daniel defoe
...). “During the 1680’s and early 1690’s, business and politics were the two interwoven strands in Defoe’s life. Some distraction from is complicated dealings was sorely provided by the civil war of 1688-90, in which James II was deposed”(Richetti 3). “In 1684, he married the daughter of a well-to-do merchant who brought him the generous gift of thirty-seven hundred pounds. Daniel and his wife, Mary Tuffley, ended up having eight children, two boys and six girls”(Richetti 3). Robinson Crusoe is one of Daniel Defoe’s finest products. This novel is well known for its use of religion and sin. The theme of Robinson Crusoe is even if sin will bring you pleasure for an instance; it always has its payback. Yet, Peace and faith can be brought by belief in God and forgiveness, and will bring you pleasure for an eternity. Conflict between Crusoe, who is encouraged by the aspiration to travel and make a fortune, is the protagonist of the novel, and Crusoe's antagonist is the sequences of misfortune that come about before him. Some quotes from Crusoe that illustrate the theme are… “I forgot not to lift up my heart in thankfulness to Heaven: and what heart could forbear to bless him, who had not only in a miraculous manner provided for me in such a wilderness, and in such a desolate condition, but from whom every deliverance must always be acknowledged to proceed?” “All help is from Heaven, sir, said I.” “So little do we see before us in the world, and so much reason have we to depend cheerfully upon the great Maker of the world, that he does not leave his creatures so absolutely destitute, but that, in the worst circumstances, they have always something to be thankful for, and are sometimes nearer their deliverance than they imagine, nay, are even brought to their deliverance by the means by which they seem to be brought to their destruction.” “The diligent lived well and comfortably; and the slothful lived hard and beggarly; and so, I believe, generally speaking it is all over the world.” These quotes really emphasize the theme Daniel Defoe was trying to put forth. Daniel Defoe has many critics who love, and are intrigued by his “different” type of writing style. “Defoe has a very different way of writing fiction. Defoe reveals even more of his fictional hand when he writes in Crusoe about dreams felt to be real events. It is not that he believes the images of dreams actually take place outside the head, but those images make so powerful an impression, they seem to be real”(Seidel 32). “In some ways Defoe was the most unpoetical soul alive, and in all his stories we are conscious of the background of the counting house, of profit and loss and periodical stock-taking”(Shinagel 387). Defoe had a vocational reason as a government spy for writing himself into another voice, but he was born mimic, almost by impulse”(Seidel 29). “Robinson Crusoe shows with most of Defoe’s later fiction, a firm basis in actuality. While his fictio...