12 September, 2012

I feel like I’m not quite sure what to do with this, so here goes.

The thing that struck me as I was reading Robinson Crusoe was the almost detached consciousness of the style.  Though the novel is written as a first person narrative, it could also read as an almost scientific journal of observations and events.  For example, Crusoe “consulted several things in [his] situation, which [he] found would be proper for [him]: first...secondly...thirdly...fourthly...” (89-90).  This is an extremely linear, logical way of laying out not only action and event, but thought as well.  Though Crusoe the character has no scientific background, he observes and decides like a scientist might. 

When I approached the secondary readings, I felt as if the novel made a little more sense. Ian Watt wrote that "realitst" view of the phenomenon of the original novels (of which Defoe was a writer) as “tend[ing] to differ from the more flattering pictures of humanity presented by many established ethical, social, and literary codes...because they were the product of a more dispassionate and scientific scrutiny of life than had ever been attempted before.” (11).  This made a lot of sense with the detachment I had noticed while reading. 

I’m not entirely convinced that the novel was objective, though, or even that it was trying to be.  Watt seems to concur with that in his denouncement of the realist's claim that the novel was objective.  Firstly, it was written in the first person, as a journal.  A truly objective voice would be outside the action – a mere observer.  Secondly, though Crusoe goes into much detail about certain of his endeavors, such as the circumferance and width of the fence he constructs around his dwelling, there are numerous places where he states that he’s going to skip over this next part, as it is repetitive of the previous.  An objective view includes each detail, not judging which is important or trivial.  I guess I’m exploring the objectivity of the novel, as well as Crusoe himself.