Title explaination: The book is called after the main character

Summery (in one sentence): The book is about a man who choses a life on the sea and all its risks.

Exposition: The situation doesn't get clear at one point, because the situation changes multiple times.

Complication: The life after a shipwreck. 

Climax: A shipwreck

Resolution: The book theaches us how to life on a Island.

Start of the book: Robinson tells his parents how he want to live his life and that he doesn't want to becoma a lawyer.

Narration: the book is written with a first-person view. The book was written like a diary or autobiography. You know what happens from the way Robinson tells it. We get to know other characters though the conversations. We never know more about what happened or what people were thinking than Robinson.

Main characters: Robinson in a round and dynamic character. His personality changed during the story. You get to know him well. He grows because of his experiences. If he stayed at home and became a lawyer, he would never be the same. He is adventurous, determined and independent through the whole book. His characteristic traits don’t change but the way you see them back is deferent. He is still determined at the end but not in a stubborn way anymore. Robinson doesn’t change he grows.

Setting: the story takes place at the end of the 17th century.

Themes: We all notice different things in the book, these things define how we think about the world and what is imported to us. I think the book wants us to think about ourselves. Are we really who we want to be? Or are we just reflections of the world around us. Robinson starts to believe more in god than before just because he has a bible with him on the island. He could have chosen not to if he wanted to, but he did. Therefore, many people think the book is all about some-one who believes in god and wants to go to heaven. Family is also one of the imported themes in the book, and so is slavery.

Literary devices: allusion and foreshadowing.

Tone/mood: Crusoe’s tone is mostly detached, meticulous, and objective. He displays little rhetorical grandeur and few poetic or colorful turns of phrase. He generally avoids dramatic storytelling, preferring an inventorylike approach to the facts as they unfold. He very rarely registers his own feelings, or those of other characters, and only does so when those feelings affect a situation directly, such as when he describes the mutineers as tired and confused, indicating that their fatigue allows them to be defeated.

Impotant Quotes: “In the mean time, I in Part settled my self here; for first of all I marry'd, and that not either to my Disadvantage or Dissatisfaction, and has three Children, two Sons and one Daughter: But my Wife dying, and my Nephew coming Home with good Success from a Voyage to Spain, my Inclination to go Abroad, and his Importunity prevailed and engag'd me to go in his Ship, as a private Trader to the East Indies: This was in the Year 1694.” (p. 257) 

Even after what happened on the island he still wants to go back to the sea. He has a ‘new’ life now, but still has a lust for the sea that will never fade. 

Period context: The end of the 17th century, exploring the world, slavery etc.

Genre: Adventure novel

Opinion: I Think Robinson Crusoe is a bit hard for 5 VWO students. The book contains long sentences, hard grammar and difficult informal words. This is also why I wrote his note in nowadays English. I couldn't bring it up to make such long sentences, with a type of English I don't understand. I know this wasn't the assignment, but this was better than just leaving it open. 

Despite this Robinson Crusoe is a book with an amazing story. If it was written in nowadays English, I would love the story. I would recommend the book to those who know their English is above average.