Hello everyone, this blog is responding to a thinking activity task assigned by Megha Ma'am which is based on post colonial text, 'J.M.Coetzee's Foe' which is discussed here.
Write a blog on comparative and critical analysis of Daniel Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’ and J. M. Coetzee’s ‘Foe’.1. Introduction:
Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) is often hailed as the first English novel and a cornerstone of Enlightenment values: rationality, individualism, and colonial enterprise. Crusoe’s survival on an uninhabited island becomes a metaphor for human resilience and divine providence.
J. M. Coetzee’s Foe (1986), however, rewrites this story from a late-20th-century postcolonial and feminist standpoint. It interrogates who gets to speak and whose stories are erased in the making of Western literary canons. By revisiting Defoe’s narrative through the voice of Susan Barton, Coetzee deconstructs the myth of mastery and questions the politics of authorship, language, and silence.
2. Colonial Ideology vs. Postcolonial Resistance
Defoe’s Colonial Man
In Robinson Crusoe, the protagonist embodies the spirit of the colonial “self-made man.” Shipwrecked on a deserted island, Crusoe uses reason, labour, and faith to impose order on chaos symbolically replicating the colonial project of conquering and civilizing the unknown world.
- Crusoe sees the island as his property, calling himself “king” and naming Friday “my servant.”
- Friday, the indigenous man, is “civilized” by being taught English and Christianity, representing the erasure of native identity under European control.
As Edward Said notes in Culture and Imperialism, Crusoe’s island is “a prototype of the colonial plantation,” reflecting the imperial logic of possession and exploitation.
Coetzee’s Counter-Narrative
Foe reimagines this same island — but now the focus is not Crusoe, but the silenced others: the woman (Susan Barton) and the tongueless slave (Friday). Coetzee’s island is not a site of mastery but of fragmented voices and lost histories.
- Susan’s attempts to tell her story to the writer “Foe” (a fictional version of Defoe) highlight how women’s experiences are mediated through male authorship.
- Friday’s silence becomes the most powerful metaphor: his missing tongue symbolizes the voicelessness of colonized subjects and enslaved people.
Through this, Coetzee reverses the colonial gaze: the island becomes a place of unmaking, not mastery.
3. The Question of Authorship and Storytelling
Defoe’s Authorial Control
Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe presents itself as an authentic autobiography, “written by himself.” This claim to truth reflects Enlightenment ideals of authentic experience, empirical observation, and divine providence. Crusoe’s narrative is linear, logical, and self-assured — reinforcing his control over both the island and his own story.
Coetzee’s Fragmented Narrative
In Foe, narrative control collapses. Susan Barton writes letters to Daniel Foe (the author) to help shape her experience into a publishable story, but he constantly reshapes and edits her account, showing how narrative authority is gendered and political.
- Susan’s struggle to make herself heard mirrors the struggle of subaltern voices erased by patriarchal and colonial discourse.
- Friday’s muteness resists interpretation; his silence is not emptiness but a critique of Western desire to make the Other speak in familiar terms.
As Gayatri Spivak argues in Can the Subaltern Speak?, the colonized subject’s voice is often lost because it is always represented through the language of the colonizer. Coetzee dramatizes this very dilemma.
4. Language, Silence, and Power
In Robinson Crusoe, language is a tool of mastery. Crusoe teaches Friday English, renames him, and through this linguistic act, claims ownership over him. Language civilizes; silence is ignorance.
In Foe, language becomes a site of struggle:
- Friday’s silence challenges the idea that speaking is the only way to be human.
- Susan’s voice, constantly rewritten by Foe, exposes how narratives are shaped by power and privilege.
- The final section of Foe, narrated in a ghostly, dreamlike voice, blurs who is speaking — suggesting that true history lies buried, irretrievable, and resistant to neat storytelling.
Thus, silence in Foe is not weakness; it is a form of resistance, a refusal to be contained by the colonizer’s language.
5. Gender and the Rewriting of History
Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe almost entirely excludes women; the narrative is male-centered, reflecting the patriarchal norms of the 18th century.
Coetzee’s Foe corrects this omission by centering Susan Barton, a woman who seeks authorship but is continuously dismissed. Her body, her experiences, and her storytelling become metaphors for female marginalization in literature.
- When Foe rewrites her story, he also rewrites her identity, echoing how canonical literature has historically silenced women’s perspectives.
- Coetzee thus performs a feminist recovery of voice, but not by giving Susan complete power — instead, he reveals how incomplete and fractured women’s representation often remains.
6. Realism and Its Undoing
Defoe’s novel is rooted in realism — detailed descriptions of Crusoe’s daily survival mirror the rise of capitalism and empiricism in 18th-century England. The narrative reinforces a belief in the rational, autonomous subject who can shape reality through will and labour.
7. Allegory of Writing and Empire
In both novels, the act of writing mirrors the act of colonizing:
- Crusoe builds his island society through naming and recording — writing becomes a colonial archive.
- Foe and Susan’s struggle over authorship exposes the imperial nature of narrative: whose stories count as history, and whose become footnotes.
Coetzee thus rewrites Defoe not just as a postcolonial response, but as a philosophical critique of how power operates through narrative itself.
8. Conclusion:
Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe builds the myth of the solitary, rational man as the ideal colonial subject. Coetzee’s Foe dismantles that myth, revealing the silent structures beneath it — the unspoken stories of the colonized and the silenced voices of women.
References:
Coetzee, J. M. Foe. Penguin UK, 2010.
Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe. Prakash Books, 2017.
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