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• 1 media/First-edition-of-Daniel-c_30_f_6_fp_tp-2.jpg 2019-05-27T02:19:57-07:00 Timeline of Events in Robinson Crusoe 35 plain 2019-10-13T14:29:59-07:00 Robinson Crusoe is presented as being narrated by Robinson Crusoe in autobiographical form. Crusoe begins his narrative:

  I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull; he got a good estate by merchandise, and leaving off his trade, lived afterward at York; from whence he had married my mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very good family in that country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but, by the usual corruption of words in England, we are now called, nay, we call ourselves, and write our name, Crusoe; and so my companions always called me.

  Crusoe recounts his life story beginning with his birth and subsequent adventures, devoting the majority of the narrative to his time spent shipwrecked upon the island. The events that unfold in the novel, therefore, are all past occurrences recounted in Crusoe's present day. Because the novel's events are nested in this manner, and because some events are given more narrative time and space in the novel itself, a timeline is helpful to grasp the timeframe of events recounted in the novel. 
  
  There is no dynamic, digital timeline that currently exists to provide a chronological snapshot of events in Crusoe's life, so I created this timeline to be used as a pedagogical supplement to the novel. 
  
  
  
  
   
• 1 media/First-edition-of-Daniel-c_30_f_6_fp_tp-2.jpg 2019-08-31T21:41:28-07:00 Map of Robinson Crusoe's Voyage 27 plain 2019-10-13T14:30:24-07:00 Travel—and an irresistible pull to travel—is the central catalyst in Robinson Crusoe. In his youth, Crusoe recounts that, despite his parents' designs for him to become a lawyer and to embrace "the middle state, or what might be called the upper station of low life, he "would be satisfied with nothing but going to sea." Crusoe embarks on his first sea voyage from Hull to London on September 1st, 1651, a date that recurs as an omen in the text—Crusoe later boards the ship that results in him being stranded upon the island on September 1st, 1659, not coincidentally "being the same day eight years that I went from my father and mother at Hull, in order to act the rebel to their authority, and the fool to my own interests." Crusoe states early in his narrative "an irresistible reluctance to going home" that drives him to continually seek out adventures. After his shipwreck and isolation upon the island, Crusoe initially avoids travel by sea and travels by land, only to find himself traveling yet again by ship to the East Indies to visit the island he was stranded upon for 28 years, and to other Caribbean Islands. 
  
  This storymap provides a chronological view of Crusoe's travels that he recounts in the novel. The map includes the locations to which he travels alongside his commentary about these locales that Crusoe provides in the narrative. Each of these points depicted in this storymap, of course, is not an exact, regular increment—sometimes mere days separate Crusoe's travels to a given location, and sometimes decades. To get a grasp of the timeline of events in the novel, see the interactive timeline of events in Robinson Crusoe.
  
  Though the island onto which Crusoe washes up is the locus of the narrative and occupies the most narrative time in the novel (as well as in the character Crusoe's life, as he spends 28 years upon the island), the island's location is not fixed in the novel. The reader is informed that the island is located somewhere in the Caribbean—a noted departure from Defoe's real-life castaway inspirations—but a specific island (either real or fictional) is never named. This indeterminacy is a narrative technique that establishes realism in the novel—though Defoe sometimes achieves this realism through copious detail and lengthy enumerated lists, essential to this vision of realism are moments of purposeful omission and textual absence. The unstated location of island increases the aura of mystery surrounding Crusoe's narrative, and its lack of a real-world referent allows Defoe to craft an original glimpse of an island with characteristics fitting its approximate location without being too tethered to space and place.