In Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, I
don't know that Crusoe's change of heart towards God indicates that he is a "hopeless
rebel." I assume this term means that he cannot help but be a rebel. Human nature may
tend to push one naturally toward Crusoe's behavior. In the heat of the moment, when
fear is so overwhelming, the basic instinct of a human being is to do whatever is
necessary to survive.
After the fear has passed, it is also
not unusual that promises made under duress would be forgotten as quickly as they were
made. Crusoe admits that this is what happens to him. However, he does not wholly lose
sight of his brief encounter with God:
I found, indeed, some intervals of reflection;
and the serious thoughts did, as it were, endeavour to return again sometimes; but I
shook them off, and roused myself from them as it were from a distemper, and applying
myself to drinking and company, soon mastered the return of those fits—for so I called
them…
Crusoe speaks of God
numerous times throughout the story. He reports that when he first is washed ashore
while everyone else perishes, he does not thank God (we assume he infers "as he should
have,") but runs about wringing his hands like a madman until he
collapses.
With the "miraculous" growth of corn on the
island, Crusoe once again "sees" God, but this, too, is
temporary.
...and then the wonder began to cease; and I must
confess my religious thankfulness to God’s providence began to abate, too, upon the
discovering that all this was nothing but what was
common...
A permanent change
eventually does come over the castaway. At one point, when he becomes
seriously ill—close to dying—Crusoe begins to think about his lack
of a relationship with God, his father's prediction that rejecting his parents' wishes
would not bode well for him, and it might well be that God's hand is present in his
current separation from civilization:
I had no more sense of God or His judgments—much
less of the present affliction of my circumstances being from His hand—than if I had
been in the most prosperous condition of life. But now, when I began to be sick, and a
leisurely view of the miseries of death came to place itself before me; when my spirits
began to sink under the burden of a strong distemper, and nature was exhausted with the
violence of the fever; conscience, that had slept so long, began to awake, and I began
to reproach myself with my past life, in which I had so evidently, by uncommon
wickedness, provoked the justice of God to lay me under uncommon strokes, and to deal
with me in so vindictive a
manner.
What began to work in
Crusoe earlier in the story disappeared when the threats were gone. He was, however,
younger then, and as he himself concludes, this independence from God is not unusual for
a young man who believes all is well with his life—that he need depend on no
one.
Human nature shows that when change is about to come
over us in whatever fashion, it may take several "life-altering kicks" before we are
aware that life is trying to get our attention. Crusoe was raised in a good home, and in
that he is growing as a person—seeing how insignificant he is, alone in the universe—I
would not assume that he is truly a hopeless rebel. I would think simply that he will
stop fighting life and look for a peace regarding his circumstances which will allow him
to survive. Recognizing that God has a hand in this disaster, he can see, too, the
blessings Crusoe has received.
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