Robinson Crusoe Set

One of the first novels ever written, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, the classic adventure story of a man marooned on an island for nearly 30 years. The story begins with the universal quest: the young man in Britain, torn between his safe home and his hunger for adventure, breaks away from his loving father and sails away into the unknown. His lively first-person account shows how his intelligence and education help him survive for many years, and how he uses technology, including guns and tools salvaged from the ship.

Defoe is said to have based his novel on the true adventures of Alexander Selkirk (who spent four or five years on an island in the South Pacific) and on accounts of other castaways of the time. The survival adventure is still enthralling. The guns and tools make Crusoe boss, but wouldn’t Friday have been able to teach the newcomer some survival skills? Does it never occur to Crusoe to learn Friday’s own name and language?