Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Published 1719 · 288 pages · 120,798 words · about 7 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction

How hard is Robinson Crusoe to read?

Robinson Crusoe scores 37 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 45 out of 100
Plain early-eighteenth-century English with practical vocabulary for shipbuilding, agriculture, and survival. Defoe aims for journalistic clarity rather than literary ornamentation.
Sentence structure: 42 out of 100
Declarative, matter-of-fact sentences that mimic a journal or memoir. Defoe's plain style was revolutionary in its directness and remains accessible today.
Abstraction: 48 out of 100
The surface is pure survival narrative: building shelters, growing barley, making pots. Deeper questions about providence, civilization, and colonialism emerge through action rather than argument.
Information density: 45 out of 100
Defoe catalogs practical activities in careful detail: how to fire clay, how to hollow a canoe, how to fortify a cave. Information-rich but repetitive in its rhythms.
Narrative indirection: 35 out of 100
Crusoe narrates his own story with journalistic directness. He explains his reasoning, records his spiritual reflections, and details his activities without ambiguity.
Symbolic density: 50 out of 100
The island as blank slate for civilization, the footprint as the return of the human world, Friday as both companion and colonial subject. Symbols are legible without scholarly apparatus.
Ironic distance: 30 out of 100
Crusoe is an earnest narrator who means what he says. Whatever irony exists comes from modern readers recognizing the colonial assumptions Defoe shares with his hero.
Resolution withholding: 28 out of 100
Crusoe is rescued, returns to England, discovers his Brazilian plantation has made him wealthy. The plot resolves completely and satisfyingly.
Structural complexity: 28 out of 100
Linear first-person chronological narrative with occasional diary entries. One of the simplest structures in the canon of major novels.

How Robinson Crusoe is regarded

Robinson Crusoe holds a literary regard score of 88 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

What Robinson Crusoe asks you to hold together

Robinson Crusoe sustains Formal (11) on the Model of Hierarchical Complexity: a line between variables. It peaks at Systematic (12), a constellation on pages 172–173. Read from the full text, all 227 passages. What the stages mean.

Where Robinson Crusoe sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (227 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, Robinson Crusoe scores 58 out of 100. A second mythos, comedy, pulls at it with a weight of 0.25. About the map of stories.

Mode: Low Mimetic
I was lord of the whole manor; or, if I pleased, I might call myself king or emperor over the whole country which I had possession of
Symbol: Literal & Descriptive
Upon the sides of this square post I cut every day a notch with my knife
Mythos: Romance iv (the beleaguered castle) (romance iv)
so I was completely fenced in and fortified, as I thought, from all the world
Genre: Confession + Novel
I drew up the state of my affairs in writing, not so much to leave them to any that were to come after me

Where the story of Robinson Crusoe takes place

  • 1651–1687, mostly a desert island (1651 to 1687), the main setting
  • Hull, Yarmouth Roads and London, 1651
  • Sallee, the African coast and Brazilian plantations, 1651-1659 (1651 to 1659)
  • Desert island near the Orinoco mouth, 1659-1686 (1659 to 1686)
  • Lisbon, the Pyrenees, England and the island revisited, 1686-1695 (1686 to 1695)

5 things that are true of Robinson Crusoe, with the passage for each

  1. Crusoe keeps his calendar by cutting a daily notch in a post, with longer notches for Sundays and for the first of each month.

    Upon the sides of this square post I cut every day a notch with my knife, and every seventh notch was as long again as the rest

  2. The miraculous barley turns out to come from chicken-feed Crusoe had shaken out himself.

    At last it occurred to my thoughts that I shook a bag of chickens’ meat out in that place; and then the wonder began to cease

  3. The single footprint in the sand terrifies Crusoe so much that he flees to his fortification and sleeps none that night.

    I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man’s naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen on the sand.

  4. Crusoe names Friday after the day of the week on which he saved him.

    I let him know his name should be Friday, which was the day I saved his life

  5. Crusoe leaves the island after twenty-eight years, two months and nineteen days.

    I left the island, the 19th of December, as I found by the ship’s account, in the year 1686, after I had been upon it eight-and-twenty years, two months, and nineteen days

Scenes in Robinson Crusoe that Frye would name

32 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Hamartia, untitled
there seemed to be something fatal in that propensity of nature, tending directly to the life of misery which was to befall me Crusoe's wilful leaving of his father's house is the fatal misstep that sets the whole sequence going.
Anagnorisis, untitled
I threw down the book; and with my heart as well as my hands lifted up to heaven, in a kind of ecstasy of joy, I cried out aloud The reading of Acts about repentance pivots Crusoe from mere deliverance to a sense of sin and grace.
Hamartia, untitled
But I, that was born to be my own destroyer, could no more resist the offer than I could restrain my first rambling designs He repeats the original error by leaving his thriving Brazil plantation for the slaving voyage that ends in the wreck.
Apocalyptic imagery, untitled
I saw a man descend from a great black cloud, in a bright flame of fire, and light upon the ground The fever dream of the fiery avenging angel is the book's one apocalyptic vision, announcing 'now thou shalt die'.
Confession, untitled
a certain stupidity of soul, without desire of good, or conscience of evil, had entirely overwhelmed me The sustained introverted self-examination of his earlier life is the confessional register of the book.
Anagnorisis, untitled
conscience, that had slept so long, began to awake, and I began to reproach myself with my past life In his fever he recognizes his father's prophecy fulfilled and his own guilt.

Books that share these scenes with Robinson Crusoe

About the author

Daniel Defoe