The Journal

Abstract

September 30, 1659. I poor miserable Robinson Crusoe, being ship-wreck’d, during a dreadful Storm, in the offing, came on Shore on this dismal unfortunate Island, which I call’d the Island of Despair, all the rest of the Ship’s...

Solitude and Sunshine in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe

“…The publication of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe in 1719 marks the beginning of realistic fiction as a literary genre. The novel is known for adventures of shipwrecks and survival, pirates and prisoners, slaves and Spaniards, loss and loneliness, for its allegories of civilization, and for its cultural relativism .…”

“…However, among battles with cannibals and conquerors, Crusoe’s recurring battle with the sun is one of his biggest concerns, equal to his need to eat and drink, to find shelter, and to evade enemies: “Though it was true that the weather was so violently hot that there was no need of clothes, yet I could not go quite naked—no, though I had been inclined to it, which I was not—nor could I abide the thought of it, though I was alone. The reason why I could not go naked was, I could not bear the heat of the sun so well when quite naked as with some clothes on; nay, the very heat frequently blistered my skin.” (p93)…”

“…[I] covered it with skins, the hair upwards, so that it…kept off the sun so effectually, that I could walk out in the hottest of the weather with greater advantage than I could before in the coolest. [Also] I had a great high shapeless cap, made of a goat’s skin, with a flap hanging down behind, as well to keep the sun from me.” (p104)…”

“…Crusoe would have appreciated that the hot-weather survival gear, known as SKRAM bags (Survival Kit, Ready Access, Modular), issued to US military pilots, includes both a sun-protective hat and topical sunscreens. After all, Crusoe equates the importance of blocking the sun to staying alive: “At my back I carried my basket, and on my shoulder my gun, and over my head a great clumsy, ugly goat’s-skin umbrella, but which, after all, was the most necessary thing I had about me next to my gun.” (p105)…”