Robinson Crusoe

 I recently read Robinson Crusoe. It was a book about a 18 yr old that grew up in England while one of his parents was a foreigner that came to England. His parents and friends all wanted him to settle down as a lawyer in England, but Robinson wanted to go out to sea . His father had a talk with him about how the middle class was the best and they did not need to go out and risk their lives ( that that was only for the poor or rich )  and that he should just settle down. Robinson was moved by this , but after a while ( when his friend came and persuaded him to come on a journey with him on a ship ) he left ( he was 19 or older by now ). On this voyage there was a bit of a gale , for the crew , but for Crusoe it seemed like a full storm. He was terrified that they would go down any minute and made vows that he would go home a soon as he could if he survived the gale. His friend gave him some rum and soon after the gale subsided to a calm sea. Robinson decided not to keep the vows and when he was thinking about it he drank some rum ( he was wicked when he was young ). Soon after though there was a really terrible storm, and all the crew was sure it would go down any minute. Crusoe was scared and he went to the pump to pump out water. They got in a boat and left their ship. Soon after their ship capsized. Another ship found them and they got into it. They took this ship to shore. At shore Crusoe met the captain ( whop was his friends father ) and told him about he had left against his fathers will. At this the captain was mad and told him it was his fault they had lost their ship and said he would not take a man like him for 1000 pounds, then told Robinson to go back to his father. Robinson got a ship back to London, but he did not stay long, for there were some men who were going to Guinea in Africa to get rich, and Crusoe joined them. They went to guinea and got a lot of money from gold and things. This was successful so Robinson Crusoe wanted to do it again. He did go on a ship to Guinea, But they were attacked by the Moors and taken prisoner or executed. Robinson stayed a slave for the moors for a long time. His master went on fishing trips and took Crusoe with him since he was very good at fishing. One day there was a fog and they got lost, They did not really have any provisions in the boat and the master got worried. They made it back to shore though and the master ordered the ship to be furnished with more provision and made into a seaworthy boat with a sail .  After this , the Moor master was going to have some guests over to fish, so he ordered more provisions added and also guns into the boat , for they might hunt game on land also. But it turned out that the guests did not come, and Robinson Crusoe, a Moor servant and a moor boy went fishing. They went out to deep waters and then Robinson forced the Moor servant to leave and the boy promised to be his slave. So with the provisions , and guns in a sturdy vessel they went south ( where Robinson hoped he woulds find some English colonies  , or European ships ). So though their water ran out and they were forced to land at shore. They found a stream and got some fresh water there. There came in the night some animals , but Crusoe scared them off with his gun. Once they landed for water and found a lion sleeping at the riverside. They killed hit and took its hide to lay on. Another time they found some natives, and then a Leopard came , and Robinson shot it. He gave them it and asked for the skin, they agreed, and he set of. Soon he was ear the cape Verde islands and found a Portuguese ship headed for Brazil. When he got on they spoke to him in 4 different languages which he did not know, but finally there was a Scotsman who hailed him. The captain was very nice and bought his boat and hides for a good deal of money. When they came to Brazil ,  The captain offered to start him in the plantation business, and then offered to have half his money from England turned into tools for the trade and have them brought here. Crusoe agreed, and he had a good start to his plantation business . In 4 years he made a lot of money, learned the Portuguese language and was well off. But he realized this was the middle class station and was what he ran away from. So when a group of plantation owners decided to go on a trip to Africa to get some slaves for their plantations , Robinson agreed. They set off but after a while there was a terrible storm that blew them where they knew not, and when they sighted land they should get in a boat and go there , they rowed towards the rock though and knew they were going to die. But then a giant wave crashed them under and Crusoe barely made it to the surface in time ( before he suffocated ) , and then was pushed under again, He swam ,and fought the stormy sea and tried to get to shore . Finally he made it and lay there exhausted, after a while he went and found a thorny tree which he slept in ( to be safe if the were predators on the land, though there actually turned out to be none ). When he woke up he saw that the ship was driven in the water nearby , and he swam to it. There were many things he could use and he gathered some of them, ( guns, powder , shot , food, clothes and sail canvas ) he went about and made a raft from the boards of the ship ( he also got some nails and tools ) to take his things to shore with. He found a creek and drove his laden raft down it and landed in a cove. Then he went up a hill ( armed, and with much labor ) and discovered he was on an island ( more precisely the island of Trinidad ). On top of thew hill he also found that the island was uninhabited by humans. He came down and worked the rest of the day to get his cargo of his raft and onto the shore ( many of the things were in chests ). He Barricaded himself and went to sleep. The next day he swam to the ship again, gathered useful things again , made a raft again and took the cargo to shore again. On shore he made a tent out of the sail canvas and poles or sticks. He blocked it with chests on the outside and went to sleep. He went to the ship and got more resources 10 more times, and on the last one a storm was starting. He went back to his tent and the storm blew all night. The next day when he woke up to find the ship gone, he was glad he had taken so much from it when he could. His place where the tent was not a good place for settlement ( because it did not have any fresh water near and it was on low ground , this being bad for defenses against the natives who may come to the island ), So he set out to find a good place. He found one, a raised up piece of flat land on the side of a hill with a slight hollow spot in the rock of the hill. He drew a half circle that connected to the wall of the sheer rock and set about making stakes and driving two rows of them on the half circle , and then filled up the space between them with cable ( from the ship ) and more stakes. He then made a ladder to let him get over his wall , Every time he went into his fortification he pulled the ladder into it with him so no one could come in after him. He brought in all his goods with a lot of work and then made a double tent ( one small one in a large one ).  He brought his food into the tent so the rain might not spoil it, after this he started making the hollow larger. Time passed in this work and he made a small cave behind his tent. One night there was a thunderstorm and he was worried for his powder , lest it should be hit be lightning and explode and burn. Without the powder he would not be able to hunt and defend himself very well, and also if it exploded he might have died. After this he made many small compartments and separated his powder into these and put them in many different places. Each day he went out with his gun and hunted, for he had found some wild goats, they were fast though and he had to attack them in a valley from above. Robinson Crusoe went on living on the island for 27 or so years, and ( since there was a bible there which he had taken from the ship and read it ) changed to a more hard working good man. He made many advancements on his island home, some are: another home inland , a herd of domestic goats ( he tamed some and then bred them ) , and a wheat field that gave him bread ( he made a process that required a lot of work to make bread ). He discovered that native cannibals sometimes came to the island to eat after a victory in war. At first he wanted to kill them for the savage acts , but then realized they probably did not know that their acts were wrong, so he did not try to kill them . Then a few years before he left , a party of natives came , and one of their prisoners ( for eating ) escaped, Crusoe saw this and helped the escaped prisoner by killing one of the savages that chased him ( he had only 2 chasers on him ) and knocking out the other . The escaped native thanked Robinson mightily and then ( after asking Crusoe for his cutlass, which Robinson gave him ) cut of the now semi-conscious cannibal that had chased him. The escaped native made signs that he would be Crusoe 's slave forever, and Robinson told him his name was now Friday. Crusoe inspired fear and awe in Friday by using his gun, and Friday helped Robinson a lot. He also made Friday more civilized and taught him the christian protestant faith. After some while there came a cannibal party with a white man prisoner with them, Crusoe and Friday attacked them ( killed or wounded most of them and only 3 or 4 got away ) with guns ( For Friday had learned to use them ) and saved the White man. They also found another prisoner who was Friday's father! Friday was overjoyed to see him , and took great care of him. The white man turned out to be a Spaniard, and he and Friday's father became helpers of Crusoe. Robinson learned that there were a group of Spaniards and Portuguese with Fridays people, who had been shipwrecked. Crusoe told the Spaniard and Friday's Father to go to them and ask them if they would come to the island.  Robinson hoped they might be able to make a ship with more hands. While they were gone, a ship came and landed on the island. Crusoe and Friday were in their fortification and saw it with a spy glass. They saw that it was an English ship and that the men who came out were English ( mostly ). There were 3 men that seemed prisoners of the rest. The other men left these three on the shore , and went to sleep in the forest. Robinson came and talked to them with Friday. It turned out that they were the captain and a couple of his trusted followers, who had been taken prisoner in a mutiny. They were going to be abandoned on this island while the mutinous crew went away. Crusoe and some others took the mutinous men on the island captive and after a not so short fight with more men on the ship, they took the ship. The captain promised to follow Robinson's orders,  the leaders of the mutinous gang were left on the island ( Crusoe taught them how to survive with the improvements he had made , and told them to be nice and live with the Spaniards and others who came ) , and Robinson, Friday and the rest went to England. He had been gone 35 years, and he was a stranger to everyone, except one or two close friend(s). He went to Portugal and back ( on his way back his party met some wolves ) because the captain of that ship which had long ago taken him in , was there. In Portugal he arranged that he would get some money from his plantation  with the captain. The book ends soon after he gets back to England.  It showed how a not so righteous man can become good after a long time in isolation and hard work.




Note : some things might be incorrect , but it should mostly be right.