Crusoe’s island
The unnamed island where Crusoe spends 28 years, which the text places in the mouth of the Orinoco off Venezuela; pinned there as an inference. His castle, the footprint, the cannibal shore and Friday’s rescue are all on it.
At a glance
| Source | Author | Role | In one line |
|---|---|---|---|
| Robinson Crusoe | Daniel Defoe | setting | Twenty-eight years of castaway life, from the footprint to Friday to rescue. |
Robinson Crusoe — Daniel Defoe (1719)
Source: Original · Readwise highlight
This I understood to be no more than the sets of the tide, as going out or coming in; but I afterwards understood it was occasioned by the great draft and reflux of the mighty river Orinoco, in the mouth or gulf of which river, as I found afterwards, our island lay; and that this land, which I perceived to be W. and NW., was the great island Trinidad, on the north point of the mouth of the river.
- Role: setting
- In the book: Sole survivor of the wreck, Crusoe lands on 30 September 1659, reckons his latitude at nine degrees twenty-two minutes north and names the place the Island of Despair; he builds his fortified ‘castle’, farms and is converted. In his fifteenth year he finds a single naked footprint on the shore, and fear of the cannibals rules the next years until he rescues Friday, from whom he learns that the island lies in the mouth of the Orinoco with Trinidad to the west. In his twenty-eighth year an English ship’s mutineers land, Crusoe and Friday help the captain retake the ship, and he leaves on 19 December 1686.
- Why it matters: The island is the novel’s central setting for twenty-eight years; its creek, hill, castle and cannibal shore frame nearly every scene.
- Real vs. fictional: The island is fictional; Defoe drew partly on Alexander Selkirk’s years on Más a Tierra in the Pacific.
- Where is it?: ⚠️ Crusoe reckons his latitude as ‘nine degrees twenty-two minutes north’, sees high land fifteen or twenty leagues to the west, and later learns from Friday that the island lies in the mouth or gulf of the Orinoco, about forty miles off the mainland, with Trinidad to the west and north-west. Wikipedia likewise places it off the Venezuelan coast near the mouth of the Orinoco. Pinned at the Orinoco Delta; Tobago, which claims the island, is the main alternative.