I am suddenly becoming fascinated by all things Trinidadian and Tobagoan now that I have a Trinidadian daughter-in-law (Candice) and a Trinidadian-American granddaughter (Esmé). Among other changes, I now read Robinson Crusoe differently.
My son Toby steered me to a Robinson Crusoe website that establishes fairly convincingly that Crusoe’s island is Tobago, the smaller of the two islands that make up the two-island nation. But there’s even more that I find of interest. Candice is part Carib, part African, and Defoe’s book manages to touch on all the ethnicities in Toby’s new family.
First of all, Crusoe is English, as are the Bateses, and Candice, whose last name is Wilson, has some English blood. Crusoe is off to bring African slaves to the new world when his ship wrecks, and some of Candice’s ancestors were probably slaves brought over to work the sugar plantations. One side of Candice’s family was partly Carib, and the Indians who capture and are prepared to eat Friday are probably Carib. (Friday himself is probably Taino, one of the Arawak tribes that predated the Caribs and then was conquered by them.) Recent historians, incidentally, have cast doubt on the European belief that the Caribs were cannibals.
I think the novel has several applications to my son’s family. Toby, who has been married less than a year and now is a father, has already learned one of Defoe’s indirect lessons, which is to surrender any illusion of control. Crusoe, like a stereotypical male, may think that he can put his stamp on the island by fencing it and building fortresses. Time and again, however, surprises arise.
One of my favorite scenes is when he thinks he has the entire island under his control and is safely ensconced in his cave, at which point there is an earthquake that nearly buries him. Later, thinking he is master of his domain, he finds the footprint in the sand and nearly goes crazy with fear. Then there’s Friday, who it turns out is misnamed—Crusoe has gotten his days wrong and actually saves him on a different day. And when Crusoe tries to instruct Friday about Christianity, including Satan and the Trinity, Friday asks such probing questions that Crusoe gets confused and changes the subject.
In short, the book teaches marital and parental rule #1: don’t think that you can control what happens.
In another way, Toby and Candice are in the spirit of this multicultural book as they both see themselves as citizens of the world. Our household was always filled with international students (from Slovenia, Ethiopia, Wales, England, Nicaragua, and Japan) while Trinidad has been populated by a score of different nationalities, including the Tainos, Caribs, Spanish, French, Dutch, Brits, Syrians, slaves from various African nations, and east Indians. Tobago, meanwhile, has changed ownership 33 times. As a result, Toby and Candice can imagine working in other parts of the world–or as Crusoe would see it, running off to sea. Crusoe’s father, who wants him to follow his own safe and secure “middle way,” would not approve.
But much as I would like Toby’s family close to us, I don’t want to be like Crusoe’s father, who chastises his son for choosing the sea over business, thereby causing Robinson to feel perpetually guilty. I pray that I’m not in Toby’s head in the same way.
Toby may well be repeating one irony that shows up in the book, however. Although Robinson disobeys his father numerous times, he realizes, after establishing successful plantations first in Brazil and then on his island, that he has achieved his father’s “middle way” after all. Toby, meanwhile, is well on his way to becoming an English professor. So much for rebellion.
Toby, however, is specializing in 19th century British fiction whereas I specialized in 18th century British fiction. So he has forged his own path.
