the novel, it would be worthwhile to examine the progression of religious and political thought in Crusoe's "society”. This evolution of religious and political thought affirms two ideas: 1) in the personal realm, it affirms religious individualism--the idea that one can and should find his God independently from any human authority or intermediary and 2) in the public realm, the novel affirms that religious toleration, especially on the part of those in power, is the appropriate way to resolve those conflicts that are inherent in the transition of religion from the private to the public. As the absolute ruler of the island, Crusoe has reached the final stage in the evolution of political religion, by finding a resolution between the personal and the public religion essentially, there is no public religion on his island.  Following the quotation as :

"My Man Friday was a Protestant, his Father was a Pagan and a Cannibal, and the Spaniard was a Papist: However, I allow'd Liberty of Conscience throughout my Dominions..." (Robinson Crusoe, 174)


Another latent function in this novel is in the point three, “Influence the development of the other institution”. In the 18th century the industrial revolution has occurred in Britain, which is where the massive changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology and has a profound impact on social, economic and in the world. It affects the religious institution in that era. As the quotation below:

“Those people cannot enjoy comfortably what God has given them because they see and covet what He has not given them. All of our discontents for what we want appear to me to spring from want of thankfulness for what we have.”

Based on the quotation above in that era, the revolution industry changes industry on a large scale, then a lot of people complain because they earn lower incomes, so they are not grateful for what they have.
CONCLUSION

            After I analysis the novel, I can describe if this is a good novel with a good storyline, especially with “based on a true story” tag on the cover. The plot is good and entertaining even sometimes take too seriously. The Analysis Of Religious Institution Of Robinson Crusoe Novel by Daniel Defoe.  It also helps us to understand about the novel based on true story in England how the religious movement in the 18th century. The analysis of the novel of “Robinson Crusoe” with the religious institution, showed a person who spread Christianity in the island he never visited. The manifest function of religious institution related with the novel “Robinson Crusoe” is the provide comfort, assurance, and release from anxiety. Latent function of religious institution related with the novel “Robinson Crusoe” is influence the development of the other institution. The religious institutions make it all clear based on the novel of the “Robinson Crusoe” is to know the religious movement in the 18th century.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

reference.com/browse/robinson+crusoe



[1] http://www.enotes.com/topics/robinson-crusoe
[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institution
[3] http://www.sparknotes.com/sociology/religious-institutions/section4.rhtml



[1] http://www.biography.com/people/daniel-defoe-9269678#acclaimed-writer

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