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... every to survive is to die, is a powerful statement, illustrating Crusoes and by extension, the Westerners need for accumulation and domination; it is the antithesis of Fridays mindset and it highlights another example of Crusoes tendency to regression. After an apparent move towards transcendence with his shift away from the calendar and its accumulated time Crusoe contradicts himself with this oxymoronic statement and relapses into a thought pattern thats neurotic and ontologically antagonistic. In just his fourth journal entry, Crusoe, though having exhibited those signs of the possibility of a new way of thinking, shows that on some level hes fighting hard to maintain the social structures bequeathed him by his Western upbringing: But it must wait till later. Later...
The wealth of promise in that simple word! What suddenly dawned upon me is my need to fight against time, that is to say, to imprison time. Insofar as I live from day to day, I let myself drift; time slips through my fingers, and in losing time I lose myself. Indeed, the whole problem of this island may be expressed in terms of time, and it is no accident if, at the lowest level, I started by living here as though I were outside time. When I began a calendar I regained possession of myself...
None of this first harvest of wheat and barley must be swallowed up by the present. It must be preserved as a source of strength for the future. (Tournier 60 - 61) Shown again explicitly is the thinking that the present is not something to be enjoyed and lived to the fullest to be lived passionately, as with Friday but a finite entity that must be conquered and collected. Similarly exposed are masochistic Puritanical tendencies towards self-denial and self-negation. Most significant is the fact that despite signs of spiritual awakening, Western Puritanical tendencies appear to be inexorably entrenched in Crusoes being. Continuing in the Western vein of thinking, he constructs a water clock which is, an immense comfort to him... he had the feeling that time could no longer slip away from him, that he had regulated and mastered time a word, tamed it, just as the whole island was gradually to be tamed by the strength and resolution of a single man (Tournier 65).
With the construction of the clock and his mastery of time, Crusoe begins on a campaign to fully dominate the island animals, land and vegetation alike are cultivated and domesticated. He also fortifies, arming the island to the teeth, another vestige of Western thinking. Whats more, he writes an island charter completely superfluous endeavor to symbolize and consolidate power, control and domination in his mind. About this time though, solitude begins to weigh heavily on his moral structure. He wavers between transcendence and regression as he begins to question his sanity, despite the armor of strenuous building and organization with which he protects himself. Simultaneously, the rigid structure surrounding his moral fabric begins to show signs of failure.
It was as though the framework, fragile but feverishly strengthened, which he built around himself existed only to protect the evolution of a new man, destined eventually to emerge (Tournier 79). Meanwhile, he denies that gradual evolution through the, punishments he inflicted on himself (Tournier 79), the straight jacket of conventions (Tournier 79), and his, rigid adherence to a time schedule (Tournier 79). Time passes and Crusoe forgets (symptomatic of modern society) in the routine of small tasks and ceremonies that for a moment he had dreamed of other things (Tournier 91). The unexpected stopping of the water clock proves a catalytic moment. Crusoe feels as if hes on holiday the incessant drip of the clock no longer dictates his every moment. Later he labels the event the moment of innocence (Tournier 90) an instructive one in his relation to Speranza.
It was as though in ceasing to be related to each other according to their used their abuse things had returned to their own essence, were flowering in their own right and existing simply for their own sakes, seeking no other warrant than their own fulfillment (Tournier 90). The stoppage was also impetus for his vision of another island, a place more alive, warmer and more fraternal, which his mundane preoccupations had concealed from him (Tournier 90). Importantly, it lent him the epiphany that, change was possible without decay! (Tournier 90). Though the breakthrough brought upon him with the stopping of the clock didnt end his obsessions with the future and the domination of the island, it led to his encounter with the cave and with Speranza as a symbol of maternity and the feminine and his acceptance of her as a living being; the awakening is undeniably in motion. The paradigm-structure of his Western religious thinking is fatally cracked and he begins to adopt instead a marked sense of nature-imbued spirituality. During his time in the cave, the better part of four days, Crusoe is not inhibited by any of his neurotic obsessions with time and work, or the efficient marriage of the two.
Instead he is exploring, in search of that spirituality that will allow him to fill the void inside that solitude has highlighted and which Western religion has not been able to reconcile. He is, suspended in a happy eternity (Tournier 101), and becoming more and more aware of a spirituality thats in tune with the natural savagery of the island. Birthed literally and figuratively from the cave, a searing pain assailed his eyes and he covered his face with his hands (Tournier 105), emerging much the same physically (albeit lighter) but changed on the inside. Despite the transmutation experienced in the cave, his first action on exiting is to start the water clock again perhaps the novels most explicit show of Crusoes neurotic regression after spiritual gain.
While hes getting closer to the salvation of the circular process, hes still wallowing in the grasp of Western thought, which is symbolized by the clock and its preoccupation with linear time. Though not ready to shake the remaining chains of his Western beliefs, hes aware of an ongoing fundamental change. Previously, he writes in his journal, there had always been something insecure in me, an imbalance that was a source of mental sickness and distress. I sought to console myself with visions of a house, the house in which I would end my days, built out of massive blocks of granite, resting on unshakable foundations.
I indulge no longer in that dream. I no longer need it (Tournier 107). Despite his experiences in the cave and the spirituality growing within him perhaps because of it Crusoe fights to keep alive those Western tenets of thinking he brought to the island. As the clock continues to drip, he takes the scope of his endeavors to a new level with the initiation of a rice paddy massive undertaking in domination. Meanwhile he ends his exploration of the cave as hes reac...
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Research essay sample on Time And Spiritual Transcendence In Crusoe
