Central University of Kashmir.

Dept, of English.

Assignment on: Character Development of Robinson

Crusoe.

Submitted by: Faizaa Aijaz.

Enrollment no.:2103-cukmr-04.

Program: M.A English.

Course: MEG103.

Submitted to: Dr. Showkat.

Dept, of English.

CUK.

Date:
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT OF ROBINSON CRUSOE.

Introduction
Character Development Definition: Character development is the process of creating
fictional characters with the same depth and complexity as real-life human beings.

Throughout the story writing process, the author will develop any number of character traits
to fully flesh out the people that populate their stories. Good character development often
includes the following elements:

 Backstory: Backstory refers to events that occurred prior to the story’s plot, but
which nonetheless affect the plot itself. For example, a common trope for
character backstories is having a traumatic childhood.
 Flaws: Every character has personality flaws, because every person has flaws.
Traits like hubris, narcissist behaviour, laziness, or impulsivity can encourage
someone to make bad decisions, prolonging the story’s conflicts.
 Goals: A central component of character development is that character’s goals.
What do they want, need, or desire? What’s standing in the way of those goals?
These questions often drive the bulk of the story’s plot and character arcs.
 Personality: At its simplest, personality is a pattern of thoughts, actions, and
beliefs that form a human being. What character traits does each person does
the story have? These traits will coalesce into a complex personality.
 Philosophy/Worldview: A key aspect of personality and character
development is that character’s worldview. By worldview, we mean the
constellation of religious, philosophical, and political beliefs that shape how
someone interacts with the world. For example, one character might believe in
the inherent goodness of humankind, while another will believe all people are
selfish and irresponsible; each philosophy will affect how each character
perceives others and lives in the world.
 Physical Character Traits: What do your characters look like? How do those
traits impact how other characters view them? In the real world, our physical
appearances affect how other people treat us (for better or for worse). It’s the
same in fiction, so give some thought to each character’s physical traits.
 Morals/Values: What morals guide your characters? What do they value the
most? Remember, morals aren’t inherently good: the idea that one gender is
better than another is a moral belief, too, though not a very good one.
 Spiritual Beliefs: Finally, what religious or spiritual beliefs drive your
characters? This can be a major world religion, but it can also be beliefs about
the universe at large. Does the character believe that life has a meaning, that
humans exist for a purpose, and that we’re compelled to act in certain ways?

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT OF ROBINSON CRUSOE:

Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe is considered as the most important precursor of the English
Novel or even as the first few English Novel. Crusoe's attitude towards business, religion and
non-Europeans in its historical context are three elements of Crusoe's character that are
inseparably linked to each other and are therefore essential to an appreciation of Crusoe's
mind and character. Crusoe's character has been interpreted differently by various critics. To
Ian Watt, Crusoe is an embodiment of economic motive, a reverence for book keeping and
the laws of contract are the marks of Crusoe's personality. (l) Maximillian E. Novak goes a
little farther and considers Robinson Crusoe as an illustration of Defoe's own economic
concepts. (2) Crusoe, to Novak, is not only an economic man. If economics be taken as the
only trait and pursuit of Crusoe's character, then the account of his adventure will become
dull, localized and uninteresting to his readers. Besides being an economic man, Crusoe, says
Novak, has a romantic temperament. It is the romanticism in Crusoe's temperament which
keeps him going in his adventures and also maintains the interest of a reader from beginning
to end. Crusoe's adventurous life begins with the dissatisfaction of his routine. His father
wanted him to be a lawyer and stay in the "middle station" of life to which they belonged.
Crusoe's restlessness was partly due to his longing to go to sea and partly due to his
dissatisfaction with his "middle station" of life. (3) In his thinking Crusoe is not an isolated
Englishman; on the contrary, he represents the ideals of British society of that time. It was a
time when the Bank of England and the South Sea Company were founded. The Royal Africa
Company and the East India Company were moving out into the remote areas of the world.
Naturally Crusoe's desire to make his fortune through sailing and trading was quite
representative of the spirit of his age. Michael Shinagel remarks: " ... Defoe employed the
colonial theme as a means of showing his middle - and lower - class readers how they could
better their fortunes, regardless of their ancestry or birth, through industry in the already
established colonies in America, specifically Virginia and Maryland." (4)
Crusoe, in the beginning, turns out to be an unfortunate sailor and tradesman, but shipwrecks
and slavery do not keep him from his ambitions. He is not the type of man who could be
easily persuaded to give up his plan by misfortune; on the contrary, these hardships and his
helplessness become a driving force in his case. He has the temperament of a well-disciplined
merchant whom loss or set-back does not crush but whose endurance and patience are
thereby augmented. These setbacks contribute to his wisdom and prepare him for future
challenges. Crusoe never neglects any opportunity for investment and trade. In Brazil, in
addition to exploring other possibilities for making money, he carefully examines the
plantations, land, and the laws of the country: "I lived with him some time, and acquainted
may self by that means with the manner of their planting and making of sugar; and seeing
how well the planters lived, and how they grew rich suddenly, I resolved, if I could get
license to settle there, I would turn planter among them, resolving in the meantime to find out
some way to get my money which I had left in London remitted to me. To this purpose,
getting a kind of letter of naturalization, I purchased as much land that was uncured as my
money would reach and formed a plan for my plantation and settlement ... " (RC, P.55)
Crusoe, no doubt, inherited his business-like and practical attitude towards life from his
family. To settle down as a planter in. Brazil, it is necessary to acquire property and obtain a
legal license, He exploits the situation to his full advantage and begins to think of his future
prospects as a successful planter. Crusoe is the sole survivor of the unfortunate shipwreck.
Though the vessel is filled with water, he finds the food stuffs dry and brings all the
salvageable items to the island. He lives on this deserted island by means of his practical
ingenuity. His living, management of the resources on the island, and his insight into even the
most mundane details of day-to-day life are clear expression of his business instincts. Though
he calls money a "drug" and "nasty, sorry, useless stuff' (RC, p. 75) he does not throw the
money away but rather wraps it in a piece of canvas and saves it for the future. Robinson
Crusoe's life as an active business man begins when he arrives in Lisbon after having lived on
the island for more than twenty-eight years. He begins his life over again, from scratch,
inquiring about the state of his plantation in Brazil and attempting to renew his old business
contacts. He learns that his plantation is still flourishing and receives from its profits over five
thousand pounds in sterling silver. Thereafter, he sells his share of the plantation and settles
down in England. Crusoe's attitude towards nature is also business-like. He exploits the island
only for his sustenance and comfort and experiences no aesthetic delight from its scenic
beauty. He is only concerned with the improvement of his land and has no leisure to observe
that the island offers a beautiful landscape. Crusoe's sole delight comes from surveying his
goods: "I had everything so ready at my hand" and "that it was a great pleasure to me to see
all my goods in such order and specially to find my stock of all necessaries so great" (RC, p.
86). When he was in the "Island of Despair" he always prayed for his deliverance. But after
his deliverance, and on coming back to his home, he is not prepared to forget the investment
he has made in the island. Besides its nostalgic association for him, the island is connected
with his business motives. He writes: "Besides this I shared the island into parts with 'em,
reserved to myself the property of the whole, but gave them such parts respectively as they
agreed on; and having settled all things with them, and engaged them not to leave the place,
/left them there". (RC, pp. 298-90). Crusoe, in his attitude towards trade, is amazingly
practical and farsighted; his frugal investments have brought him a substantial return. He is a
successful businessman and his adventures, to use the words of Ian Watt, symbolize the
virtues of "individualism" and "absolute economic, social and intellectual freedom for the
individual.". (5) Despite the frequent religious meditations in Defoe's novel, one senses that it
would be false to take the purpose of the novel or even its principal interest as being religious
in nature. Intuitively judged, the novel seems secular, more immediately and more constantly
concerned with man's worldly satisfactions than with his duty toward God under the guidance
of religion. The religious aspect of the work does not so much strike us as false or
hypocritical as it does matter-of-fact and close to irrelevant. William Halewood considers that
religion in Robinson Crusoe". gives the book its structure, justifies its length and method,
contributes to its air of authenticity, provides emotional complexity'-and depth, and enlivens
its language”. (6)  In the beginning of the novel, Robinson disregards Christianity and leads a
life that he later looks back on as wicked. He discounts his father's warning that God will not
bless him if he goes to sea, and does not thank God when he is rescued from the storm on the
way to London, or by the Portuguese captain off the coast of Africa. However, after he
dreams one night of a strange figure scolding him for not repenting, Robinson turns to
Christianity on the island and eagerly studies the Bible. With his newfound Christianity,
Robinson is never entirely alone on his island, because he can converse with God through
prayer. Moreover, Christianity offers Robinson a way to make sense of his life and its various
twists and turns. He sees his rebelling against his father as his original sin, for which he was
then punished by being taken as a slave and then by being shipwrecked. However, he was
blessed and saved by God by being saved from drowning and ending up on the island with
enough provisions to survive. After repenting, Robinson sees himself as further blessed by
various miracles, whether the accidental growing of his first crops or the arrival of Friday and
the English captain. In addition, Robinson comes to see various unpredictable natural
disasters like storms, hurricanes, and the earthquake that damages his island home as signs
from God, instruments of his divine agency. Defoe was not only a puritan, but an active and
public one who suffered for his beliefs. He wrote a defence of his fellow-believers called the
Shortest Way with Dissenters, that so offended the defenders of the state religion that he was
condemned to public punishment in the stocks and then to imprisonment. Thus, Defoe proved
the sincerity of his beliefs. At the same time, Defoe’s career in politics, business and
formalism strikes us today as self-seeking and opportunistic. His very novels seem to have
little purpose but to make money by serving the tastes of middle-class readers with stories of
adventure and of success. So, Defoe himself seems to embody the paradox of Puritanism. So
too does his first novel, Robinson Crusoe. Midway through the novel, Crusoe, after a long
examination on whether religion permitted him to kill without warning or provocation the
cannibals who come to the island, ends by observing that, should be try to kill them and fail,
they might kill him. His comment is, "Religion joyned in with this prudential... me" (RC, p.
179). Religion throughout the book has a way of agreeing with the safety and the comfort of
Crusoe. It is true, that Crusoe's initial imprudence in going off to sea without his father's
permission is viewed by him and is meant to be so viewed by us, as wilful disobedience to
the will of God, that these misadventures are meant to lead him into repentance of his sin and
into the mercy and loving-kindness of God, and that his final prosperity is evidence of God's
care for him; all this is true, but it is also true that despite this spiritual drama, Crusoe's
character as such does not seem to change at all from one part of the novel to the other,
whether he be in a state of sin, of repentance, or of grace. It would be unfair, however, to
Defoe to leave the matter at this point. There is one more point to make. A main part of the
action of the novel depends on Crusoe's being shipwrecked on the island as God's way of
bringing him to repentance and salvation. In several passages in the novel, Defoe achieved a
kind of grandeur of vision; in which the absolute power and majesty of God are celebrated. ...
“I had now brought my state of life ... next to miraculous" (RC, pp. 140-44). Here the Puritan
sense of the marvellous care and grace of God for an unworthy man, a sinner like all men, the
care of God extending from the greatest displays of power (like the great storms at sea) to the
most intimate of kindnesses, is well-expressed. This may seem the mark of a hypocritical
religious belief, despising riches yet labouring to achieve them, but to the Puritan, there is
nothing hypocritical or contradictory in this. The harshest, most disagreeable note in Defoe's
novel is the attitude of Crusoe towards non-Europeans. It is just because this attitude is so
unpleasant that it is interesting to us, for it promises to help us understand the foundations of
British Imperialism that were being laid at the time the novel was written. There is no
question but that the attitudes expressed by Crusoe are those of the author as well. We know
enough of Defoe's own political career as an agent of the Prime Minister who made the treaty
giving Great Britain its slaving rights, Sir Robert Harley, to be sure he was in agreement with
British policy, it is, furthermore, clear that Defoe in showing his casual sense of superiority,
to non-Europeans counted on his readers' sympathy, even to the point of making "native"
humour one of the interests of the novel. Let us look at four aspects of the novel before trying
to come to some conclusion: the humorous use of language to characterize non-Europeans;
the discrimination practiced by Crusoe; Crusoe's expectation that other peoples should serve
him; and his reflections on "nationality!'. The first of these seems harmless, but it is not. the
problem lies in the fact that both Xury and Friday speak very bad English indeed. In Xury's
case, perhaps the surprising thing is that he speaks English, for we are told that Crusoe had no
fellow-Europeans to talk to while he was at Sallée. One should expect that he and his fellow
slaves would speak Turkish or Arabic or Berber, some language, that is, used in the Maghreb.
Yet Xury speaks bad English in talking with Crusoe. Friday, of course, spoke no English
when he first met Crusoe. Yet, after some three or four years of constant conversation in
English, his English is no better than Xury's. Yet other foreigners, Europeans like the
Portuguese sea-captain, speak perfectly good English. Now language is one mark, a most
important mark, of the equality of human relations. That Defoe presents Xury and Friday
thus, making humorous use of their bad English, has the insidious effect of making us see
them as somehow inferior to Crusoe and to Englishmen generally. The second thing to note,
if only briefly, is another instance of Crusoe's discrimination. In the episode where Crusoe,
after having determined not to interfere in the cannibalistic rituals of the Indians who come to
the island, changes his mind suddenly and does interfere, the cause of his interference is that
one of the victims is a European. There is some abstract justification that might be made out
for this, on the basis of Crusoe's theory of nationalities, but this would be too weak to explain
the strength of Crusoe's reaction. Friday's announcement that one of the victims is a European
"fired all the very soul within" him. He "was filled with horror at the very naming the white
bearded man," who he saw plainly was "a European, and had clothes on." This sort of thing
shows sharply Crusoe's real sympathy for Europeans, whatever he might say in calmer
moments. The third thing we have mentioned is difficult to elaborate. All one can do is to
point out that it never occurs to Crusoe to accept a relation of equality with non-Europeans.
He works deliberately to inspire them with awe and expects, as a matter of course, that they
should be willing to sacrifice their lives in his service. Finally, the fourth thing to observe is
that Crusoe's theory of nationalities, seems to see the bulk of "native" peoples as evil and
deserving of God's punishment. It is true that he leaves it to God to punish them, but the
expression of the theory is designed sharply to limit our sympathy with them. In the
following passage Crusoe goes on to observe : " ... we did not know by what light and law
these should be condemned; but that as God was necessarily, and by the nature of His being,
infinitely holy and just, so it could not be, but that if these creatures were all sentenced to
absence from himself, it was on account of sinning against the light ... " (RC, p. 212) Thus
whereas Crusoe himself is in the special care of Providence, these people are seen by him as
being literally God-forsaken. Even Crusoe’s portrayal of women says a lot about his
character, the following lines depict his relationship with the other sex: "l'marry'd, and that
not either to my disadvantage or dissatisfaction; and had three children" (RC 298). This
single sentence narrates Robinson Crusoe's sole noteworthy encounter with what was then
called the 'fairer sex.'. This lack of regard for his wife, the woman who has given birth to his
children further throws light on the narcissistic character of Robinson Crusoe. To conclude,
Crusoe is a shrewd businessman and his attitude towards religion appears to be a paradoxical
relationship between a serious religious life and great worldly success. Besides disagreeable
traces of national intolerance and colonialism, is what disturbs us more is the unselfconscious
and even pious feeling that Crusoe expresses that he and his fellows are somehow chosen by
God to dominate others and that they somehow show themselves worthy of this election by
their benevolence and good nature. The nakedness of the attitude shown in the novel helps us
to see clearly what British imperialism was from its beginning.

Work cited: 1. Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe Richardson and Fielding
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), p. 67.
2. Maximillian E. Novak, Economics and the Fiction of Daniel Defoe (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1962), p. 49.

3. Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd., 1981), p. 28. This book has
been cited internally and appears as RC.

4. Michael Shinagel, D"aniel Defoe and Middle-Class Gentility (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1968), p. 132.