This blog is an academic task assigned by Megha Trivedi Ma’am to deepen and enhance our understanding of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and J. M. Coetzee’s Foe through a comparative and critical lens.

The objective is to explore how Coetzee reinterprets and challenges Defoe’s classic narrative, allowing us to examine key themes such as colonialism, authorship, silence, and identity in both texts.

Rewriting the Island: A Comparative and Critical Analysis of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and J. M. Coetzee’s Foe

Introduction

Every age rewrites its own truths. Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) and J. M. Coetzee’s Foe (1986) stand as two monumental texts that talk to each other across centuries — one celebrating the rise of European individualism and colonial expansion, and the other dismantling those very ideologies through postcolonial and feminist lenses.

While Defoe’s Crusoe embodies the Enlightenment ideals of human reason, faith, and conquest, Coetzee’s Foe exposes the silences, exclusions, and erasures that those ideals produced. Coetzee’s rewriting becomes an act of resistance — a postmodern interrogation of authorship, language, and power.

About the Authors

Daniel Defoe (1660–1731)

Daniel Defoe, often hailed as the father of the English novel, was a prolific writer, journalist, pamphleteer, and trader. Born in London, Defoe lived through the Age of Enlightenment, a period that celebrated reason, science, and exploration. His life was marked by financial struggles, political controversies, and adventurous travels — experiences that deeply influenced his fiction.

Defoe’s most famous work, Robinson Crusoe (1719), is widely regarded as one of the earliest English novels. It reflects the Protestant work ethic, Puritan morality, and the rise of middle-class individualism. Through the story of a castaway who builds civilization on a deserted island, Defoe glorifies the ideals of rationality, hard work, and divine providence.

However, modern critics also view Defoe as a product of imperial Britain, whose work unintentionally justifies colonialism and racial hierarchy. Crusoe’s domination over nature and Friday mirrors England’s growing control over its colonies.

Key Traits of Defoe’s Writing:

Realistic detail and journal-like narration.
Didactic tone with religious and moral reflection.
Celebration of human reason and survival instinct.
Early representation of colonial and capitalist ideology.

Through Robinson Crusoe, Defoe not only gave birth to the realistic novel form but also provided a symbolic blueprint for the modern Western subject — self-reliant, rational, and imperial.

J. M. Coetzee (1940– )

John Maxwell Coetzee is a South African novelist, essayist, and Nobel Laureate (awarded in 2003) known for his intellectual depth, ethical intensity, and postcolonial critique. Born in Cape Town during the apartheid era, Coetzee’s works often explore the moral and political complexities of oppression, identity, and silence.

His 1986 novel Foe is a postmodern rewriting of Robinson Crusoe, in which he reimagines the story from the perspectives of Susan Barton and Friday, characters marginalized in Defoe’s version. Through this rewriting, Coetzee challenges Western literary authority, colonial history, and the gendered politics of storytelling.

Coetzee’s writing style is often minimalist but layered with symbolism, ambiguity, and philosophical depth. He resists simple answers, preferring to confront moral questions that have no resolution — especially those related to language, silence, and responsibility.

Key Traits of Coetzee’s Writing:

Postcolonial and metafictional approach.
Themes of silence
Sparse, controlled, and introspective prose.
Deep engagement with philosophy, especially Derrida, Foucault, and Spivak.

Through Foe, Coetzee performs an act of literary decolonization — rewriting a colonial text to reveal the silences and erasures it conceals. He transforms Defoe’s island of adventure into an island of ethical questioning and unheard voices.

1. Historical and Ideological Context

Defoe’s Age (18th century):

The novel was written during the rise of the British Empire, mercantilism, and Puritan ethics. Crusoe’s voyage mirrors the adventurous spirit of European colonialism and the idea of the “self-made man.”
The novel reflects Protestant work ethic, rational individualism, and divine providence, presenting Crusoe’s survival as both moral and economic triumph.
Coetzee’s Age (20th century):

Foe was written during a period marked by postcolonial theory, feminism, and postmodernism. Coetzee, a South African writer, wrote in the shadow of apartheid, making the novel a profound critique of colonial history, racial oppression, and literary authority.

His retelling becomes a political response to how literature itself is complicit in shaping colonial ideologies.

2. Narrative Structure and Perspective

In Robinson Crusoe, Defoe uses first-person narration, creating the illusion of authenticity. Crusoe controls the narrative; he interprets events through a rational, Christian, and colonial lens.
His journal-keeping represents self-discipline and control over reality — a microcosm of colonial order.
Foe uses multiple layers of narration and metafictional framing. Susan Barton tells her story to Foe (a fictionalized version of Defoe), who then reshapes it.
This fragmentation questions narrative authority: Whose story is being told, and who decides what counts as truth?
Coetzee’s self-conscious narrative reflects postmodern skepticism toward “truth” and “authenticity,” exposing how every narrative is an act of construction — never neutral.

3. Representation of Colonialism

In Defoe’s novel:
Crusoe embodies the colonial master. His “island” becomes his empire. He names, measures, fences, and cultivates — transforming wilderness into civilization.
His relationship with Friday is paternal and hierarchical. He renames him, teaches him English, and converts him to Christianity — reflecting the colonial project of domination through language and faith.
Defoe thus normalizes colonial expansion by linking it with divine approval: “It was by God’s will that I became lord of the island.”
In Coetzee’s novel:
Coetzee subverts the colonial order. Friday’s muteness is central — his tongue has been cut out, a literal symbol of colonial silencing.
His silence is not ignorance but resistance; it exposes the impossibility of fully recovering the subaltern voice (echoing Gayatri Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?”).
The island is no longer a paradise of conquest but a haunting space of loss, trauma, and absence.

4. Gender and Feminist Dimensions

Defoe’s Crusoe is dominated by masculine individualism. Women are absent or peripheral. The novel celebrates male endurance, rationality, and control.
Coetzee introduces Susan Barton, a shipwreck survivor who struggles to have her story recognized. Through her, Coetzee rewrites the narrative from a female perspective, exposing how women’s voices were erased from colonial adventure tales.
Susan’s struggle with Foe to publish her version represents the feminist battle for authorship and recognition.
When Foe attempts to reshape her account to fit popular adventure norms, Susan’s resistance becomes symbolic of the woman writer’s fight against patriarchal literary authority.
Susan’s relation to Friday is also complex — she tries to “teach” him language but ultimately realizes that his silence cannot be appropriated. Her realization critiques both colonial and feminist assumptions of “speaking for the other.”

5. Language, Silence, and Power

In Robinson Crusoe, language is power. Crusoe names the island’s objects, people, and animals — to name is to possess.
His act of naming Friday marks the transformation of the other into property. Language becomes a colonial tool of control.
In Foe, language fails. Friday’s silence destabilizes the Western belief in language as the vehicle of truth.
The absence of speech represents what cannot be said — the trauma of slavery, violence, and historical erasure.
Coetzee thus shifts focus from what is spoken to what is unspeakable.
The novel ends in a haunting image — a narrator entering Friday’s mouth and hearing “the sounds of the sea.” This symbolizes a submerged history, suggesting that truth lies beneath language, unreachable by rational discourse.

6. Religion and Morality

In Defoe’s world, religion is central. Crusoe’s survival is seen as divine providence. His conversion to faith transforms isolation into spiritual awakening.
The island becomes both a colonial and Christian allegory — where Crusoe represents the chosen man who tames the savage world through faith and work.
Coetzee removes divine assurance. In Foe, the universe feels empty, ambiguous, and godless. There is no providence, only human struggle for meaning.
Coetzee thus exposes the moral blindness of colonial religion — faith used to justify domination.

7. Themes of Isolation and Identity

Crusoe’s isolation leads to self-discovery and mastery. His journal records his progress from despair to order, symbolizing the triumph of human reason.
For Susan Barton, isolation leads to marginalization and invisibility. Her voice competes with Foe’s, and she becomes trapped in another man’s narrative.
Thus, isolation in Coetzee’s text represents the erasure of identity, especially for women and the colonized.

8. Intertextuality and Metafiction

Coetzee’s Foe is built upon Defoe’s intertext. It functions as both a continuation and critique.
The act of rewriting reveals how literary “classics” are built on exclusionary foundations.
By inserting Foe (Defoe) as a character, Coetzee blurs the boundary between author and creation. This metafictional layer questions the authenticity of all narratives, emphasizing that history itself is written, edited, and manipulated.

9. Symbolism

The Island:
- In Robinson Crusoe → A space of conquest, civilization, and rebirth.
- In Foe → A space of trauma, silence, and fragmented memory.
Friday’s Tongue:
- Symbolizes the violent erasure of the colonized. His silence speaks volumes about lost histories.
Writing and the Pen:
- Crusoe’s pen represents control and order.
- For Susan, writing becomes an act of reclaiming existence, yet even her story is rewritten by Foe — reflecting how women’s words are rewritten by patriarchal authority.

10. Postcolonial and Postmodern Elements

Foe is both postcolonial (challenging empire and power) and postmodern (questioning truth and authorship).
Coetzee’s fragmented narrative, metafiction, and ambiguity reflect postmodern concerns.
The silence of Friday functions as a postcolonial allegory — resistance through absence.
Foe also echoes Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction: meaning is unstable, and truth depends on who speaks.
It dialogues with Spivak’s subaltern theory, Foucault’s discourse of power, and Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism — showing that every story is a contest between voices.

11. Philosophical and Ethical Reading

Defoe’s text is moralistic and teleological — man learns to live through reason and faith.
Coetzee’s novel is ethical in a modern sense — acknowledging that we cannot fully know or speak for the Other.
The ethical act, for Coetzee, lies not in speaking for Friday but in recognizing the impossibility of doing so — a profound moral humility absent in Crusoe’s colonial certainty.

Conclusion

Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe celebrates the beginnings of the modern world — reason, individualism, and empire. J. M. Coetzee’s Foe dismantles those beginnings, revealing what they cost — the silencing of women, the erasure of the colonized, and the manipulation of truth.

Through Foe, Coetzee turns the island of adventure into an island of silence — a haunting metaphor for the voices history has drowned. By comparing the two, we witness the evolution of the English novel itself: from colonial narrative to postcolonial resistance, from authorship to authenticity, from speech to silence.

Ultimately, both novels invite us to question not only who tells the story but who is left untold.

References:

Bishop, G. Scott. “J. M. Coetzee’s Foe: A Culmination and a Solution to a Problem of White Identity.” World Literature Today, vol. 64, no. 1, 1990, pp. 54–57. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/40145792. Accessed 1 Nov. 2025.

Coetzee, J. M. Foe. Penguin UK, 2010. Accessed 1 November 2025.

Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe. Prakash Books, 2017. Accessed 1 November 2025.

Moore, John Rees. “J. M. Coetzee and Foe.” The Sewanee Review, vol. 98, no. 1, 1990, pp. 152–59. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27546175. Accessed 1 Nov. 2025.

Swados, Harvey. “Robinson Crusoe: The Man Alone.” The Antioch Review, vol. 18, no. 1, 1958, pp. 25–40. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/4610024. Accessed 1 Nov. 2025.

Truptihadiya55

Saturday, 1 November 2025

Comparative and Critical Analysis of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and J. M. Coetzee’s Foe