Chapters XIII–XVII
Summary: Chapter XIII — I Sow My Grain
After planting his grain in the dry season when it cannot sprout, Crusoe learns from his mistake, and afterward makes a table of the dry and rainy months to facilitate his farming. He also discovers that the wooden stakes he drove into the ground when building his “bower,” or country house, have sprouted and grown. Over the course of several years they grow into a kind of sheltering hedge providing cool shade. Crusoe also teaches himself to make wicker baskets, imitating the basket makers he remembers from his childhood. By this time he lacks only tobacco pipes, glassware, and a kettle.
Summary: Chapter XIV — I Travel Quite Across the Island
Finally carrying out his earlier wish to survey the island thoroughly, Crusoe proceeds to the western end, where he finds he can make out land in the distance. He concludes it belongs to Spanish America. Crusoe is reluctant to explore it for fear of cannibals. He catches a parrot that he teaches to speak, and discovers a penguin colony. He takes a goat kid as a pet, keeping it in his bower where it nearly starves until Crusoe remembers it. By this point, Crusoe has been on the island two years, and his moments of satisfaction alternate with despairing moods. He continues to read the Bible and is consoled by the verse that tells him God will never forsake him.
Summary: Chapter XV — I Am Very Seldom Idle
Crusoe spends months making a shelf for his abode. During the rainy months he plants his crop of rice and grain but is angered to discover that birds damage it. He shoots several of the birds and hangs them as scarecrows over the plants, and the birds never return. Crusoe finally harvests the grain and slowly learns the complex process of flour grinding and bread making. Determined to make earthenware pots, Crusoe attempts to shape vessels out of clay, failing miserably at first. Eventually he learns to shape, fire, and even glaze his pots. Thinking again of sailing to the mainland, Crusoe returns to the place where the ship’s boat has been left upturned by the storm. He tries for weeks to put it right side up but is not strong enough.
Summary: Chapter XVI — I Make Myself a Canoe
“Poor Robin Crusoe! Where are you? Where have you been? How come you here?”
(See Important Quotations Explained)
Resolving to make a canoe, Crusoe selects and cuts down an enormous cedar. He spends many months hacking off the branches, shaping the exterior, and hollowing out the insides. The result is a far larger canoe than he has ever seen before. He now realizes the mistake of not previously considering its transport, since for him alone it is immovable. He considers building a canal to bring the water to the canoe, but he calculates it would take too long and abandons the idea. By this point, four years have passed. He reflects that all his wants are satisfied, since he already has everything that he can possibly use on his island. He feels gratitude imagining how much worse off he could be now. He also reflects on several calendar coincidences that he finds remarkable: he left his family on the same day he was enslaved by the Moor; he escaped from the ship near Yarmouth on the same day that he escaped from Sallee; and he was born on the same day he was cast ashore on the island. Crusoe undertakes to make himself some new clothing out of animal skins, and he also constructs an umbrella. Building a smaller canoe, he sets out on a tour around the island. He is caught in a dangerous current that threatens to take him out to sea and away from the island forever, and when he is saved he falls to the ground in gratitude. Crusoe hears a voice say his name repeatedly on his return, asking where he has been, and Crusoe discovers that it is his parrot Poll.
Analysis: Chapters XIII–XVII
With his survival no longer in question, Crusoe begins to redefine himself not as a poor castaway, but as a successful landowner. We see again how important his attitude is. He begins to refer to his island dwelling as his “home” and his “castle,” and when he constructs a shady retreat inland, he calls it his “bower” or “country seat,” both references having upper-class connotations. He refers to the totality of his land as his “plantations” and even refers to his goats as his “cattle.” All these terms suggest that his relationship to the island is becoming more proprietary, involving a much greater sense of proud ownership than before, though of course the ownership is a fiction, since there is no deed to this land. Naturally, he still has gloomy moods in which he bemoans his fate and views the island as a prison. But now the alternation between his different moods allows us to see how subjective his situation is and how nearly impossible it is to define Crusoe’s island experience objectively. Totally dependent on his frame of mind, it is, as he says, “my reign, or my captivity, which you please.”