How Crusoe ended up on a desert island. The jokes are funny. Traveler Daniel Foss

    The hero of the novel by Daniel Defoe The life and amazing adventures of Robinson Crusoe, a sailor from York, who lived for twenty-eight years all alone on a desert island off the coast of America, near the mouth of the Orinoco River, where he was thrown out by a shipwreck, during which the entire crew of the ship, except for him, died, with an account of his unexpected release by pirates, written by himself, you see, an amazing person. Before entering the desert island, he was very interested in various things, and therefore he turned out to be prepared, more than an ordinary person, for life on a desert island.

    If Robinson managed to establish a life, then he, like any person, lacked communication. You can't blame him for this. How he looked at all the footprints on the island, how he rejoiced at Friday...

    When the man was alone on the island, he did hard work so as not to yearn for loneliness.

    Will to live.

    When there is a will to something, you will always find the strength and emotions that will help you cope with the task. The will to live is an incredible force that can only be felt when you get into a difficult and difficult situation.

    Faith in the best helps a person to survive on a desert island.

    If a person is a pessimist, he will either put his hands on himself or simply wither awayquot ;.

    Robinson Crusoe believed that someday he would get out of this damned island, and this gave him strength. He also never stopped doing something. Physical and mental stress did not allow thoughts to think about the bad.

    The main problem of Robinson Crusoe, who ended up on a desert island, was not even the lack of basic things and amenities, not the lack of food, because in the end, he ended up on a tropical island, where there was quite enough different food. Loneliness became his main problem. It is loneliness that breaks a person, turns him into an animal and drives him crazy. But Robinson Crusoe did not break down, he found salvation in daily hard work, which not only provided him with everything he needed and gave him food and shelter, but which gave him the purpose of life. It was in work that Robinson escaped from the despair and hopelessness that still engulfed him from time to time. It was labor that gave Robinson the strength to endure.

    Any person who finds himself in harsh and extreme situations is primarily driven by the goal of staying alive. It is inherent in human nature. Robinson Crusoe himself was a strong, strong-willed man. This gave him the hope of salvation, which he longed for during the 28 years he spent on a deserted island. In addition, things from the wrecked ship helped him a lot, friend Friday, whom he found on the island and, of course, the goal from which he did not step aside. All these circumstances favorably affected his life, which helped Robinson Crusoe to survive on a desert island.

    Robinson Crusoe was helped most to survive on the island by faith and hope. The hope that he will once again be among the people and for this you need to fight in every possible way, fight for your life in order to wait for this moment.

    An important character trait that helped Robinson to hold out was patience. Crusoe was ready to endure many hardships, overcome them and not despair.

    Robinson Crusoe survived, by and large, helped the character and luck.

    Without the second factor, no amount of willpower and faith in the best would have saved a person who found himself in complete (initially) social isolation on a desert island. Had he been placed in more unfavorable conditions without fantastic luck, the novel would have taken about twenty pages. He was lucky to get to a tropical island with a mild climate, fresh water and food, he was lucky that the remains of the ship did not sink at a depth, so he was able to collect a lot of useful things from the ship's luggage and utensils.

    Well, character is what made Robinson able to build a conditionally full-fledged life on the island, and not go crazy with despair.

    Many factors influenced Robinson Crusoe to survive on a desert island. First, this lust for life. That is, in any situation, go to the end, find a way out, no matter what the circumstances.

    And the circumstances were quite difficult. The worst thing that happened was that Robinson was all alone. Food could be obtained, shelter could be built, but here is where to get your own kind for communication.

    And Robinson Crusoe plunged into labor activity, did not sit idly by, waiting for manna from heaven. And work always has a beneficial effect on a person, gives hope that you do not live in vain.

    And the reward was big for Robinson Crusoe. I always put myself in that person's shoes. At first it seems that this is cool, nature is all around and I can be on it alone. But gradually you realize that this happiness of loneliness is a deceptive feeling. After all, you can stay one or two days, and then you still want simple human communication.

    Daniel Defoe was a pioneer in literature. For the first time, he took up topics that his predecessors did not think about at all, or thought so languidly and artlessly that their works have not reached us. Starting his novel as a typical Christian moralizing story about how the prodigal son disobeyed the will of his father and went into the big world, which beat him and inspired the idea that it would be much better to stay behind the stove, the author raised questions about what a person really needed for happiness and how fortitude can overcome adversity. Not about the mortification of the flesh surrounded by temptations, but about its triumph among natural deprivations.

    Dafoe was far from the writers of Hollywood scripts, ready to throw their super-heroes on a desert island with one raschka and a portrait of the US president (I exaggerate intentionally), he allowed Crusoe to fish out chests with all sorts of good things useful for life from the depths of the sea. Many pages of the novel are occupied with the description of the finds - this is far from the most interesting reading.

    The conclusions are surprising for their time: a person does not need money, because outside of society they do not feed and do not warm. Communication with their own kind is as important as shelter and food. The survival instinct pushes us into actions that we are not capable of in ordinary life.

    The will, the ability to accept the challenge made by hostile circumstances, and the natural desire for survival helped Crusoe remain human and not become a victim of chance.

    Friday, of course. By the way, you never wondered why Friday turned out to be just a male, because he could save a lady from his pursuers. And this would be an even more suitable option in his position. Still, apparently, he is a man he was healthy, strong, and there is such a long abstinence. In general, somehow Daniel Defoe writes little about this side of the life of his hero. Of course, Robinson was busy with backbreaking work to ensure his existence, it is possible that he was also a true Christian. - still...

    Faith and hope are, of course, good, but do not forget about material goods, which played a decisive role in the survival of Robinson Crusoe on a desert island. I mean the things that he took first from the ship on which he was wrecked, and then from another wrecked ship. As a result, he ended up with firearms, tools, clothes, paper, ink and many other items that helped him not to lose his human face.

    A wonderful book by Daniel Defoe, which has been read for several centuries. The original title of the work sounds like an abstract of the entire book The Life and Amazing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, a sailor from York, who lived for twenty-eight years all alone on a desert island off the coast of America, near the mouth of the Orinoco River, where he was thrown by a shipwreck, during which the entire crew the ship, besides him, perished, with an account of his unexpected release by pirates, written by himself. 🙂

    It's scary to even imagine being in that situation. You involuntarily ask yourself the question: Would I be able to survive? ... Here is the hero of Daniel Defoe could.

    I think that firstly, Robinson was able to survive on the island. thanks to their knowledge, skills, experience gained in that life that preceded the shipwreck. Thanks to them, he was able to use all the resources available on the island and taken from the ship to create more comfortable living conditions in the wild.

    Secondly, thanks to its resilient nature, which allowed Robinson Crusoe in such a difficult situation not to lose his presence of mind, not to panic, not to become discouraged, depressed, but to search, fight, survive on this ill-fated island.

    Thirdly, constant labor which did not allow him again to be distracted by sad thoughts. Robinson is strict with himself, does not give himself a moment of relaxation. He builds a house, breeds goats, goes hunting, fishes, cultivates the land, plants barley, sews his own clothes, shoes, sculpts dishes,

    Fourth, faith in the best, in God, in which the hero did not believe before the journey, desire to live And hope for a speedy return home.

    And again in my head this question: Could I do that? You probably won't know for sure until you try it. And for some reason I don’t want to try! 🙂

    Speaking about what exactly helped Robinson Crusoe to survive and survive in the conditions of a desert island, many authors mentioned the excellent personal qualities of the protagonist of the novel Daniel Defoe - courage, unshakable faith in the best, optimism, discipline and diligence ... they also noted good luck). And the main success, in my opinion, was that there was a comrade from the natives that they managed to meet him (albeit not immediately) and establish communication and friendships, and who helped brighten up the hardships of loneliness and make survival itself easier ( Friday)).

    Life on a desert island is characterized, of course, by the difficulties of everyday life, but the forced lack of communication, in my opinion, is the main minusquot ;. (

Before the novel by the English writer Daniel Defoe was published, no one would have identified a man who had fallen on a desert island with Robinson. Today, anyone who is left alone in some wilderness calls his adventure Robinsonade.

But it is not uncommon for people whom we can call Robinsons to experience such ups and downs of fate that the book hero Defoe did not even dream of.

Alexander Selkirk - the prototype of Robinson Crusoe

It is known that the hero of Daniel Defoe is not fiction, but a story about a real person. His name is Alexander Selkirk. What this Scot had to endure is very similar to the misadventures of Crusoe. But the writer, of course, brought his author's fiction to the novel.

Being the boatswain of a pirate ship, Selkirk fell into disfavor with the captain in May 1704. The consequences of the quarrel was the landing of a sailor on the deserted island of Mas-a-Tierra, which is located in the Pacific Ocean, and where they didn’t even hear about their friend Friday. Despite the difficult living conditions, Alexander was able to achieve some success during his stay on the island.


For example, tame wild goats. It was in the company of these horned ones that English ships found him in 1709, and already in 1712 Selkirk managed to return home. The editors recall that Defoe's stay of Robinson on the island was 28 years.

Traveler Daniel Foss


Daniel Foss, whose cruise on the Negotsiant ended in a collision with a huge iceberg. He was the only passenger on the ship who managed to escape by sailing to the rocky island in 1809.

Daniel Foss was noticed by the sailors of a ship sailing past the island. This piece of land was deserted, and there was nothing here but a rookery of seals. An ordinary wooden oar helped the hero to survive, which was washed to the shore of the island by waves. The hero was waving it like a flag when he was seen from a passing ship 5 years later. Moreover, Daniel got to him by swimming, because the captain was afraid to land the ship on a rocky bottom.

Volunteer Robinson – Tom Neal


He also knows the history of voluntary Robinsons. Suvorov Coral Island sheltered Tom Neal in 1957. Unlike his predecessors, the hermit hero had everything he needed with him: food, hygiene products, pets, and even fuel.

Tom Neal twice voluntarily stayed on a desert island. In addition, the island was rich in its tropical gifts. When, after 3 years, Tom's stay in paradise was violated by the Americans, he did not even want to hear anything about the world of people. Nevertheless, in 1966, Tom made a short trip back to publish his memoirs and earn money.


After a long life of loneliness, Tom Neal wrote a book With the book "An Island for Myself" he returned to the island. His inspiration lasted another 10 years, after which Tom Neal returned to civilization and went to live out his life in his native New Zealand.

The Magic of Defoe's Book


It is not known how much Daniel Defoe's book was involved in the shipwreck of the schooner "Beautiful Bliss" in 1911, but the fact that it helped Jeremy Beebs survive is certain. A 14-year-old teenager was able to escape on a piece of land in the Pacific Ocean.

Jeremy Beebs survived on a desert island thanks to the famous book by Daniel Defoe. He learned his knowledge of calendar management, hunting and primitive architecture from a book about Robinson Crusoe, and fresh fruits and coconut milk helped maintain health until old age. Only in 1985, at the age of 88, he found himself on a German ship that happened to pass by.

Alexey Khimkov - Russian "Robinson"


Under the leadership of helmsman Alexei Khimkov, the merchant ship went fishing in 1743. In search of walruses near the island of Svalbard, the ship got stuck in the Arctic ice. A team of several hunters, led by the captain himself, went to land, where they discovered a hut. They took few supplies, as they planned to return to the ship the next day. However, fate decreed otherwise: in one night, the ice, along with the wind, carried the ship to the open sea, where it soon sank.

Aleksey Khimkov and his team found themselves cut off from civilization. Khimkov had no choice but to insulate the discovered building for wintering. Rifle cartridges did not last long, but with the help of handy items, the brave team made homemade bows and spears. This was enough to hunt deer and bears. The island was also rich in small game and fish, and salt was mined straight from sea water.


Unfortunately, it was not hunger or cold that lay in wait for them, but ordinary scurvy. In conditions of lack of vital vitamins, one in four died five years later. Another year and a half passed before, in the summer of 1749, a passing ship led by Commander Kornilov noticed the wild Robinsons.


The appearance of the ship near the Arctic island was a lifesaver for these people. I must say that they did not board the ship empty-handed. During the years of their stay on a desert island, these hunters managed to get more than 200 skins of a large animal, and the same number of a small fox, there were also deer fat reserves.


News of the surviving hunters eventually reached Count Shuvalov himself, who was listed at the royal court. It was he who instructed the French citizen Le Roy to write a book about the misadventures of Khimkov called "The Adventures of Four Russian Sailors Brought to the Island of Svalbard by a Storm", which was subsequently published in several languages ​​​​in different countries of the world. We invite you to learn the stories of the most famous travelers.

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The novel "Robinson Crusoe" immortalized the name of Daniel Defoe, and the name of the protagonist has long become a household name. Any child in childhood imagined how he would end up on a desert island and survive here. What can I say, not only a boy. So, just recently we talked about a ruined millionaire who celebrated the 20th anniversary of his stay on the island. But what other real stories of Robinsons are there?

The real Robinson Crusoe - Alexander Selkirk

Robinson Crusoe Island, where Alexander Selkirk spent 4 years

4 years and 4 months
The story of the Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk just inspired Defoe to write the novel, it was he who became the prototype of Robinson Crusoe. True, the literary hero spent 28 years on the island, and during this long time alone with nature and with himself, he grew spiritually. Selkirk stayed on the island for 4 years, and he got there not as a result of a shipwreck, but after a quarrel with the captain. And no Friday friend for you, and, of course, cannibals. However, Alexander managed to survive in harsh conditions, he ate shellfish, tamed feral goats and built two huts. In 1709, the sailor was discovered by English ships. When Selkirk returned to London, he told his amazing story to writer Richard Steele, who published it in a newspaper.
By the way, the island on which Selkirk lived alone was later called Robinson Crusoe. And 150 kilometers from it there is another island - Alexander-Selkirk.

Traveler Daniel Foss


Lived on a deserted island 5 years
The story of another traveler, Daniel Foss, is also surprising. A man at the end of the 18th century traveled on the ship "Negociant" with a crew through the northern seas, where they hunted seals. The ship collided with an iceberg, and 21 people managed to escape by boat. For a month and a half they sailed on the waves until two people were left alive. Soon the boat was thrown ashore, where Foss lost his last comrade. And this island turned out to be far from paradise: a small rocky piece of land, where there was nothing but a rookery for seals. Actually, seal meat helped Daniel survive, and he drank rainwater. Only five years later, in 1809, Foss was picked up by a passing ship. At the same time, the poor fellow had to swim before him, as the captain was afraid that he would run the ship aground.

Tom Neal - voluntary hermit

Lived on a deserted island about 16 years old
But there are stories about voluntary seclusion. So, for almost 16 years, the coral island of Suvorov became the home of Tom Neil, a native of New Zealand. He first visited the island in 1952. The man domesticated chickens, started a garden, caught crabs, shellfish and fish. Thus, the New Zealander lived on the island for almost three years, and after a serious injury he was taken out. But this did not stop him from returning: Tom returned to his paradise in 1960 for three and a half years, and then in 1966 for ten years. After his second stay, Neil wrote the book An Island for Myself, which became a bestseller.

Jeremy Beebs - Robinson, who managed to grow old on the island


Lived on a deserted island 74 years old
In 1911, the ship "Beautiful Bliss" was shipwrecked. Only Jeremy Beebs survived. Then he was only 14 years old. Due to his age, he was very fond of adventure novels, and what do you think was one of his favorite books? Of course, Robinson Crusoe. Here he learned basic survival skills, learned how to keep a calendar, hunt and build huts. The young man managed to grow old on the island: they took him only in 1985 as an 88-year-old man. Just imagine, during this time two world wars have passed and man has mastered space.

Alexey Khimkov with friends - polar Robinsons


Living on a deserted island 6 years
This story is even more severe: without tropical forests and warm seas. The team lived in the Arctic ice for six years. In 1743, headed by helmsman Alexei Khimkov, a merchant ship went fishing and got stuck in the ice. A team of four went to the coast of the Svalbard archipelago, where they found a hut. Here they planned to spend the night, but fate decreed otherwise: a strong Arctic wind carried the ice floes along with the ship into the open sea, where the ship sank. The hunters had only one way out - to insulate the hut and wait for rescue. As a result, they lived on the island for 6 years, during which time the team made homemade spears and bows. They hunted bears and deer and also fished. So the harsh Arctic winter turned out to be tough for men. However, there was an outbreak of scurvy in their small camp, and one of the travelers died.
Six years later, a ship sailed past the island, which saved the polar Robinsons. But they did not board empty-handed: during this long time they managed to get about 200 skins of a large animal and about the same amount of arctic fox. About the misadventures of the Russian Robinsons, the book “The Adventures of Four Russian Sailors Brought to the Island of Spitsbergen by a Storm” was later published, which was translated into several languages.

How did people manage to survive on uninhabited islands. | Photo: crazy.casa.
The exciting adventures of the protagonist of Daniel Defoe's novel "Robinson Crusoe" have long become classics. But history knows many cases when people found themselves alone on uninhabited islands, and everything turned out to be much more prosaic than in an adventure novel. How real "Robinsons" managed to survive in extreme conditions - further in the review. Alexander Selkirk

Alexander Selkirk became the prototype of Robinson Crusoe. | Photo: upload.wikimedia.org.
In 1703, a British expedition was sent to South America. On one of the ships was a Scottish boatswain Alexander Selkirk. This man had such a quarrelsome character that in a very short time he managed to quarrel with the whole team.

Once, after another skirmish, the boatswain began to exclaim that he was landed on the nearest island, because. he cannot bear the whole crew. The captain with great satisfaction did what the sailor so hastily asked for. When Selkirk was escorted to the coast of Mas a Tierra, he would have been glad to apologize, but it was already too late.


Monument to Alexander Selkirk in Scotland. | Photo: 1.bp.blogspot.com.

Fortunately for Selkirk, colonists once lived on the island. As they left, they abandoned the cats and goats, which had already run wild. The boatswain managed to re-domesticate animals, thereby providing himself with food.

After 4 years and 4 months, a ship under the British flag "Duke" landed on the shores of the island. The Selkirk was brought back to Scotland. There, the former sailor became a real celebrity. Reporters vying with each other interviewed him, ordinary onlookers over a glass of alcohol with their mouths open listened to the wonderful story of salvation. One such listener was the writer Daniel Defoe, who based his novel about Robinson Crusoe on the adventures of the sailor Selkirk.

Pavel Vavilov

The sinking of the ship "Alexander Sibiryakov". The picture was taken from the cruiser Admiral Scheer. | Photo: centrosib.info.
In August 1942, in the Kara Sea, the Soviet icebreaker Alexander Sibiryakov was defeated in battle with the German cruiser Admiral Scheer. The ship sank, and only the stoker could escape Pavel Vavilov. In the boat in which he found himself, there was an emergency supply, which included matches, biscuits and fresh water. Vavilov was lucky to find warm clothes and a supply of bran among the floating wreckage. The sailor decided to sail towards the lighthouse. So he ended up on an island inhabited only by polar bears.


Excerpt from the biography of Pavel Vavilov. | Photo: kolanord.ru.

A month and three days lasted Vavilov's survival in the Arctic on a desert island. When food supplies were already running out, Vavilov managed to attract the attention of the Sakko ship passing by. The stoker was rescued.

Sergei Lisitsyn

Sergei Lisitsyn is called the Russian Robinson. | Photo: salik.biz.
Russian Robinson Crusoe is called a nobleman and a hussar Sergei Petrovich Lisitsyn, which, due to its tough temper, ended up on the shores of the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bOkhotsk. In 1847, Lisitsyn was on a ship heading for Alaska. The nobleman quarreled with the captain, who landed him ashore, giving with him clothes, matches, writing supplies, food, and a couple of pistols.

If in the famous novel about Robinson Crusoe the protagonist finds himself on a tropical island, then in the case of Lisitsyn, it happened in a much colder climate.


Hut of Sergei Lisitsyn. | Photo: belok.net.

For seven months the unfortunate hussar was alone. Then, after another storm, he found a man lying on the shore. The rescued man introduced himself as Vasily and said that the ship he was on had leaked. Everyone sailed away, but he was forgotten. To the delight of Lisitsyn, there were cattle and small cattle on the ship.

At the same time, the Chinese began to more actively raid the Amur region, so Russian warships began to arrive there. One of them discovered "Russian Robinsons". Isolation lasted 7 months.

Gerald Kingsland and Lucy Irvine

Frame from the movie "The Outcast" (1986). | Photo: sseanghai.com.

Sometimes it happens that people consciously refuse the benefits of civilization and go to a desert island. This is exactly what journalist Gerald Kingsland did in the early 1980s. It was a kind of social experiment in which it was necessary to hold out for a whole year. Kingsland advertised looking for a partner. Lucy Irwin agreed to go with him. The experiment took place in 1982. The couple arranged a fictitious marriage in order to go to the island, which was located between Australia and New Guinea, without delays at the border.


Frame from the movie "The Outcast" (1986). | Photo: cineplex.media.baselineresearch.com.

As it turned out, the newly-made spouses had little in common. Moreover, they constantly quarreled on domestic grounds. A few months later, a severe drought led to the fact that voluntary hermits were without fresh water. They were rescued by natives from a neighboring island.

Upon arrival in the UK, Kingsland and Irvine immediately filed for divorce. Each of them wrote a book, outlining their personal experience of being on a desert island. Literary works became bestsellers, and films were made based on them.

Englishman Brandon Grimshaw earned the nickname of the modern day Robinson because spent 40 years away from civilization on a desert island.

Robinson Crusoe, the protagonist of the novel by the famous writer Daniel Defoe, is well known to readers all over the world. For more than two centuries, children and adults have been fascinated by the adventures of a man who finds himself on a desert island and, despite the circumstances in which he finds himself, is still waiting for his salvation. Reading this fascinating novel, each of us must have asked ourselves the question: “What would I do, what would I do if, like Robinson Crusoe, I ended up on a desert island?”.

I, like Robinson Crusoe, love the sea very much, but I see it very rarely, because I live quite far from the sea coast. My city is far from those places where it smells of algae and fish, where seagulls noisily scream, where large ships run to distant lands. But I can imagine that I, like Robinson Crusoe, go on a long journey and find myself on a desert island.

“I come to my senses after a shipwreck that died in a severe storm, and I understand that I ended up on some kind of island. I am lying on the shore, a few meters from the sea, which has already calmed down - there is not a trace left of the storm. Evening approaches, I feel hungry and tired. That is why I have to think about lodging and food, but where can I get them on an unfamiliar island? So I collect some brushwood, cover it with your jacket and try to fall asleep in order to at least somehow wait for the morning and gain some strength. I feel uncomfortable and hard. Soon, somewhere in the distance, a bird called out, and I was overcome with fear. I was tormented by hunger and for a long time I could not fall asleep, but in the end, fatigue won out ... ”- this is how I imagine my first day as Robinson Crusoe.

“When I woke up in the morning, I began to think about what to do next. First of all, you need to take care of food. This, in my opinion, was not very difficult, because there was a sea nearby, and there were a lot of fish in it, and a forest could be seen nearby, in which one could also find something edible - these were hazelnuts, and berries, and bird nests, and many other living creatures. After all, this is what Robinson ate during his stay on the island. So I went into the forest and after a short search I came across nuts, and then I found a clearing with berries that looked like strawberries. Having calmed my hunger a little, I decided to make a fire and find some dishes in which to cook the fish soup. But I am on a desert island - what kind of dishes are there, where does it come from? Therefore, for the time being I put off preparing hot meals, and I remember that Robinson further took care of housing, and then even made furniture for himself. Then he sewed himself comfortable clothes and even made an umbrella. Unfortunately, I don’t have such life experience as Robinson Crusoe, and I sadly understand that it’s almost impossible for me to survive on a desert island, and if I succeed, I still won’t be able to hold out for a long time ... ".

Circumstances forced Robinson Crusoe to master many professions, learn how to grow wheat and tame wild animals. His life experience, determination and perseverance helped him cope with all the hardships and survive in a very difficult situation, while remaining a worthy person and not losing faith in his salvation. I do not have enough knowledge and experience yet, but I hope that in time I will also become the same as Crusoe and be able to cope with any problems.