"Robinson Crusoe" is more than just a story about a man shipwrecked on an island. The island is paradoxical place, because it simultaneously becomes a heaven and a threat. It will overwhelm and conquer Crusoe if he does not make it his paradise. The psychological tricks are survival tactics. And as many philosophers wrote that man in this sort of state of nature was a social animal, that the bestial life of the solitary savage was insecure, and that so far from being happy, the isolated natural man lived in constant fear of death. …
