Daniel Defoe′s ′Robinson Crusoe′
and J.M. Coetzee′s ′Foe′: Characters in Comparison

by

 Luise A. Finke

CONTENTS

I. J.M. Coetzee′s Foe: a literary parody with political attitude 3

[1] The spiderweb of fiction and reality 3
[2] Literature shaping cultural images - Robinson Crusoe and Colonialism 5
[3] Foe: the title as hints to the character of Coetzee′s novel 5
[4] White South-African J.M. Coetzee writing on behalf of the ′voiceless′ 6

II. Character alteration from Defoe to Foe 7

[1] Cruso: the anti-hero 7
[2] Introducing a female narrator - the character of Susan Barton 10
[3] Friday: the voiceless 15

III. Fiction and metafiction: how many layers does truth have? 19

Bibliography 21

I. J.M Coetzee′s Foe: a literary parody with political attitude

[1] The spiderweb of fiction and reality

J. M. Coetzee′s 1986 novel Foe leaves its reader in a tumble of a multi-layered reality, confused about literary original and copy, and, maybe most grave, confronted with the question: what is historical truth and how can it be recognised. The veils that unfold and reveal the facets of fiction and reality through the novel are many, and they are intricately woven into each other. We, the readers, however educated and experienced with fictional texts, may find ourselves slightly confused after a first reading.

Coetzee has written a parody¹ of a classic of world literature: Daniel Defoe′s Robinson Crusoe, first published in 1719². The simple fact that Coetzee′s work of fiction was first published in 1986³ makes it evident that it was based on the older classic. Yet the content of the novel claims the very opposite when the female protagonist Susan Barton tells how the story really was before Mr Foe sat down to turn it into a novel of his own intentions, altering and falsifying it. She tells her own story in the Iperspective, in terms of the ′plot′ even before the writer Mr Foe would have completed his ′Robinson Crusoe′. Through this, Coetzee creates the illusion that Susan Barton′s report might have indeed been the antecessor of the literary classic Robinson Crusoe. Nevertheless, we are talking of a work of fiction here, so there is no doubt that Coetzee marvellously plays with the means of storytelling instead of telling the world ′how it all really was′. There is no such Robinson Crusoe as depicted both in Defoe′s and Coetzee′s novel - there is merely fiction, and one should not confuse fiction and reality, however many layers of both seem to be mingled into each other in Coetzee′s novel.

[2] Literature shaping cultural images - Robinson Crusoe and Colonialism

Even if fictional elements in Coetzee′s story do not have the purpose to shed light on reality, those kind of elements generally represent something outside of ′things that really happened′ - which they do in Coetzee′s novel. Coetzee does not intend to correct the actual story of Robinson Crusoe. His way of re-writing a story, which is so much part of national, or probably even global, literary heritage, is clearly a metaphor. Daniel Defoe′s Robinson Crusoe has shaped the minds of generations, especially in its widely-spread form as a youth book. With the alterations that Coetzee made in the story and characters of the original Robinson Crusoe when rewriting it, he forces us to think why he chose to retell the old story in this very way.

Why was Robinson Crusoe written that way and no other? And why does Coetzee decide that he has to write the old story anew? In a way, Daniel Defoe′s Robinson Crusoe could be considered a perfect example for the spirit of the times it was written in. The way Robinson cultivates and reigns the island and the slave-master relationship between him and (coloured) Friday represent the attitude of colonialization: white European men come to a foreign, apparently uninhabited island and turn it into a fertile, liveable environment through their intelligence and hard labour. The occasional native is saved from great danger and, in gratitude to the white man, becomes his servant, whom the benevolent master even introduces to the realm of European language, culture, and Christian religion of course.

If this depiction of colonial attitude is of a rather ironic tone, that already indicates that today′s reader will see Defoe′s Robinson Crusoe in a critical light. Reading about Friday′s ′domestication′, the way Robinson Crusoe treats Friday seems rather racist in today′s view Coetzee rewrites the story of the 18th-century white castaway, introducing us to the complicated links between reality, fiction, and metafiction. He also makes us realise that an author writing a novel always has an intention that makes him depict a certain character in a certain way, and what impact this intention can have on culturally shaped images of (social and cultural) history. Coetzee rewrites Robinson Crusoe, and he does so in the 20th century, being a white, critical South African writer. As we think about his intention in rewriting the story, we come upon the fact that Daniel Defoe had his intentions, too. That he was, although being a very liberal mind, a child of his times, and thus promoting a view on the encounter of Europeans with the ′savage′ natives during colonial times that is indeed told from a very European, or even ′colonial′, point of view. We come to understand that all literature, and with it history and the like, was written with an intention and in favour of the social group writing it, and that with nothing that we read can we be careless believers. So Coetzee′s novel functions as an ′eye-opener′ to the reader; when he rewrites the story of white European Robinson Crusoe and his fate in the Caribbean, it is an act of adding his own version of colonialisation to the culturally shaped view on history - he thus corrects the official accounts, of which Defoe′s Robinson Crusoe is one, by adding the voice of a minority that was speechless before.

[3] Foe: the title as hints to the character of Coetzee′s novel

[...]

1 A parody according to Linda Hutcheon is an: "imitation characterised by ironic inversion", or "repetition with critical distance, which marks difference rather than simularity"; in: Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms. New York and London: Methuen, 1985, p.6

2 See: Bibliographical Note; in: Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe. London: Dent, 1975, p. xiii

3 First published in Great Britain by Martin Secker & Warburg 1986; here it will be referred to the Penguin paperback edition of 1987 when quoting passages from the text.