Religion

Robinson's development

In Daniel Defoe’s novel, Robinson Crusoe we notice Robinson’s relationship to religion. The young adventurer and merchant's son has received a Christian and Puritan upbringing in his middle-class family in York. At the beginning of the narrative, however, he does not seem particularly religious and obedient. He leaves home without notifying his parents. But on the ship to London, he gets caught in a violent storm that makes him think of his father:

in this agony of mind, I made many vows and resolutions that if it would please God to spare my life in this one voyage, if ever I got once my foot upon dry land again, I would go directly home to my father, and never set it into a ship again while I lived; that I would take his advice, and never run myself into such miseries as these any more. (Chapter 1, 41%) 

A week later he is shipwrecked for the first time: “I could hear him softly to himself say, several times, “Lord be merciful to us! we shall be all lost! we sha...