Foe by J M Coetzee (ThA)
Foe by J M Coetzee
A Tale of Two Islands: A Comparative Analysis of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Coetzee's Foe
The Island and Its Inhabitants: A Shift in Focus
In Robinson Crusoe, the island is a stage for Crusoe's mastery and industriousness. He is the undisputed "King," transforming the wilderness into a rudimentary colony. The narrative is a straightforward, almost journalistic, autobiography focused entirely on Crusoe's perspective.
Foe dramatically shifts the center of gravity. The story is told through Susan Barton, another castaway, whose account introduces a complexity and uncertainty Defoe omitted. Coetzee’s "Cruso" is a less heroic, more passive figure, content with mere survival, highlighting the fictionalized exaggeration of Defoe’s protagonist. Crucially, the arrival of Susan and the subsequent departure from the island lead to a new setting: London, where the true struggle over the story's meaning unfolds.
The Problem of Voice and Silence: The Case of Friday
Coetzee’s Friday is fundamentally mute—his tongue has been cut out or removed for unknown reasons. This silence is not a mere plot device; it is the novel's central political and thematic concern. Friday's muteness in Foe symbolizes the historical silencing of the colonized and marginalized. Susan Barton and the writer "Foe" (a version of Defoe) repeatedly attempt to force a story onto Friday's silence, exposing their own colonial and literary appropriations. Coetzee suggests that the original text deliberately silenced the native in order to assert a dominant colonial narrative.
Authorship and Narrative Control
Foe is a brilliant piece of metafiction, constantly questioning the very act of storytelling. Susan Barton’s struggle is not merely to survive, but to preserve the truth of her experience from the manipulative pen of the author, Foe. Foe, representing Defoe, attempts to sensationalize and revise her story with elements like cannibals and more dramatic action—precisely the elements that bolster a marketable adventure tale but obscure reality. Coetzee’s work thus moves beyond the simple retelling of an adventure to critically analyze who gets to tell the story and how the power of narrative shapes reality and history.
| Feature | Robinson Crusoe (Defoe) | Foe (Coetzee) |
|---|---|---|
| Narrator/Protagonist | Robinson Crusoe (Male, Colonizer, Master) | Susan Barton (Female, Secondary Castaway) |
| Tone | Didactic, Autobiographical, Triumphal | Postmodern, Ambiguous, Critical |
| Friday | The "Savage" Redeemed, Assimilated, Voiced | Mute, Symbol of the Voiceless and Marginalized |
| Main Theme | Self-Reliance, Colonialism, European Mastery | Authorship, Silencing, Post-Colonial Critique |
In conclusion, while Defoe's Robinson Crusoe remains a powerful monument to the European spirit of adventure and industry, Coetzee’s Foe serves as its essential, sobering shadow. It is a necessary conversation across centuries, one that moves the focus from the heroic exploits of one man to the profound ethical questions of voice, power, and historical erasure that define the colonial legacy.
The Critical Dialogue Between Robinson Crusoe and Foe
To truly appreciate Coetzee’s achievement, we must see Foe not just as a retelling, but as a deliberate and surgical intervention into the ideology of the original.
1. Colonialism and the Idea of "Possession"
Robinson Crusoe: The Justification of Empire
Defoe’s novel is an indispensable text for understanding the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of early Capitalism and Colonialism.
The Civilizing Mission: His relationship with Friday is a clear allegory for colonialism. Crusoe names Friday, teaches him English (or enough to be understood), converts him to Christianity, and subjects him to service. This represents the European belief in its duty to "civilize" the savage, justifying domination.
Absence of Guilt: Crusoe shows little to no moral qualms about taking land, resources, or people (Friday) into his service. His narrative validates the colonial project.
Foe: Undermining the Colonial Project
Coetzee's novel dismantles this tidy colonial narrative by foregrounding its violence and instability.
The Unruly Colony: Susan Barton arrives to find a much less organized "colony." Cruso (Coetzee's spelling) is content with bare survival and has no grand ambition to master nature or civilize Friday. He is a diminished version of Defoe's hero, suggesting the illusion of Crusoe's competence.
Deconstructing Paternalism: By making Friday mute, Coetzee removes the pretense of "civilization." Friday is not a willing convert but a symbol of the brutally oppressed. His missing tongue is a physical manifestation of the colonial violence that steals the native’s voice, not just their land.
2. Economic and Spiritual Materialism
Robinson Crusoe: God and Gold
Crusoe’s narrative blends the spiritual and the material, making hard work and economic success a sign of divine favor (Providence).
Accounting and Inventory: Crusoe’s meticulous record-keeping, his accounts of all his salvaged goods and agricultural output, reflect the burgeoning bourgeois spirit. The novel is structured like a ledger, where every hardship is offset by a spiritual or material gain.
Profit from Labor:
His labor is always productive, turning "waste" into "wealth" (e.g., growing grain from a few seeds). This reinforces the capitalist idea that effort leads to accumulation and eventual reward.
Foe: Material Absence and Narrative Value
Coetzee strips away the economic triumph to focus on the poverty of the actual experience and the market value of the story.
Mundane Reality: Susan’s account emphasizes the monotonous, often grubby reality of island life, contrasting sharply with Crusoe’s heroic narrative of self-sufficiency.
The Market for Stories: The real economic critique occurs in London, where Susan tries to sell her tale to Daniel Foe. Foe insists the story is lacking (no cannibals, no heroic climax) because it does not fit the established market demand for a sensationalized adventure story. Coetzee highlights that the value of the story is determined not by its truth, but by its ability to reinforce dominant cultural myths (like Crusoe's triumph).
3. Gender and the Invisible Woman
Robinson Crusoe: The Absent Woman
Women are virtually absent from the central action of Robinson Crusoe, reduced to the role of the wife or mother whose advice Crusoe ignores, or the widow who guards his money. The novel is a story of masculine independence and solitary endeavor.
Foe: Centering the Female Subject
Coetzee introduces Susan Barton as the narrator, fundamentally challenging the novel's gender dynamic.
Feminist Reclamation: Susan claims the right to narrate her own survival, asserting her presence in a narrative space traditionally reserved for men. She is the witness and the primary storyteller, actively seeking to engage with the literary world (Foe).
The Double Burden: Susan not only survived the island but must also survive the subsequent battle to maintain the integrity of her own story. Her struggle in London reflects the difficulty women faced in having their voices, stories, and experiences taken seriously within a male-dominated literary and historical sphere.
The True Subject: The novel suggests that the real story is not the island survival, but Susan's relentless and complex battle for self-definition and authority over her narrative.
By comparing these elements, we see Robinson Crusoe as a text that constructs a myth of individual and imperial supremacy, while Foe acts as a powerful deconstruction, digging beneath the surface of the myth to expose the realities of colonial violence, economic commodification, and narrative exclusion.
Character Motivation and Psychological State
The central figures of each novel—Crusoe and Susan Barton—are driven by fundamentally different impulses, reflecting the literary shift from the Enlightenment to Postmodernism.
Robinson Crusoe: The Rational, Driven Man
Defoe's protagonist is the embodiment of rational self-interest and purpose.
Motivation: Crusoe is driven by a desire for profit, self-improvement, and religious penance. His main goal is to replicate European civilization on the island. He views the shipwreck not as an end, but as a new project.
Psychology: His mind is characterized by order, inventory, and control. He maintains his sanity through rigorous accounting, journaling, and construction. His conversion to Christianity is portrayed as a rational, ordered process of repentance and accepting Providence. He is psychologically stable because he remains master of his domain.
Agency: Crusoe is a character of immense agency. He acts upon his environment, making tools, building shelter, and ultimately engineering his rescue.
Foe: The Searching, Fragmented Consciousness
Susan Barton's psychology is one of doubt, searching, and fragmentation.
Motivation: Susan's primary drive is to bear witness and claim her story. She is searching for her lost daughter and later for the author (Foe) who can validate her experience. Her goal is not mastery of the environment, but mastery of the narrative.
Psychology: Her mind is marked by uncertainty and insecurity. Her letters to Foe reveal her desperation to establish the "truth" of the island but also her willingness to compromise it for publication. She is psychologically defined by her relationship to language and memory, constantly battling for stability in a shifting, subjective world.
Agency: Susan's agency is limited and challenged. She is not the master of the island, and once back in England, she is at the mercy of the patriarchal literary system embodied by Foe.
Literary Style and Narrative Form
The contrasting literary styles underscore the critical relationship between the two texts.
Robinson Crusoe: Realism and Didacticism
Defoe's style is a hallmark of early Realistic fiction.
Form: The novel is an epistolary, pseudo-autobiographical travelogue. It is presented as a factual, first-hand account.
Style: The prose is plain, direct, and meticulously detailed, often listing objects and activities. This journalistic precision lends credibility to the narrative and reflects Crusoe's rational, ordered mind.
Narrative Voice: The voice is monologic and authoritative. Crusoe is the sole interpreter of events, and his perspective is presented as the unambiguous truth. The purpose is largely didactic (to teach moral and economic lessons).
Foe: Postmodernism and Intertextuality
Coetzee's style is deliberately unsettling and layered, using the original text as its canvas.
Form: The novel is broken into distinct, yet interconnected, sections: Susan's narrative on the island, her extensive letters to Foe in London, and the final, ambiguous visitation scene. This fragmentation reflects postmodern doubt.
Style: The prose is sparse, analytical, and highly self-aware. It moves from detailed realism to dreamlike sequences without warning, questioning the boundary between fact and fantasy.
Narrative Voice: The voice is dialogic and contested. The story is filtered through Susan's consciousness, her dialogue with Foe, and the final mysterious narrator. The central action is the debate over what the true story is, making the text profoundly intertextual (a conversation with another text).
By examining the shift from Crusoe's rational self to Susan's searching consciousness, and from Defoe's straightforward realism to Coetzee's metafictional ambiguity, we see that Foe functions as a complex, sophisticated mechanism for interrogating the very foundations of Western literature and imperial history.
Literary Legacy and Cultural Impact
The two novels occupy vastly different positions in the literary canon, largely due to their contrasting attitudes toward Western values.
Robinson Crusoe: The Founding Myth
Literary Status: Robinson Crusoe is considered a foundational text of the English novel, often credited as the first novel written in English.
Cultural Myth: It established the enduring "Crusoe myth"—the narrative of a resourceful, self-made man who triumphs over nature and misfortune through industry and European ingenuity. This myth reinforced the values of the Protestant work ethic, early capitalism, and the right to colonization.
Influence: It launched an entire sub-genre known as "Robinsonades" (survival narratives) and influenced economic thinkers who used Crusoe's solitary efforts to model fundamental economic principles. The naming of Friday also spawned the term "Man Friday," a now-controversial idiom for a loyal, efficient male assistant. Its legacy is one of unquestioned cultural authority.
Foe: The Deconstructive Postmodern Reply
Cultural Function: Coetzee's work functions as an anti-myth. It doesn't offer a new adventure but exposes the cultural mechanisms (language, authorship, power) that constructed the original myth. Its lasting impact is as an example of intertextuality—a novel that proves its point by rewriting its source material.
Influence: Foe's legacy is one of critical questioning. It compels readers to examine all classic literature not just for its content, but for its silences, exclusions, and embedded political and racial biases. It is a powerful argument that history is a narrative written by the victors.
Reference:
Coetzee, J. M. Foe. Secker & Warburg, 1986.
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