The concept of Locke in the work of Robinson Crusoe. Analysis of the coverage of the problem of artistic space in works devoted to the novel by D. Defoe "Robinson Crusoe"

For Defoe, as the embodiment of the ideas of the early Enlightenment, the role of labor in the development of nature by man is inseparable from the spiritual improvement of the hero, from the knowledge of nature through reason. Focusing on J. Locke, the founder of English deism, Defoe shows how through experience, with the help of the work of his hands and mind, Robinson, a former Puritan mystic, comes to an integral deistic concept of the universe. The hero's confession showed that after this the conquest of nature by the intelligent Robinson became possible, which the author portrays not as the physical exploration of the island, but as the knowledge by reason of the laws of nature.

The most prosaic fact - making a table and chair or firing pottery - is perceived as a new heroic step for Robinson in the struggle to create human living conditions. Robinson's productive activity distinguishes him from the Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk, who gradually forgot all the skills of a civilized man and fell into a semi-savage state.

As a hero, Defoe chose the most ordinary man, who conquered life in the same masterful way as Defoe himself, like many others, also ordinary people of that time. Such a hero appeared in literature for the first time, and for the first time everyday work activity was described.

As a “natural” person, Robinson Crusoe did not “go wild” on a desert island, did not succumb to despair, but created completely normal conditions for his life.

At the very beginning of the novel, he is not a very likeable person, he is a slacker and a slacker. He shows his complete inability and unwillingness to engage in any normal human activity. He has only one wind in his head. And we see how later, mastering this living space, learning to wield different tools and perform different actions, he becomes different, because he finds both the meaning and the value of human life. This is the first plot that you should pay attention to - the real contact of a person with the objective world, how bread, clothing, housing, and so on are obtained. When he baked bread for the first time, and this happened many years after he settled on the island, he said that we had no idea how many different labor-intensive procedures needed to be performed in order to get an ordinary loaf of bread.

Robinson is a great organizer and host. He knows how to use chance and experience, knows how to calculate and foresee. Having taken up farming, he accurately calculates what kind of harvest he can get from the barley and rice seeds he has sown, when and what part of the harvest he can eat, put aside, and sow. He studies the soil and climatic conditions and finds out where he needs to sow during the rainy season and where during the dry season.

"The purely human pathos of conquering nature, - writes A. Elistratova, “in the first and most important part of Robinson Crusoe the pathos of commercial adventures replaces, making even the most prosaic details of Robinson’s “works and days” unusually fascinating, which capture the imagination, for this is the story of free, all-conquering labor.” .

Defoe gives Robinson his thoughts, putting educational views into his mouth. Robinson expresses ideas of religious tolerance, he is freedom-loving and humane, he hates wars, and condemns the cruelty of the extermination of natives living on lands captured by white colonialists. He is enthusiastic about his work.

In describing labor processes, the author of Robinson Crusoe shows, among other things, considerable ingenuity. For him, work is not a routine, but an exciting experiment in mastering the world. There is nothing incredible or far from reality in what his hero undertakes on the island. On the contrary, the author strives to portray the evolution of labor skills as consistently and even emotionally as possible, appealing to facts. In the novel we see that after two months of tireless work, when Robinson finally found clay, he dug it up, brought it home and began to work, but he only got two large, ugly clay vessels.

By the way, as researchers note, at first Defoe’s hero did not succeed only in those things, the manufacturing process of which the author himself knew well from his own experience and, therefore, could reliably describe all the “torments of creativity.” This fully applies to clay firing, since at the end of the 17th century. Defoe was a co-owner of a brick factory. It took Robinson almost a year of effort so that “instead of clumsy, rough products”, “neat things of the correct shape” came out from under his hands.

But the main thing in the presentation of work for Daniel Defoe is not even the result itself, but the emotional impression - that feeling of delight and satisfaction from creating with one’s own hands, from overcoming obstacles that the hero experiences: “But never, it seems, have I been so happy and proud of my wit “like the day I managed to make a pipe,” Robinson reports. He experiences the same feeling of delight and enjoyment of the “fruits of his labors” upon completion of the construction of the hut.

From the point of view of understanding the impact of work on the individual and, in turn, the impact of a person’s labor efforts on the surrounding reality, the first part of the novel “Robinson Crusoe” is the most interesting. In the first part of the novel, the hero alone explores the primordial world. Gradually, Robinson masters the art of sculpting and firing dishes, catching and taming goats, from primitive types of work he rises to the most complex, based on experience and knowledge of the laws of nature. But at the same time, the hero begins to rethink life values, educate his soul, and humble everyday worries and passions. Researchers of D. Defoe's work believe, for example, that Robinson's long process of mastering pottery symbolizes the process of the hero curbing his sinful inclinations and improving his own nature. And, if the hero’s initial spiritual state is hopelessness, then work, overcoming, reading the Bible and reflection turn him into an optimist, always able to find a reason to “thank Providence.”

Throughout the entire novel, D. Defoe ironically notes that his hero is characterized by pride and an exaggerated idea of his capabilities. This was most clearly manifested in the episode about the construction of a grandiose boat, when Robinson “amused himself with his idea, not giving himself the trouble to calculate whether he had the strength to cope with it.” But the same megalomania is found in the original intention of building a goat pen two miles in circumference; The raft built by Robinson on one of his trips to the ship turns out to be excessively large and overloaded; the cave overexpanded by him becomes accessible to predators and less safe; etc. Despite the irony present, the reader nevertheless understands that the author has great sympathy for a person who takes the trouble to do a lot and even complains about the constant lack of time.

This fact - at first glance absurd in the conditions of a desert island - in itself is, firstly, another proof of the “social nature of man”, and secondly, glorifies work as the most effective cure for despondency and despair.

In all the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, the author's educational experiment takes place, consisting of two stages - the education and testing of a natural person. In a narrower sense, it is an experiment in the upbringing and self-education of a natural person through work and a test of spiritual maturity and moral strength of the individual through work. Defoe depicted the complex process of formation and development of personality and the role of labor activity in it.

The whole life of the hero on the island is the process of returning a person, who, by the will of fate, was placed in natural conditions, in a social state. Thus, Defoe contrasts earlier concepts of social order with an educational program for the improvement of man and society. Thus, work in the work of Daniel Defoe is an element of self-education and self-improvement of the hero’s personality.

Defoe depicts the story of life on a desert island in such a way that it becomes obvious: the continuous process of learning about the world and tireless work is the natural state of man, allowing him to find true freedom and happiness, delivering “minutes of inexpressible inner joy.” Thus, Daniel Defoe, who was once preparing for a spiritual career and a man who is undoubtedly a sincere believer, and Defoe - the exponent of the most progressive views of his time - proves that the entire history of civilizations is nothing more than the education of man by human labor.

The concept of the primary role of labor in the process of improving man and society in Daniel Defoe's novel "Robinson Crusoe" reflected the most progressive, democratic ideas of the early Enlightenment. Taking advantage, like J. Locke in his work on government, of the theme of an island out of contact with society, Defoe, using the example of Robinson’s life, proves the enduring value of labor in social development and the creation of the material and spiritual basis of society. The majestic hymn to labor and creative activity of the mind, for the first time in the history of world literature, sounded from the pages of a work of art, became a sharp, uncompromising criticism of both the feudal past and the bourgeois present of England at the beginning of the 18th century. It is the work and creative activity of the mind that, according to Defoe’s deep conviction, is capable of radically changing the world. Thanks to labor, a kind of mini-civilization arises on a desert island, the creator of which is an intelligent “natural” person.

Defoe's hero became the living embodiment of the Enlightenment's ideas about contemporary man as a "natural" man, not historically arose, but given by nature itself.

Documentaryism and Documentaryism and the diary form of the novel by Defoe Robinson

Plan:
Introduction
1. Historical background
2 Problems of the theory of genre in literary criticism..
3. The history of the creation of the novel.
4. Philosophy of freedom. The concept of freedom in literature.
5. The desire for freedom or flight from it?
6. Test of Loneliness.
7. Victory over yourself.
Conclusion

G.N. Pospelov concludes that a genre is not a type of any separate genus, genre and generic properties lie in different planes of the content of works and works can only be divided into genera and genres “crosswise.” Pospelov’s genre typology has some fundamental points of contact with Bakhtin’s theory of the novel and novelized genres. Despite the different understandings of the novel, both concepts are methodologically similar in their recognition of the leading importance of the substantive beginning of genres and the desire to build a functional poetics of genre groups. The principle of cross-classification also brings them together: the lines of division into genre groups do not coincide with the generic differentiation of the work. This principle is recognized by scientists as the most promising.
The problem of genres belongs to the least developed area of literary criticism. In the history of studying this problem, two extremes can be traced. One is the limitation of the very concept of genres to formal features, considering their development as isolated, outside the living literary process. The other is the dissolution of the problem in the general movement of literature. Meanwhile, the most fruitful way is to study the uniqueness of genres as a manifestation of general, “historically determined patterns of literary evolution.” In this case, one should take into account such a contradictory feature of genres as their constant interaction and, at the same time, the tendency to preserve the specificity of each of them.
The complex process of interaction of genres within an artistic whole still remains one of the most interesting and promising for theoretical understanding. Traditionally, it comes down to the synthetic nature of the work, understood as the dominance of one genre principle, which acquires the function of genre formation. The system resists such genre monologue; genres combine and interact without being influenced by the dominant genre principle, without losing their genre essence.
From our point of view, it would be more correct to consider it from the perspective of a synthesis of genres, rather than the dominance of any one of them.
The form in which the paintings in Robinson Crusoe are presented is expressed through travel. Therefore, we can talk about the use of such a literary genre as travel. The travel genre is based on the description by the traveler (eyewitness) of reliable information about some little-known countries or lands in the form of notes, diaries, and essays. A special type of literary travel is a narrative about fictional, imaginary wanderings, which we deal with in Robinson Crusoe (Dafoe sometimes names geographical objects incorrectly). The formation and development of the travel genre is distinguished by a complex interaction of documentary, artistic and folklore forms, united by the image of the traveler (storyteller), which is already characteristic of ancient travel. The defining position of such a hero is that of an observer of someone else’s world, and “...the confrontation of “one’s” world, space with “alien” is a formative factor in the travel genre. All this is clearly presented in Robinson, which allows us to talk about the presence of this genre in the work.
From this form of storytelling (through travel), all other genre modifications follow. Defoe sought to evoke in his reader's imagination the folk psychology of his day.
The form of the narrative itself, and not just the content, speaks in favor of the genre of diary entries.
“Robinson” is an inter-genre formation that includes the genres of document, diary, autobiography and travel. The transitional nature of the era, new themes and plots required new genres, with the help of which the writer could more accurately and completely convey his thoughts to the public.

Regarding Defoe's novel, it is impossible to say definitely what genre his novel “Robinson Crusoe” can be classified into. Everything here is controversial. Everything is multifaceted. The genre of the hero’s autobiography, diary and document are intertwined here. It is enough to recall the history of writing the novel. The prototype of Robinson is considered to be the navigator Alexander Selkirk, who at the beginning of the 18th century with his crew fled from a ship on which riots began. History claims that he allegedly remained of his own free will on the island of Mas a Tierra, off the coast of Chile. Only four and a half years later it was discovered by a semi-pirate flotilla that came to the island for fresh water.
For the first time, the story of the mutiny on the ship, from which Selkirk, among many, escaped, was heard in a report written upon his return by one of the participants in the unsuccessful journey. Some time later, Captain Woods Rogers, on whose ship he sailed from Selkirk Island, wrote about this in his travel notes. The same story was described by Captain Cook, who sailed with Rogers. Compared to the initial report, the event that forced different people to take up the pen was overgrown with more and more new details. Moreover, each of them looked at the fate of the unfortunate navigator from different points of view. Finding himself in the crosshairs of publicist Richard Steele, Selkirk, who returned to the mainland, turned into a real hero who survived a unique ordeal. The result was an essay by the famous writer R. Style, recorded from the words of Alexander Selkirk himself.
But this fact, which became widely known, was brought to perfection by D. Defoe. He changed the name of the hero, extended his stay to 28 years, moved the action from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic, and moved the time of the event by fifty years. As a result of these seemingly simple actions, we have the greatest literary work, ageless, not covered with dust for hundreds of years. The novel still shines with new facets in the 21st century, it is read with enthusiasm by adults in translations or the original and by children in K. Chukovsky’s retellings.
The novel by the English writer Daniel Defoe /1660 * 1731/ “The Life, Extraordinary and Amazing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe...” is one of the most widely read works of world literature. Interest in him does not dry up both on the part of readers and on the part of researchers of the English novel of the Enlightenment, who highly appreciate the writer’s contribution to the development of the national traditions of the genre and all Western European fiction. Daniel Defoe was one of those enlightening authors who, with his work, laid the foundations for many types, genre varieties and forms of the novel of the 19th and 20th centuries.
There are at present only three other heroes in English literature who occupy the same place as Robinson in the minds and speeches of the common man in the street. Any coal delivery man, any cleaning lady will understand what is meant when they say about someone that he is “a real Romeo”, “the spitting image of Shylock”, “damn Robinson Crusoe” or “damned Sherlock Holmes”. Other heroes, such as Don Quixote, Bill Sikes, Mrs. Grundy, Micawber, Hamlet, Mrs. Hemp, and so on, are known to educated and semi-educated people, but these four are known to more than ninety percent of the population, millions who have never read a line from the works in which they appear. The reason for this is that each of them is a symbolic figure representing the eternal passion of human character. Romeo means love, Shylock means stinginess, Crusoe means love of adventure, Holmes means sport.
Dickens's opinion of Defoe is well known. He considered Defoe to be an “unemotional” writer, that is, unable to depict feelings and evoke them in the reader. Defoe's novels, according to Dickens, aroused only curiosity: what will happen next? A. Green, on the contrary, read Defoe’s novels. The father wanted his son to get an education and start working. But Sasha was not like other children, he was attracted to unknown, exotic countries, forests, the sea, which he learned about from the books of F. Cooper, E. Poe, D. Defoe, J. Verne. At sixteen, young Sasha Grinevsky leaves home to pursue his dream. Isn't it true, than Robinson? As a result, we got a magnificent morenaist writer, a storyteller who turned real life into a miracle. Of course, D. Defoe also deserves credit for this.
In fact, the sea is not just a backdrop for the actions of the romantic hero; It contributed to the development of will and strong character of a person. The image of the sea is found in the works of W. Scott “The Pirate”, D. Defoe “The Life and Amazing Adventures of the Sailor Robinson Crusoe”, D. Swift “Gulliver’s Travels.
The secret of the unprecedented success of the novel about the adventures of Robinson Crusoe lies, of course, in the choice of topic: the hero’s passion for travel is a striking sign of the times when there were still “blank spots” on the map. However, not only the theme, but also - and above all - the way it is revealed still attracts readers to this book. “Robinson Crusoe on his island - alone, deprived of help and all kinds of tools, providing himself, however, with food and self-preservation and even achieving some well-being - this is a subject ... that can be made entertaining in a thousand ways ...”, wrote French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his pedagogical treatise "Emile, or Education".
D. Defoe - poeticized the reality surrounding his hero on the island, Robinson Crusoe's attitude to everything that he experiences. Poetics is an element of the author’s literary and aesthetic views, characteristic of the first novelists of the Enlightenment. The connection between Defoe's work and the literary traditions and philosophical and ethical views of the Enlightenment is inextricable.
Daniel Defoe expanded the boundaries of aesthetic perception of reality for posterity, finding his own sphere of the strange and surprising, which largely predetermined the success of his work. “It’s amazing that almost no one has thought about how many small jobs need to be done to grow, preserve, collect, cook and bake an ordinary piece of bread,” reflects Robinson Crusoe.
What exactly was Robinson doing on a desert island? First of all, without a doubt, he made every effort to survive. But the author presents his necessary efforts as adventures associated with the most ordinary things: making furniture, firing pots, arranging housing, growing bread, taming goats. Thus, heavy rains, which did not stop for almost two weeks, force the hero to devote two to three hours every day to excavation work and expand his cave. The search for a secluded place for a new batch of goats results in the discovery of places of cannibal feasts. But the main thing is that the hero begins to rethink life values, educate his soul, and humble everyday worries and passions. Researchers of D. Defoe's work believe, for example, that Robinson's long process of mastering pottery symbolizes the process of the hero curbing his sinful inclinations and improving his own nature. And, if the hero’s initial spiritual state is hopelessness, then overcoming numerous difficulties, reading the Bible and thinking turn him into an optimist.
Partially rejecting the traditions of literary play, which in the writer’s time was an immutable law of literary prose, Defoe nevertheless suggests: even if the reader sees fiction as a game, then it should not be rejected if it is truthful and contains “good morals.”
Defoe, as the embodiment of the ideas of the early Enlightenment, depicts how Robinson, a former Puritan mystic, comes to an integral concept of the universe. The hero's confession showed that after this the conquest of nature by the intelligent Robinson became possible, which the author depicts not as the physical exploration of the island, but as the knowledge by reason of the laws of nature and existence. As a result, instead of chasing luck, which the young Robinson, prompted by the spirit of the times, wanted to do, the Robinson who finds himself on the Island of Despair achieves everything by strength of spirit and returns home as a businessman - an entrepreneur.
The evolution of Robinson Crusoe's consciousness, presented by Defoe, confirms the correctness of the basic enlightenment concepts of man: firstly, man, even under natural conditions, remains a “social animal”; secondly, loneliness is unnatural. The whole life of the hero on the island is the process of returning a person, who, by the will of fate, was placed in natural conditions, in a social state. Thus, Defoe contrasts earlier concepts of social order with an educational program for the improvement of man and society.
Throughout the entire novel, D. Defoe ironically notes that his hero is characterized by pride and an exaggerated idea of his capabilities. This was most clearly manifested in the episode about the construction of a grandiose boat, when Robinson “amused himself with his idea, not giving himself the trouble to calculate whether he had the strength to cope with it.” But the same megalomania is found in the original intention of building a goat pen two miles in circumference; The raft built by Robinson on one of his trips to the ship turns out to be excessively large and overloaded; the cave overexpanded by him becomes accessible to predators and less safe; etc. Despite the irony present, the reader nevertheless understands that the author has great sympathy for a person who takes the trouble to do a lot and even complains about the constant lack of time.
Thus, in all the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, the author’s educational experience takes place, consisting of two stages - the education and testing of Man. In a narrower sense, it is an experiment in the upbringing and self-education of a person, testing the spiritual maturity and moral strength of the individual. Defoe depicted the complex process of formation and development of personality.
The novel is based on the concept of the world and man, characteristic of the early stage of the Enlightenment. The worldview of a person of that time cannot be considered without the influence of religious and ethical principles on his consciousness, and the novel “The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe” is unconditional proof of this. Numerous researchers of Defoe's work not only find direct illusions with biblical texts in the text of the novel, but also draw an analogy between the main storyline of "The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" and some Old Testament stories.
The solution to the question of the origins of the preaching of work in this context is more than simple: “With hard work you will earn your bread until you return to the ground from which you were taken,” God said to Adam, expelling him from paradise. Hard work is one of the beatitudes of the Christian faith. Robinson has to realize all this.
Reflections and reading the Bible open Robinson Crusoe's eyes to the universe and allow him to come to a religious perception of life. From a certain moment on the island, he begins to perceive everything that happens to him as the Providence of God. It can be assumed that Robinson Crusoe improved his life, not only because he strived for comfort, but also because - and for Defoe the preacher this is apparently the most important - that “having learned the truth”, he stopped blindly striving for liberation from imprisonment, beginning to perceive with full responsibility everything that the Lord sent down. “... To a person who has comprehended the truth, deliverance from sin brings more happiness than deliverance from suffering. For deliverance... I no longer prayed, I didn’t even think about it: it began to seem like such a trifle to me...” - here the essence of the changes that occurred in the hero’s consciousness.
In this regard, the hero’s stay on the Island of Despair is compared to the desert through which the Old Testament Moses led his people for forty years and which became a symbol of liberation not so much physical as spiritual. Among all the types of activities carried out by Robinson on the island, Daniel Defoe assigns the most important role to spiritual work: “Religious duties and the reading of the Holy Scriptures were in the foreground,” says Robinson, “I invariably allocated a certain time to them three times a day. The second of the daily "My business was hunting, which took me about three hours every morning when there was no rain. The third task was sorting, drying and preparing killed or caught game..."
In endless spiritual and physical labors, Robinson gets rid of the main vices of a civilized society: greed, laziness, gluttony, hypocrisy. Defoe portrays the story of life on a desert island in such a way that it becomes obvious: the continuous process of learning about the world and tireless work is the natural state of a person, allowing him to find true freedom and happiness, delivering “minutes of inexpressible inner joy.”
Daniel Defoe's novel "Robinson Crusoe" reflected the most progressive, democratic ideas of the early Enlightenment. Using the theme of an island out of contact with society, Defoe, using the example of Robinson’s life, proves the enduring value of internal freedom in social development and the creation of the material and spiritual basis of society. The novel became a sharp, uncompromising critique of both the feudal past and the bourgeois present of England at the beginning of the 18th century.
Philosophy of freedom. The concept of freedom in literature.
D. Defoe's novel "Robinson Crusoe" is rightfully considered the first classic English novel. The image of a man who, by the will of fate, finds himself on a desert island, depicted by Defoe, sometimes evokes directly opposite associations in different people. Many are plunged into panic by the possibility of being in the place of Defoe's hero. Others, on the contrary, in their dreams wish to be on a desert island. Lovers are especially guilty of this. But what is it? The desire for freedom or flight from it? And what is the subtext of the writer himself? To this day, researchers of his work have not come to a final conclusion. And will they come?
There is a different psychology behind different texts. The reader has the right to his own interpretation of the meaning of a literary text. This interpretation depends not only on the text, but also on the psychological characteristics of the reader himself. The reader interprets texts created on the basis of psychological structures close to him as an individual as adequately as possible.
The problem of freedom is one of the important and complex problems; it has worried many thinkers throughout the centuries-old history of mankind. We can say that this is a global human problem, a kind of riddle that many generations of people have been trying to solve from century to century. The very concept of freedom sometimes contains the most unexpected content; this concept is very multifaceted, capacious, historically changeable and contradictory.
Evidence of the semantic “mobility” and “non-specificity” of the concept is the fact that it arises in different oppositions. In philosophy, “freedom”, as a rule, is opposed to “necessity”, in ethics – to “responsibility”, in politics – to “order”. And the meaningful interpretation of the word itself contains various shades: it can be associated with complete self-will, it can be identified with a conscious decision, and with the subtlest motivation of human actions, and with conscious necessity.
In each era, the problem of freedom is posed and solved differently, often in opposite senses, depending on the nature of social relations, on the level of development of the productive forces, on needs and historical tasks. The philosophy of human freedom has been the subject of research by various directions: Kant and Hegel, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, Sartre and Jaspers, Berdyaev and Solovyov
Schopenhauer was right in pointing out that for modern philosophy, as well as for the previous tradition, freedom is the main problem. Schopenhauer presents the problem of the concept of freedom as negative, i.e. It is possible to identify the content of FREEDOM as a concept only by pointing out certain obstacles that prevent a person from realizing himself. That is, freedom is spoken of as overcoming difficulties: the obstacle disappeared - freedom was born. It always arises as a denial of something. It is impossible to define freedom through oneself, so you need to point out completely different, extraneous factors, and through them go straight to the concept of FREEDOM. ON THE. Berdyaev, in contrast to the German philosopher, emphasizes that freedom is positive and meaningful: “Freedom is not the kingdom of arbitrariness and chance”
Freedom is one of the indisputable universal values. However, even the most radical minds of the past, who spoke in defense of this shrine, believed that freedom is not absolute. The individual has strong instincts of self-will, selfishness, and destructiveness. Freedom is good as long as a person moderates his impulses. Human freedom has its contradictions. In practical activities, some people often, overestimating their strengths and capabilities, set themselves HIGH (Beckett) goals. When a person, expecting to accomplish many things, relies only on himself, he concentrates attention on himself and neglects dependence on God; he breaks his connection with God and inevitably falls into sin. Human freedom can increase any desire for both good and evil, and this unique freedom becomes the source of both destructive and creative forces of the individual.
In the case of Robinson, it can be considered that in the extreme conditions of the island his creative powers were activated. Initially calling the island the island of Despair, its spirit still prevailed over the real state of affairs and, in order to survive, the hero calls it the island of Hope. Apparently, spiritual food - the Bible, which he, along with the most necessary things, grabbed from the ship, played an important role in this spiritual transformation. Moreover, as the author testifies, in triplicate. Not a small fact in order to understand the inner world of the hero. Without Faith, without Hope, he would not have survived. But in those conditions, Robinson had to learn to live again. He did not lose heart, did not break, the hardest inner work was happening in his soul. Thanks to this, he survived. Particularly moving is the fact that he began to record the events of his life. Why did I create two columns: Evil and Good? As one wise man said (unfortunately, I didn’t remember his name), and this phrase was engraved in my memory almost from school, “Life is not as it is, but as we imagine it.” And Robinson’s salvation was that he knew how to find positive moments in negative situations. Moments of his physical work on the island sometimes take up entire chapters, and oddly enough, it is interesting to read about it, be it firing a clay pot, growing rice and barley, or building a ship. It’s not for nothing that they say that “a person never gets tired of looking at three things: fire, water and how someone works.” In general, re-reading the novel, I once again enjoyed it. But this is a lyrical digression; let’s return to a more serious topic.
In Soviet times, special emphasis was placed on the supposed glorification of labor in the novel. Nothing special! The man on the island quite naturally worked to survive! In fact, before all the ups and downs, he was a normal young slacker, which he himself admitted without embarrassment: “... I had money in my wallet, I was wearing a decent dress, and I usually appeared on the ship in the guise of a gentleman, so I didn’t do anything there and didn’t learn anything.” True, his subsequent life made him regret it, because he still had to learn everything, but in a tougher form. Alone and without teachers. Life forced me! Where can you get away from her...
Does a person desire freedom? Is it so? Nietzsche and Kierkegaard drew attention to the fact that many people are simply not capable of personal action. They prefer to be guided by standards. Man's reluctance to follow freedom is undoubtedly one of the most amazing philosophical discoveries. It turns out that freedom is the lot of the few. And here is the paradox: a person agrees to voluntary enslavement. Even before Nietzsche, Schopenhauer formulated in his published work the thesis that man does not have a perfect and established nature. It's not finished yet. Therefore, he is equally free and unfree. We often find ourselves slaves to other people's opinions and moods. Robinson did not escape this either. He had the idea of returning to his parents' house after the first failures. But, “I imagined how the neighbors would laugh at me and how ashamed I would be to look not only at my father and mother, but also at all our friends.” And one more important phrase put into Robinson’s mouth: “... people are not ashamed of sin, but are ashamed of repentance, are not ashamed of actions for which they should rightly be called mad, but are ashamed to come to their senses and live a respectable and reasonable life.” Later, existentialists will pay attention to this formal dependence of man on sociality. Be that as it may, Goethe wrote: “Freedom is a strange thing. Everyone can easily find it if only he knows how to limit himself and find himself.
Is it possible to talk about a conscious choice on the part of the individual if supporters of psychoanalysis prove that human behavior is “programmed” by childhood impressions, suppressed desires. It turns out that any action, the most secret or completely spontaneous, can be predicted in advance and its inevitability can be proven.
American philosopher Erich Fromm identified and described a special phenomenon of human consciousness and behavior - flight from freedom. This is the name of his book, which was published in 1941. The main idea of the book is that freedom, although it brought independence to man and gave meaning to his existence, but at the same time isolated him, awakened in him a feeling of powerlessness and anxiety. The consequence of such isolation was LONELINESS. The unbearable moral loneliness of a person and the attempt to avoid it are described by Balzac in “The Sorrows of the Inventor” (III part of the novel “Morning Illusions”): “So remember, imprint in your so receptive brain: a person is afraid of loneliness... If an individual has achieved some freedom in the world , he begins to understand that freedom has turned into boundless loneliness. Having eliminated all forms of dependence, the individual is ultimately left with his individual self. In Brazil, Robinson began to think more and more often about loneliness in the ocean of people - “I used to constantly repeat that I lived as if on a desert island, and complained that there was not a single human soul around.” Although, it would seem, he only recently escaped from slavery. But, bodily slavery, and having received freedom, he acutely feels Loneliness. A few lines below he will say, “How rightly fate punished me when, subsequently, it really threw me onto a desert island, and how useful it would be for each of us, comparing our present situation with another, even worse one, to remember that Providence in can make an exchange at any moment and show us through experience how happy we were before! Yes, I repeat, fate punished me according to what I deserved when it doomed me to that truly lonely life on a joyless island...” In Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov” there is an ideal phrase to describe this state - “A person is free - this means he is lonely.”
The philosophy of the 20th century has shown that freedom can become a burden that is unbearable for a person, something that he tries to get rid of.
Let's consider the concept of “a person migrating” as a sign of a search for change. The desire for freedom or “escape” from it. The phenomenon that makes up the concept of “migration” is the experience of distinguishing between dynamic and static, settled and migratory. Western people are more sedentary people, they value their present, they are afraid of infinity, chaos, and therefore they are afraid of freedom. Therefore, Robinson was not understood in his home environment. For an Eastern person, the theme of movement is not typical at all. The path for him is a circle, the connected fingers of the Buddha, i.e. isolation. There is nowhere to go when everything is in you. Therefore, Japanese culture is a culture of inner words, thoughts, and not actions.
The human picture of the world in its origins reveals similarities with a geographical map. The purpose of the map is to provide orientation in space. The geographical map itself is a secondary concept, since the need and problematic nature of orientation arises only in a changing world. A settled existence does not need a map. It only requires travel. But who managed to draw a map before traveling into the unknown? A person “walks” many, many distances to come or go, does a person strive for freedom, to feel, desire, or directly possess?
But in general, the map of the path is a tabula rasa: “you will go there, you don’t know where...” Such instructions provide not so much geographical as emotional orientation.
The traveler has to walk almost blindfolded, and at best he is led by a magic ball or thread of Ariadne. The hero's readiness for freedom is confirmed in this way. Will he dare to travel, understand the risk, with an abstract goal as a guide? The travel map turned out to be not so much a prerequisite for the journey as its consequence. She expanded the world coming from the center - home. If the traveler had a detailed map of the area, then the element of travel would be reduced to nothing. Freedom of geography would “dumb down” the PATH, making it simply a matter of moving from one place to another. The pleasure of the preceding is determined by geographical lack of freedom, but by the desire for internal freedom. The search for that untested “satori”. Because of this, understanding the path is a spatial movement, like an abstraction. Laying roads from one space to another, changing human life by changing spaces. The landscape of the human world changes under the influence of locality. Philosophers of the 19th century divided heroes into two socio-psychological types: “wanderers” and “homebodies”
They are good and sweet because they are protected from the external aggression of the world not by the shell of their own character, but by the shell of the objective world created by them. This classification is created through the influence of the city ON CONSCIOUSNESS. The city as a type of consciousness is a long-standing topic. There is no need to say that each city has its own face. It is also known that each city has its own special spirit. Perhaps it is this spirit that gives birth to people, history, and relationships in the image and likeness of the city's Face.
Conclusion: creativity is the only form of moral insurance and freedom in exile. The structural dimension of the path consists of establishing tempo and rhythm: ascent, descent, frequency of stops. Thus, it gives the right to consider on the scale of movement: departure, search for a road, return, wandering, wandering. Time and distance are the coordinates of the path with knowledge, moral purification, enrichment. Overcoming the path is the most common form in modern computer games. The symbol of the road and path is the oldest symbol of perfection /characterized by the male phallic image of an arrow/.
Many philosophers have wondered what preceded the journey. Only when a person felt crowded among his own kind, and he felt like a stranger, an outcast, did he leave/i.e. the outcome is always justified/. Moreover, a migrating person is a person who is superior in strength to his fellow tribesmen, the most fit. The path for him is additional experience, the search for greater freedom. Not everyone would have been able to escape in Robinson's place. It turned out to be precisely the selected grain that had strong roots to hold on to life. For Hope, after all. He, as it were, creates, practices with his migration experience, connects worlds and spaces, without being captive of any of them.
The locality expands the taboos imposed by society, the boundaries of the locality separate the outer space from the internal, the locality serves as the basis for the narrative of “us and others.” Home and hearth are feminine symbols. Wandering – male... Travel lengthens space and slows down time. Only the difficulties of travel can lengthen the time.
The house provides the body with a form suitable for survival. The interior plays the role of a shell, a shell, a snail's house, to which the body grows, otherwise the hostile environment would simply destroy it. The geography of the world itself suggests itself as a prototype and analogue of the structure of the text. Geography arises as a consequence of travel and its subsequent interpretation. The text is an experience of migration.
Defoe gives his hero the opportunity to expand his living space and, along the “steps” of ellipses, leads him beyond the text to another level of EXISTENCE / into metatextual life/. Great literary humanism created a hero who was initially free to move. The horizons of “another life” beckon him to travel. Neither his father's prohibitions nor his mother's pleas can stop him. As Robinson’s father said, “They leave their homeland in pursuit of adventure, he said, either by those who have nothing to lose, or by ambitious people eager to achieve even more.” But he dreamed of sea voyages and did not want to hear about anything else. After all, only by making the Great Journey is a person able to master the world, and therefore become free.
Coming from home is a distinctive feature of human nature. Heroes go either on long journeys or very long ones. Even without a hint from the fairy-tale Alice, you can guess that if you walk somewhere for a long time, you will definitely end up somewhere. Only in fairy tales there is an alternative choice. Initially, your route is conditioned and natural. Despite the initial irreversibility of your path, no matter where you go, you will still arrive where you should.
As you know, things can tell a lot about their owner. They can take it and prove that the “master” is not free, he is drawn to the past and is connected to his past by chains of things. The symbol of freedom is a lonely traveling man. But traveling light. Seeking to equalize the freedom of life with the freedom of death: when Alexander the Great was dying, he asked for two holes to be made in the lid of the coffin for his hands to show the world that he had not taken anything.
Robinson's Bible is an exponent of an emotional attitude towards the world. The author acts at the level of rethinking: thing-person /Gogolian tradition/, thing-symbol /symbolism/, person-symbol /tradition of postmodernism.
Travel acts as a way to study the universe and the soul of the hero. Having received freedom of movement from the author, after the disasters that befell him (a terrible storm, illness, slavery) and finding himself free, the hero dreams of static life. Robinson increasingly recalls his father’s words that he would not be happy without his parents’ blessing. And the hero himself is inclined to conclude that in his parents’ home he could do the same things that he had to do in a foreign land. The initial ardor with which he set off on his first sea voyage has definitely cooled down. Travel is not only a way of moving the body, but also a flight of the soul: that is, travel is an excuse to talk about a person, to recognize his essence, travel is a test of survival and adaptability to the World.
So, a person’s lack of freedom is determined by the degree of his attachment to the objective world, to a specific time and space. And this lack of freedom does not contradict the desires of the hero. After all, man is a social creature. And there is no escape from this, no matter what islands you have to escape to. You will still return to people. Whether this is good or bad is not for us to decide.

List of used literature:
1. Daniel Defoe “Robinson Crusoe”. – Minsk: Publishing house “Mastatskaya Literature”, 1987.
2. Papsuev V.V. Daniel Defoe - novelist. On the problem of the genesis of the modern novel in English literature of the eighteenth century. - M., 1983.
3. Bely A. Symbolism as a worldview. – M.: Publishing house “Respublika”, 1994. – 528 p.
4. History of modern foreign philosophy. – St. Petersburg: Publishing House “Lan”, 1997. 480 p.
5. History of philosophy in brief. – M.: Publishing house “Mysl”, 1997. – 590 p.
6. Camus A. Creativity and freedom. – M.: Publishing house “Raduga”, 1990. – 602 p.
7. Kasavin I.T. “Migrating man”: Ontology of path and terrain // Questions of Philosophy. – 1997. - No. 7. – P.74-84.
8 . New history of the countries of Europe and America. First period.//Ed. E.E. Yurovskaya and I.M. Krivoguz. – M., 1997
9. Pospelov G.N. Typology of literary types and genres. \\ Vestnik Mosk. Univ. – Series 9. Philology. – 1978. - No. 4.

One of the main themes raised in the novel is the theme of labor and “natural man.” A “natural” person, according to the author of the novel, is a hard worker and a creator.

Daniel Defoe reflected an adequate perception of reality in the novel and conveyed all the amazing moments with high accuracy. “It’s amazing that almost no one has thought about how many small jobs need to be done to grow, preserve, collect, cook and bake an ordinary piece of bread,” reflects Robinson Crusoe.

It is clear that the totality of all these “small jobs” is labor, in this case presented, first of all, as a forced necessity for survival on a desert island. But, despite the author’s direct indications that “finding himself in the most primitive conditions of life,” Robinson Crusoe “fell into despair” every day, there is no impression of hopelessness and hopelessness in this situation. In order to somehow transform the hero’s presence on the island, the author creates a whole system of artistic and visual means that elevate the labor process itself from the physical level to the spiritual.

First of all, Robinson made every effort to survive. But the author presents his necessary efforts as adventures - adventures associated with the most ordinary things: making furniture, firing pots, arranging housing, growing bread, taming goats. Thus, heavy rains, which did not stop for almost two weeks, force the hero to devote two to three hours every day to excavation work and expand his cave. The search for a secluded place for a new batch of goats results in the discovery of places of cannibal feasts.

In describing everyday activities, the author of Robinson Crusoe shows, among other things, some ingenuity. For him, work is not a burden, but an addictive experiment in mastering the world. There is nothing unrealistic about what his hero does on the island, how he tries to survive and what he does for this. On the contrary, the author strives to portray the evolution of labor skills as consistently and even emotionally as possible:

"...after two months of tireless work, when I finally found clay, dug it up, brought it home and began to work, I only got two large ugly clay vessels..."

According to researchers, Robinson Crusoe did not succeed at first only in those things, the manufacturing process of which the author himself knew well from his own experience and, therefore, could reliably describe all the processes to the smallest detail, which speaks of Defoe’s broad outlook and awareness in various fields of activity. This fully applies to clay firing, since at the end of the 17th century. Defoe was a co-owner of a brick factory. It took Robinson almost a year of effort so that “instead of clumsy, rough products”, “neat things of the correct shape” came out from under his hands.

But the main thing in the presentation of work for Daniel Dafoe is not even the result itself, but the emotional impression - that feeling of delight and satisfaction from creating with one’s own hands, from overcoming obstacles that the hero experiences: “But never, it seems, have I been so happy and proud of my wit , like the day I managed to make a pipe,” Robinson reports. He experiences the same feeling of delight and enjoyment of the “fruits of his labors” upon completion of the construction of the hut.

As you can see, it is ingenuity that underlies Defoe’s transmission of the characteristics of labor.

Labor in the novel "Robinson Crusoe" as a factor in the education and testing of a natural person.

According to the well-known philosophical concept of labor, it was labor that created natural man, separating him from the animal world. Man differs from animals in that they can only adapt to nature, while man adjusts it to suit himself. The purpose of the experiment conducted by D. Defoe is to determine the moral potential of a natural person, the creative capabilities of his hands and mind, and the reality of improving society. The experiment implied an analytical study of the natural (animal) in a person and the social (public), acquired in the process of interaction with other people. Defoe distinguishes two stages of the experiment - education and testing of a person, as a factor of influence and motivation to work.

If we consider the impact of labor on the individual and the impact of the labor of a natural person on the surrounding reality, then it is necessary to turn to the first part of the novel "Robinson Crusoe", in which the hero alone mastered the primordial world. He gradually mastered the art of sculpting and firing dishes, catching and taming goats; he moved from primitive types of work to complex ones, based on experience and knowledge of the laws of nature.

But at the same time, the hero began to rethink life values, educate his soul, and tire out his emotions. Researchers of D. Defoe's creativity believe that “Robinson’s long process of mastering pottery symbolizes the process of the hero curbing his sinful inclinations and improving his own nature.”

The evolution of the consciousness of the natural man Robinson Crusoe, presented by Defoe, confirms the correctness of the basic enlightenment concepts of the natural man: firstly, man, even in natural conditions, remains a “social animal”; secondly, loneliness is unnatural. The whole life of the hero on the island is the process of returning a person, who, by the will of fate, was placed in natural conditions, in a social state. Thus, Defoe contrasts earlier concepts of social order with an educational program for the improvement of man and society.

Thus, work in the work of Daniel Defoe is an element of self-education and self-improvement of the hero’s personality.

"...It was useless to sit idly by and dream of something that could not be obtained."

However, the process of labor itself often helps to trace the hero’s level of self-esteem. Throughout the entire novel, D. Defoe ironically notes that his hero is characterized by pride and an exaggerated idea of his capabilities. This was most clearly manifested in the episode about the construction of a grandiose boat, when Robinson “amused himself with his idea, not giving himself the trouble to calculate whether he had the strength to cope with it.”

But the same megalomania is found in the original intention of building a goat pen two miles in circumference; The raft built by Robinson on one of his trips to the ship turns out to be excessively large and overloaded; the cave overexpanded by him becomes accessible to predators and less safe; etc..

Despite the irony present, the reader nevertheless understands that the author has great sympathy for the natural person who takes the trouble to do a lot and even complains about the constant lack of time. This fact - at first glance absurd in the conditions of a desert island - in itself is, firstly, another proof of the “social nature of man”, and secondly, glorifies work as the most effective cure for despondency and despair.

Thus, in all the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, the author’s educational experiment is noticeable, consisting of two stages - the education and testing of a natural Man. In other words, this is an experiment in the education and self-education of a natural person through labor and a test of spiritual maturity and moral strength of the individual, again through work. Defoe depicted the complex process of formation and development of personality and the role of labor activity in it.

Connection with religion in the novel by D. Defoe

The novel “Robinson Crusoe” is based on the concept of the world and man characteristic of the early stage of the Enlightenment. The worldview of a natural person of that time cannot be considered without the influence of religious and ethical principles on his consciousness, and the novel “The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe” is proof of this.

Numerous researchers of Defoe's work not only do they find direct illusions with biblical texts in the text of the novel, but also draw an analogy between the main storyline of “The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe” and some Old Testament stories.

Reflections and reading the Bible open Robinson Crusoe's eyes to the universe and allow him to come to a religious perception of life. From a certain moment on the island, he begins to perceive everything that happens to him as the Providence of God. And here the author reveals to us another hypostasis of work - spiritual improvement: “... as soon as health and strength returned to me,” the hero reports, “I began to work energetically to make up for what I lacked, and tried to make my life as could be more correct."

In the light of these arguments, it can be assumed that Robinson Crusoe worked hard on the island, improving his life, not only because he strived for comfort, but also because “having learned the truth,” he stopped blindly striving for liberation from imprisonment, starting with all take responsibility for everything that happened to him. “... To a person who has comprehended the truth, deliverance from sin brings more happiness than deliverance from suffering. For deliverance... I no longer prayed, I didn’t even think about it: it began to seem like such a trifle to me...” - here the essence of the changes that occurred in the hero’s consciousness.

It is necessary to pay attention to the fact that among all the types of activities performed by Robinson on the island, Daniel Defoe assigns the most important role to spiritual work: “Religious duties and the reading of the Holy Scriptures were in the foreground, - Robinson says, - I invariably devoted a certain time to them three times a day. My second daily task was hunting, which took me about three hours every morning when it wasn’t raining. The third task was sorting, drying and preparing killed or caught game..."

So - in endless spiritual and physical labors - Robinson gets rid of the main vices of a civilized society: greed, laziness, hypocrisy.

Thus, the story of Robinson's life on a desert island is a hymn to the creative work of man, his courage, will, and ingenuity.

"Robinson Crusoe" was often quoted by Marx and Engels in their studies of the economics of capitalist society.

Conclusion

According to Marx, Defoe’s hero became the living embodiment of the Enlightenment’s ideas about contemporary man as a “natural” man, “not historically arose, but given by nature itself.”

Using the example of Robinson's life, Defoe proves the special value of labor in the development of society and the creation of its material and spiritual base. Worship of work and creative activity, for the first time in the history of world literature, found itself in a work of art, became a sharp, uncompromising criticism of both the feudal past and the bourgeois present of England at the beginning of the 18th century. It is the work and creative activity of the mind that can radically change the world. Thanks to labor, a kind of “civilization” arises on a desert island, the creator of which is a reasonable and religious person,

The purpose of the novel is to change or at least correct a person. Robinson's confession told how, despite everything, a man did not betray himself and remained himself. Instead of chasing luck, which the young Robinson did, driven by the adventurous spirit of the times, he achieved everything through hard work. But the work majestically depicted by Defoe, like all life on the island, is, in essence, a transitional stage in Robinson’s fate. Robinson fled home for the sake of a bold enterprise, and he returned to his native shores thirty years later as a merchant-entrepreneur.

We can say that Robinson remained who he was, the son of a merchant, the brother of a mercenary officer, a sailor from York, born in the early 30s of the 17th century, in the era of the first formidable signs of the coming bourgeois revolution. And all the trials that befell him did not erase a single birthmark in his past.

Bibliography

1. Daniel Defoe. Robinson Crusoe. - M., 1998.

2. Papsuev V.V. Daniel Defoe - novelist. On the problem of the genesis of the modern novel in English literature of the eighteenth century. - M., 1983.

3. 4. Shevel A.V. Lexical and structural-compositional features of the text of an English novel of the early 18th century. /Based on materials from the works of D. Defoe./ - Lvov, 1987.

4. Shevel A.V. Structural and compositional features of D. Defoe's novels. - Lvov, 1985.

5. Urnov D.M. Defoe. - M., 1978.

The Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe was Defoe's most important contribution to literature. Understanding his contemporaries very well, Defoe knew how great and natural their interest in travel was. England, which was quickly turning into a bourgeois state, pursued a colonial policy, capturing and developing new territories. Trade ships were equipped for all countries of the world. On the seas and oceans, merchants behaved like pirates, plundered foreign ships with impunity, and became masters of untold riches. News often came that new lands had been discovered in one or another part of the world. All this fired the imagination, promised the brave extraordinary luck and unexpected enrichment, and gave rise to a passion for travel. People read publications of travel diaries and notes from travelers. Literature in which fictional characters acted no longer attracted readers: they wanted to know the truth about life, real and unvarnished, to know it from living people, not made up by writers.

Defoe presented his novel as the original notes of a “sailor from York”, and himself as just their modest publisher. Fiction was accepted as truth, and this happened all the more easily because Defoe’s contemporaries, and himself, happened to see people who spent several years on uninhabited islands. One such person was Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor. For disobedience to the ship's captain, according to the custom of that time, he was landed on the uninhabited island of Juan Fernandez in the Pacific Ocean. The case with Selkirk was described in one of the journals and in the notes of the captain who, more than four years later, found Selkirk and brought him on his ship to England. Selkirk became wild and almost forgot his native language.

Selkirk's story undoubtedly influenced the conception of Robinson Crusoe. To Robinson's island, which Defoe placed near the West Indies, near the mouth of the Orinoco River, the writer even transferred part of the flora and fauna that was on the island of Juan Fernandez and could not exist at all where Robinson lived. No one could catch Defoe making a mistake - this part of the land was still little explored.

Even when readers learned that “The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe” was the fruit of the writer’s creative imagination, their interest in the novel did not fade. And now we are excitedly following Robinson's life. Here he is, a young man, drawn to the sea, and no trials or obstacles can cure him of this passion. Here he is captured by pirates as a slave, and a few years later he runs away with the boy Xuri. Here Robinson is the owner of a Brazilian plantation. How the desire to acquire wealth grows stronger about him! Here is a new terrible test in the midst of success - a storm and shipwreck; the joy of salvation and the horror that replaced it of loneliness on a desert island. How simply and yet fascinatingly everything is told. And how simple details and details create a picture full of drama! Let us recall, for example, such a case. Robinson, having escaped, looks for his companions and finds three hats, one cap and two unpaired shoes. A simple listing of things washed ashore eloquently speaks of human tragedy, of the fact that the people who owned the “unpaired shoes” are no longer in the world.

The main content of the novel is Robinson's life on a desert island. The main theme of the novel is the struggle between man and nature. But it takes place in such an extraordinary environment that every most prosaic fact - making a table and chair or firing pottery - is perceived as a new heroic step by Robinson in the struggle to create human living conditions. Robinson's productive activity distinguishes him from the Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk, who gradually forgot all the skills of a civilized man and fell into a semi-savage state.

That is why the first readers of the book believed in Robinson so much. Robinson's whole life on the island proves how much an ordinary person can do, how limitless his possibilities are.

"Robinson Crusoe" is a book for all ages. Young readers are captivated by the hero's story. Adults, moreover, become interested in all the philosophical and economic issues that are raised about it.

"Robinson Crusoe" was often quoted by Marx and Engels in their studies of the economics of capitalist society.

The classics of Marxism saw that Robinson himself and his activities not only have universal significance, but also contain typically bourgeois features. Robinson, says Engels, is a “real bourgeois,” a typical English merchant and businessman of the 18th century. Engels notes that, finding himself on a desert island, he “immediately, like a true Englishman, begins to keep records of himself.” He perfectly knows the price of all things, knows how to make a profit from everything, dreams of getting rich, and subordinates his feelings to considerations of profit. Finding himself on the island, he realizes that he is its owner. With all his humanity and respect for the human dignity of savages, he looks at Friday as his slave, and slavery seems natural and necessary to him. Feeling like an owner, Robinson and the people who subsequently ended up on his island behave like masters of the situation and demand that they obey their will. At the same time, he does not really believe the oaths of the repentant rebels from the ship and achieves their obedience, arousing in them the fear of the gallows that awaits them in their homeland.

Like a true bourgeois, Robinson firmly adheres to the Puritan religion. The debate between Robinson and Friday about religion is interesting, in which the “natural man” Friday easily refutes the theological arguments of Robinson, who undertook to convert him to Christianity, and questions the existence of the devil. Thus Defoe criticizes one of the main doctrines of Puritanism about the existence of evil.

All these traits of a merchant, a planter, a businessman and a Puritan give us an idea of the type of English bourgeois who was Defoe's contemporary. Before us is a restored historical picture of the activities of the young English bourgeoisie of the 18th century.

But Robinson is a dual image. In addition to the traits of a bourgeois and a hoarder, he has remarkable human qualities. He is courageous. He conquers fear, so understandable in his position, calling on reason and will to help. Reason helps him understand that everything that seems to him like a miracle or an act of God’s will is actually a natural phenomenon. This was the case when he saw grain growing in the place where he had poured out the grain. Fate was merciful to Robinson and allowed him to take advantage of the achievements of civilization on a desert island: from the ship he brought tools, household equipment and food supplies. But the far-sighted Robinson wants to provide for himself in his old age, because he is afraid that he will live his whole life alone. He has to master the experience of a hunter, trapper, shepherd, farmer, builder, artisan, and he masters the skills of all these professions with amazing energy, showing a truly creative attitude to work. Kornilova E. Daniel Defoe and his novel “The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe” // Defoe D. The life and amazing adventures of Robinson Crusoe, a sailor from York, who lived twenty-eight years all alone on an uninhabited island off the coast of America, near the mouth of the Orinoco River, where he was thrown out of a shipwreck, during which the entire crew of the ship except him died; with an account of his unexpected release by the pirates; written by himself. - M.: Metallurgy, 1982. - P.319.

Thus, as a “natural” person, Robinson Crusoe did not “go wild” on a desert island, did not succumb to despair, but created completely normal conditions for his life.

(See analysis of the work in the notebook)

The 18th century brings a new worldview to European literature. Literature is entering the era of enlightenment, when the ideology of feudalism fades into the background, and the cult of universal reason becomes the main ideological basis of the enlighteners.

Despite the triumph of the new principle of worldview and worldview, there were individuals who represented them with different shades. Some argued that a person is directly shaped by his environment, but progress is certainly driven by the mind. This part of the educators believed that opinion rules the world, and therefore people need to instill an understanding of certain truths and enlighten them. Thus, enlightenment was considered the engine of historical progress.

Others adhered to the concept of natural man and contrasted “historical man,” infected with the vices and prejudices of civilization, with “natural man,” endowed with virtuous natural qualities.

Thus, the Enlightenment of the 18th century was not the exponent of a single idea. Here and there polemics arose between representatives of different points of view. Our interest is in the polemic between D. Defoe and J. Swift.

D. Defoe at the beginning of his novel “The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe” shows us a hero in the world of civilization. Moreover, the hero does not want to accept the conventions of society, he refuses a career as a lawyer and responds to his father’s arguments (about his possible problem-free life as a citizen with average income) with a desire to travel. His desire for the natural element - the sea - comes true. He, seduced by the opportunity to travel for free on a ship, sets off to sea. The sea is a natural element. And, for the first time, finding himself against a “natural” background, Robinson is not able to resist it. HE, as a man of civilization, cannot delve into the struggle of sailors with the elements for his own life, and the elements, as a natural principle, do not tolerate the “civilized” Robinson. This is confirmed by the second storm he encountered. Ingratitude to parents, frivolity, and selfishness are not compatible with the natural state that Robinson strived for when he left them at home.

As a result of misadventures, the hero finds himself completely cut off from civilization on a desert island (except for the things he brought from the sunken ship as its elements). Here Defoe, relying on the concept of natural man, pursues the goal of showing man in his natural environment.

And, indeed, the hero, completely desperate at first, gradually becomes closer to nature. At the beginning of the novel, he admitted that he would never have enough patience for any task. Now, thanks to his mental abilities and the promptings of nature, he patiently completed every task. After a thunderstorm, fearing an explosion of gunpowder, he deepened the cave; after an earthquake, fearing to be buried alive, he strengthened his home, fearing that he would get sick from the rains and heat, and made clothes. The hero’s actions were subordinated only to fear and necessity. He felt neither envy, nor covetousness, nor greed, he experienced only fears. After the most “terrible” fear - the fear of death, he turns to faith. And, reading the Bible, he realizes his unrighteous life and finds peace.

Here, it would seem, appears before us the idyll of human upbringing by nature. But not every person who finds himself in natural conditions of development will be able to achieve progress. After all, the savages who visited the island of Despair from time to time also lived in natural conditions. However, the hero did not consider them people for their barbaric habit of eating their own kind. But soon, having met the savage he saved, he became convinced that he had even more virtuous qualities than any person from a civilized society. Robinson managed to set Friday on the path of true progress. He “enlightened” him, introducing him to the world of religion. And this essay has no end. But the most important thing is to say that when a person finds himself in “natural” conditions, he becomes better.

Robinson, says Engels, is a “real bourgeois,” a typical English merchant and businessman of the 18th century. Engels notes that, finding himself on a desert island, he “immediately, like a true Englishman, begins to keep records of himself.” He perfectly knows the price of all things, knows how to make a profit from everything, dreams of getting rich, and subordinates his feelings to considerations of profit. Finding himself on the island, he realizes that he is its owner. With all his humanity and respect for the human dignity of savages, he looks at Friday as his slave, and slavery seems natural and necessary to him. Feeling like an owner, Robinson and the people who subsequently ended up on his island behave like masters of the situation and demand that they obey their will. At the same time, he does not really believe the oaths of the repentant rebels from the ship and achieves their obedience, arousing in them the fear of the gallows that awaits them in their homeland. Defoe criticizes one of the main doctrines of Puritanism about the existence of evil. All these traits of a merchant, a planter, a businessman and a Puritan give us an idea of the type of English bourgeois who was Defoe's contemporary. Before us is a restored historical picture of the activities of the young English bourgeoisie of the 18th century.

Thus, as a “natural” person, Robinson Crusoe did not “go wild” on a desert island, did not succumb to despair, but created completely normal conditions for his life.