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Introduction
Robinson Crusoe is one of the foundational texts of the English novel, a tale of castaway survival, colonial adventure, and spiritual/providential self‐transformation. Foe, by South African writer J. M. Coetzee, is a post‐colonial, feminist, and metafictional reworking of Robinson Crusoe. Coetzee does more than simply retell—he interrogates the original text, exposing silenced voices, questioning narrative authority, and complicating the colonial myths embedded in Crusoe’s story.
In what follows, I will compare and contrast the two texts under different headings: context & worldview; narrative perspective & voice; colonialism, race and otherness; gender & the role of female experience; language, silencing, and voice; power, authorship, and storytelling; and finally critical evaluation of what Foe achieves and where its limits might lie.
Context & Worldview
Robinson Crusoe
Written in the early 18th century, during the rise of colonialism, European expansion, trade, Enlightenment thought and Protestant ethics of individualism. Defoe’s novel reflects a worldview where individual initiative, providence, self‐improvement, resourcefulness are prized.
The idea of mastering nature, surviving by practical ingenuity, imposing order on the island (cultivating land, domesticating animals etc.) is central.
Foe
Written in late 20th century, in postcolonial and postmodern context. Coetzee is challenging canonical colonial literature. Foe imagines what happens when we re‐enter Robinson Crusoe’s world from the margins. The worldview in Foe is more skeptical: about mastery and mastery’s promises, about narrative certainty, about voices that are lost or suppressed.
Coetzee is interested not only in what colonial narratives do, but also in what is left out: who is silenced, how narratives are imposed, how identity is constructed or denied.
Narrative Perspective & Voice
This is one of the most obvious differences.
Robinson Crusoe
First‐person narrative by Crusoe himself. We see events through his eyes; the narrative is “his” story. This gives him full control, unchallenged authority, an almost providential role. The text assumes the reader will accept Crusoe’s viewpoint and moral judgments.
Friday doesn’t narrate; is largely passive; his experiences are filtered through Crusoe. Crusoe names him, teaches him English, converts him to Christianity, all without much input from Friday’s own perspective.
Foe
The narrator is Susan Barton, a character invented by Coetzee, who is stranded with Cruso (note: in Foe, his name is Cruso without the “b”). Susan attempts to tell the story of Cruso and also to get at Friday’s story. She later seeks out the author “Foe” to help her tell her version of events. So narrative authority is fractured: Susan’s voice; Cruso’s (but often unreliable) memory; Friday’s enforced silence; and the literary “author” Foe.
Susan is ambitious, insistent, questioning. But also vulnerable: her past, her daughter, her identity are partial, mysterious. She is challenged by Foe’s demands for a story of a certain shape. So voice in Foe becomes contested.
Colonialism, Race, Otherness
Here Foe directly responds to Crusoe’s colonial ideology, expanding what Defoe only implies or ignores.
In Robinson Crusoe
Crusoe claims an island, treats nature as something to conquer, names things, builds on land, establishes master‐servant relations with Friday: traditional colonial tropes. The “otherness” of Friday is constructed by Crusoe’s culture and religion. Crusoe sees Friday as savage, he must civilize him.
There is relatively little attention paid to Friday’s interior life except as mediated through Crusoe. Friday’s identity is shaped by Crusoe: his conversion, his speech (learned), his gratitude etc.
In Foe
Friday is radically different. He is mutilated: his tongue has been cut, so he cannot speak. This is emblematic: the silencing of the colonized, the loss of agency, the inability to tell one’s own story.
Susan, too, is marginalized (by gender and by societal expectation), and she identifies with—at least partially—Friday’s marginality. She sees how Friday is objectified: how his identity is shaped by what others say of him (“laundryman,” “cannibal,” etc.) because he cannot speak for himself.
Coetzee changes some racial details: Friday is depicted as black (Negro) rather than Amerindian, so his racial identity is more directly connected to histories of African slavery, the Middle Passage etc. This heightens the colonial implications.
Gender & Female Experience
One of Coetzee’s major revisions is to bring in a female narrator and subject, Susan Barton, whose experience is entirely missing in Robinson Crusoe.
Robinson Crusoe
Very few female characters; Crusoe’s mother/father; female natives are peripheral; the story is male‐centered: male exploration, male heroism, male salvation.
Foe
Susan Barton is central. She insists on her right to tell her story. She is ambitious: she wants her narrative preserved. She wants recognition. Her desires include telling of her daughter, her past, her island experiences—not just about Cruso or Friday—but her own subjectivity.
Susan confronts patriarchal power: both Cruso’s and Foe’s demands. She resists being molded into a sensational adventure story, resisting rumors about her morality, resisting Foe’s idea of what the narrative should include to be publishable. She challenges the idea that adventure stories are necessarily male, heroic, sanitized.
Language, Silencing, Voice
Both texts deal with what can be said and who is allowed to say it.
Robinson Crusoe
Crusoe narrates everything. We hear nothing from Friday except via Crusoe’s report. Crusoe names Friday; adopts a paternal/master relation; teaches him English; converts him. All power processes are mediated through language that belongs to Crusoe’s world.
Foe
Coetzee draws attention to silence. Friday’s tongue is cut; he is physically prevented from speaking. This is a literal silencing and symbolic of colonial erasure.
Susan is trying to narrate but is also aware of her narrative’s limitations. She knows things are missing: what Friday would have said; what Cruso might misremember; what is suppressed by Foe (the author). She also sees how language is used to control—how Foe wants her story to be shaped, how labels are applied to Friday (“cannibal,” “laundryman”) when he can’t object.
There’s ambiguity: Susan wishes to speak for Friday but fears that in speaking she may distort or appropriated his voice. So Coetzee raises moral questions about representation.
Power, Authorship, Storytelling
These themes are central to Foe especially; Robinson Crusoe tends to present a more straightforward model of authorial power (Crusoe as the man shaping things).
Robinson Crusoe
Crusoe is master of his domain; throughout most of the novel he has control over environment, over time, over his narrative: remembrance, confession, spiritual growth. He claims ownership (of the island), mastery (over nature), imposes order.
The narrative is unified: Crusoe’s voice, his moral growth, his journey from error to spiritual redemption.
Foe:
Multiplicity of authorship. Susan wants to write; then comes the figure Foe (the writer) who suggests to structure Susan’s fragmented story into a neat five‐part narrative. Foe wants beginning‐middle‐end; story of loss, quest, recovery etc. Susan resists.
The act of telling is shown not to be neutral. Storytelling is a power move. Who gets to tell the story, in what shape, with what omissions, becomes crucial. Coetzee draws attention to the process of erasure—what is not said, what cannot be said, what is misremembered.
Comparative Themes
Putting together these lines of contrast, we see how Foe works as a critique or revision of Robinson Crusoe. Below are several comparative themes:
Mastery vs. Limits of Mastery
Crusoe believes in his ability to master nature, time, destiny (through hard work, providence, ingenuity). Foe shows that mastery is fragile: Cruso is older, memory failing, isolated; his narratives are contradictory; he can terrace the land but cannot plant gardens (no seeds), etc. The island is as much site of boredom, stasis, decay, and silence as of conquest.
Providence, Morality & Religion vs. Ambiguity
In Robinson Crusoe, Providence, Christian morality guide Crusoe; there's repentance, spiritual awakening. Crusoe sees divine will in his rescue, sees moral error in disobedience, etc.
The Educator Online
In Foe, religious belief still appears (Cruso, Susan) but is complicated; moral clarity is less assured. Memory is unreliable, cruelty and neglect are more visible, ethical dilemmas less resolved.
Civilization vs. Primitive Life
Crusoe in Defoe’s is fascinated with “civilizing” the island: bringing European order, agriculture, religion, language. The primitive is to be overcome.
A2Z Literature
Coetzee problematizes primitivism. The primitive life is not romantic; isolation becomes tedious; Cruso gives himself meaningless tasks (terracing without planting) perhaps to impose order where there is none. There is existential weight in the “ordinary”—the absence of grand heroic narrative. Also the critique of the binary between civilization and primitive is sharpened through the voices and silences of those marginalized.
Identity and Otherness
In Crusoe, the “other” (Friday, natives, nature) is defined by Crusoe’s perspective. Otherness is assimilated: through language, religion, dressing up, etc. Friday becomes almost a companion but always subordinate.
In Foe, ‘otherness’ is more complex: Friday is other not just because he is servant but because he is silenced; Susan is other because of gender; memory, identity, race, and geography intersect. Foe shows how colonial identity both dominates and erases.
Silence, Memory, Uncertainty
Robinson Crusoe is relatively certain in its narrative: Crusoe’s past, his recollections, his conversion, his work, his future are fairly coherent.
Foe is full of uncertain memory (Cruso can’t remember precisely, hears conflicting stories), silences (Friday, Susan’s withheld past), absence (what was not recorded), and the possibility that stories shapes truth as much as reflect it.
Critical Evaluation: What Foe Achieves
Foe’s strengths are many, especially when reviewed in light of classical & postcolonial/feminist critique:
Subversion of canonical myth: Coetzee doesn’t just criticize Robinson Crusoe from outside; he re‐works it from within. He injects new voices (Susan, Friday), new silences, new gaps. This gives readers a space to question the original myth of colonialism, European mastery, male heroism.
Insight into power & authorship: Who has power to tell stories? What does it mean to tell someone else’s story? Foe forces us to see that the act of writing—even retelling—is never neutral; it involves choices, omissions, silencing.
Feminist perspective: Susan Barton represents the female castaway whose lived experience (loss, isolation, motherhood, desire to tell her story) is marginalized in Crusoe. Foe brings gender into conversation with colonial power.
Ethical complexity: Foe complicates simple binaries. It’s not just white vs black, colonizer vs colonized; it’s also about internal contradictions, memory’s instability, the difficulty of telling truth. There is no easy resolution.
Highlighting silence and the unspeakable: Friday’s inability to speak (literally), Susan’s withheld memories, the missing parts—these force the reader to think about what cannot be said, what history erases, what literature glosses over.
Limitations or Critiques of Foe
No text is perfect. In class, some of the critiques of Foe might include:
Because Friday’s voice is so silenced, some readers find that Foe—while exposing silencing—also participates in it. The novel cannot restore Friday’s voice; we remain dependent on Susan, who is herself limited. Some may argue: is this also a shortcoming?
Susan’s character is strong and ambitious, yet some feel her internal life is less fully rendered in comparison with the moral weight given to Friday’s silence. Her past is often mysterious; the narrative sometimes seems more concerned with what is missing than with what is present.
The metafictional or postmodern frame can feel distancing: Foe asks many questions but does not always offer clear answers. Some readers may feel that this undermines emotional engagement or resolution.
Also, while Foe is powerful in its critique, Robinson Crusoe still has certain historical import, and some of its virtues (survival, spiritual reflections, colonial / economic insights) are important for understanding the historical period. Some may argue that Foe relies heavily on our negative reading of Robinson Crusoe — and that for readers unfamiliar with Defoe, some of its force may be lost.
Why This Comparative Study Matters
Studying Robinson Crusoe alongside Foe deepens our understanding of both:
Robinson Crusoe becomes more complex: not just heroic adventure, but also colonial, racial, cultural, ethical implications; what was erased; whose stories were silenced.
Foe is more than reaction: by being intertextual, feminist, postcolonial, it invites readers to see how literature participates in power; how stories shape identity and history.
For modern readers, the comparison highlights relevance: issues of colonial legacy, representation, voice, gender still matter; the power relationship in storytelling is still a live issue.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Coetzee’s Foe offers a rich, critical, and nuanced engagement with Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Through shifting perspectives (to Susan Barton), by refusing some of Crusoe’s assumptions about mastery, by drawing attention to silencing (of Friday, of women, of memory), and by problematising the authorial voice, Foe performs a revisionist act: it does not simply reject Robinson Crusoe, it reads it, questions it, and remaps its power dynamics.
While Robinson Crusoe remains a foundational text for its historical and literary importance—its adventure, its narrative of survival, its religious and individualistic themes—Foe reminds us that foundational texts often carry built‐in silences, assumptions, and exclusions. Coetzee asks: who gets to tell a story? What is erased when someone else tells it? And can we ever know the full truth of “the other”? These are challenging questions, and Foe does not resolve them, but it forces readers to face them.
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