Robinson Crusoe and the Pursuit of a Narrative Fiefdom

This study of the politics of narration in Defoe's Robinson Crusoe proceeds from a basic analogy between text and island suggested by Watt's and Said's descriptions of the latter domain as respectively a 'personal empire' and a fiefdom. As a critical survey of the novel's narrative space reveals, Defoe's depiction of the network of human relationships in four phases of fictional development is  an attempted simulation of the fiefdom political structure. Crusoe means to be 'lord-narrator' and all other characters, things, and events to be mere material in his personal narrative empire. Defoe created Crusoe to make him the ruler of an island and, more importantly of a narrative. When we investigate the nature of authorship in RC, we are also investigating the nature of rulership in the world of this seminal work. Crusoe begins his life with a demand of independence, which develops into a pursuit of absolute dominance over island and text. To achieve this he devises various kinds of political and textual arrangements. Narrative space and the quality of narrative presence of a character decide the question of authority in the text and consequently the island. All kinds of human ties can be scarified for this prize.
    The pursuit of a sole proprietorship of the text technically manifests itself in a number of narrative strategies we propose to call 'growth regulators'. Two forces are thus at work in the text: the generative and the inhibitory, and the interplay of the two creates the tension which engenders the narrative both thematically and informally. Unable to control what Said calls the molestation of authority, Crusoe relocates himself politically and narratively from king to governor to one of the governors men, and from narrator-subject to eye-witness reporter to reporter of other actors' accounts. The paradigm of self-preservation, the acquisition of 'safe comfort', the procurement of unconditional help that Crusoe sets as condition for the residency in his text-island does not hold for long, and old Crusoe realize that the creation of a personal empire out of a desert island is more attainable than the creation of a narrative fiefdom.