The story of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Dafoe demonstrates British imperialism and ethnocentrism. The story is based on the real-life adventures of a Scottish Sailor named ôAlexander Selkirk,ö who ôquickly faded from memoryö as DefoeÆs fictional Crusoe ôbecame a great successö (p. 18). Shipwrecked on an island of ôsavages,ö Crusoe encounters an exceptional savage he attempts to tame and turn into an ideal servant, his Man Friday. Throughout the novel, we see that British culture, the culture which Crusoe is part of, is portrayed as being superior to the culture of the cannibalistic savages he encounters on the Island. While Crusoe does, indeed, tame one of them, Man Friday, Man Friday is only considered exceptional by Crusoe because he is the most ôBritishö of these savages. Man Friday is admirable to Crusoe because he is generous, grateful, honest, and desires to do good. In other words, Man Friday is only considered admirable by Crusoe because he is the exceptional savage who appears to be as ôBritishö as the British. As Zuiderveen notes of Crusoe, ôCrusoe, instead of merely allowing that he saved FridayÆs life out of good will, is thrilled with the prospect of having a devoted slaveö (p. 3). Therefore, Crusoe only admires Friday because his characteristics are similar to the ones idealized by his own, British, culture.
The opening of Robinson Crusoe revolves around CrusoeÆs ability to be self-reliant and develop the skills and abilities necessary to survive. The first part of the book describes this process. Still, CrusoeÆs taming of this ôforeignö land is similar to his eventual taming of Friday. As Marzec argues, ôCrusoe tames the undifferentiated earth of the island by endowing the land with the positive and moral seed of Providence. In order to cope with an entirely Other form of land than that to which he is accustomed, he introduced an ideological apparatus to over-code the earthö (p. 131)...