Daniel Defoes Robinson Crusoe and the Protestant Work Ethic Essay

Robinson Crusoe and the Protestant Work Ethic The story of Robinson Crusoe is, in a very self-evident sense, a morality story about a wayward provided typical youth of no particular talent whose life sullen out all right in the end because he detect the importance of the values that really matter. The values that he discovers are those associated with the Protestant Work Ethic, those virtues which arise out of the Puritans sense of the unearthly life as a total commitment to a calling, unceasing service in what generally appears as a very confine yet often challenging commitment. The central concern of Robinson Crusoes experiences on the island is work. The great majority of the text is taken up with describing his unceasing efforts at mundane tasks. Robinson Crusoe is clearly eager to persuade his readers that he was never idle. some of his underta big businessmans may have been futile (like his first big boat, which he could not move to the water), save they kept him b usy. We might wonder to what extent he needs to do all the things he describes for us, like, for example, making bread or living off the produce he creates through his own agriculture. Is in that location no natural sustenance on the island which might be obtained with slight labor? What about fishing? Wouldnt that be easier? He tries it and has success, but he doesnt stay with it. Why not? Surely, given the local nature of the island, he doesnt have to labor so more? Questions like this miss the point. Robinson Crusoe is a tribute to work, and the overwhelming message is immortal has put us on this world to work. That, in effect, means guiding our energies to transform the world around us, to shape it to our will, t... ...ing it with a secret frame of pleasure (though mixed with my other afflicting thoughts), to think that this was all my own, that I was king and lord of all this country indefeasibly and had a right of possession and if I could convey it, I might have i t in inheritance, as solely as any lord of a manor in England. (101) The talking to of this quotation is interesting. He admits he takes pleasure in his consummation, but theres a sense of guilt in the admission (he has to incite us that he also has afflictions). And he frames his feelings of satisfaction entirely in legal terms (indefeasibly, right of possession, convey). What stimulates his satisfaction is not the accomplishment or the beauty or the sense of his own proven skill, but the sense of legal ownership. He has gone from a castaway to the like of an aristocrat.