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《鲁滨逊漂流记》中殖民文化对殖民地文化影响

2013-05-05 18:07

Abstract
Daniel Defoe is a great English novelist in the18th century. Robinson Crusoe, his masterpiece, is either a pioneering English adventure fiction or a typical colonial literature. It not only is a vivid narrative story about the surprising and adventuring life of Robinson, but also has the theme of colonism which is represented on a series of binary oppositional colonial discourses: the colonial country and the colony, master and slave, the white and the colored, central culture and marginal culture, civilization and savageness, Christianity and cannibals and all that. With post-colonial criticism as its visual angle, this thesis sets on the history of European colonialism, analyzes the description of characters, narrative words and the growing process of “Friday” who loses his national culture identity to deconstruct those colonial discourses, explores the strategies for colonist’s cultural colonization to those people in the colonies and reveals the dilemma of losing their national culture identity. This analysis gives us a new perspective in appreciation this classical work and a typical case study of how the colonists exert the cultural rule on the people in the colonies.
Key Words
Robinson Crusoe; colonialism; colonial discourses; cultural colonization
 
 
摘　要
《鲁滨逊漂流记》是18世纪英国作家丹尼尔.笛福的代表作，是英国历险小说的源头，也是一部带有强烈殖民主义意识的文学作品。它不仅生动地讲述了小说主人公鲁滨逊开拓荒岛的详细过程，也描绘了他驯服改造原始部族人“星期五”的手段和策略。本课题着重以“后殖民主义批评”（易小斌，2004：64-68）为视角，拟从文化背景、人物刻画以及话语分析入手，对《鲁滨逊漂流记》中所建立起的宗主国/殖民地，奴隶主/奴隶，白种人/有色人，中心文化/边缘文化，文明/野蛮，基督教/食人部族等二元对立的殖民话语体系进行解构，揭示蕴涵在作品中的殖民主义意识，并阐释鲁滨逊如何以枪炮为后盾，有计划地从语言和宗教信仰两方面对“星期五”进行赤裸裸的文化殖民，使其丧失了原有的民族文化身份，从而造成自我身份丧失的窘境。本课题为读者重读经典开辟了一个新的视角，也为读者审视殖民者的文化统治提供了一个典型个案。 （科教作文网http://zw.ΝsΕac.cOM编辑）
关键词
《鲁滨逊漂流记》；殖民主义；殖民话语；文化殖民

Introduction
 
Colonialism is the consequence of western capital accumulation. It originates from the periods of Discovery and Exploration since 15th century. Some critics think that it breaks the separation of the Old World and the New World and also encourages the exchange of both cultures. (李伯庚, 2003) Actually, from 15th to19th century, it is a long history of exploitation and invasion among European powers. They are motivated by the lure of wealth in Asia, the spice trade in India, the gold and silver in America, and the slaves of Africa after reading Marco Polo’ s Travels.（Spielvogel, 281）During this period, European countries get handsome profits and become great empires. Especially for Britain, till the reign of Queen Victoria, she becomes “the Empire on Which the Sun Never Sets” and “the Mistress of the Seas”. (Clemen, 2003) On the contrary, what they bring to the people in the colonies is ravaging their land, mocking their gods, banishing their languages, decimating their population through disease, and subjugating their children to a subservient and dependent status. (Rogers, 461-519)
However, in colonial literature, all the devil practices of those colonists have been erased, instead, we often find the messages conveyed everywhere that the whites are spreading “civilization” to non-westerners for they justifies that they are under the call of the God to “deliver the inferior races” and “civilize the savages”. Factually, it is one of popular colonial discourses for their cultural colonization or invasion. 
Daniel Defoe is a great English novelist in the18th century. Robinson Crusoe, his masterpiece, is either a pioneering English adventure fiction or a typical colonial literature. It not only is a vivid narrative story about the surprising and adventuring life of Robinson, but also has the theme of colonism. With post-colonial criticism as its visual angle, this paper sets on the history of European colonialism, analyzes the description of characters, narrative words and the growing process of “Friday” who loses his national culture identity to deconstruct those binary oppositional colonial discourses: the colonial country and the colony, master and slave, the white and the colored, central culture and marginal culture, civilization and savageness, Christianity and cannibals and the like, explores the strategies for colonist's cultural colonization to those people in the colonies and reveals the dilemma of losing their national culture identity. （科教范文网http://fw.NSEAC.com编辑发布）
 
 
I. Colonial Discourses
In colonial literatures, the colonial discourses are prevailing. Especially during the period of colonialism and imperialism, those novelists preferred to produce a succession of powerful discourses as a useful approach to spreading colonism. The westerners were good at creating “the white mythology” and constructing imaginative “others”. In Orientalism, Edward Said pointed out,
“the long-term images, stereotypes and general ideology about the ‘the Orient’ as the ‘Other’, constructed by generations of Western scholars, which produce myths about the laziness, deceit and irrationality of Orientals, as well as the reproduction and rebuttal in current debates on the Arab-Islamic world and its exchanges, particularly, with the United States.”（Selden et al., 223）
Robinson Crusoe is a typical colonial literature that has a theme of colonism which is represented on a series of binary oppositional colonial discourses: the colonial country and the colony, master and slave, the white and non-white, central culture and marginal culture, civilization and savageness, Christianity and cannibals and other discourses. With the confidence of Britain Imperialism, Robinson, the representative of those colonists continuously claimed himself as the civilized man, his culture as the central culture, thus he had the competence of enslaving “the other” and spreading “civilization” to “the inferior race”.
A. Master and Slave
We have learned from the European culture that the Renaissance derived from and rose in Italy and then spread to other European countries. With the core of “Humanism”, it advocated “Human Right” and “Liberty”. Yet, it as well supported slavery system and the evil slave deal. Since the Renaissance was an age of economy revival, too. Those capitalists gained lucrative profits from the slave deal. What’s more, Karl Marx had ever classified slave deal as one essential factor of capital accumulation. (阿勃拉莫娃，1983：2) Thus, “Human Right” and “Liberty” were only confined to the West that was considered as “the Center of the World”. Master and slave was a common discourse in colonial literature. Those scholars often constructed “the white mythology” and treated westerners as “the master” of “the other” in their works.

本文来自中国科教评价网

For another, Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe, was originally a merchant who was concerned more about own interests. Daniel Defoe once said: “Trade is the wealth of the world. Trade made the difference between rich and poor, between one nation to another.”(Jackson, 82) In this short but significant statement Defoe expressed the main ideas of the mercantilistic system that Britain was developing at the end of the 17th century. The English mercantile spirit began during the Elizabethan Age when England realized that trade generated wealth. In his eyes, as well as in Robinson’s eyes, slave deal was nothing devil but one terms of trade that could bring handsome profits.
1. Selling Xury and Buying Black Slaves to Work for His Plantation
In Robinson Crusoe, Defoe narrated that Robinson once became a slave himself of the Moors but later, when he was a free man, he sold a little boy and bought a slave for his plantation. Robinson also explained nonchalantly to his friends in Brazil that black slaves could easily be bought on the African coast.
As Xury once being enslaved with Robinson, later, the little boy was enslaved to Robinson again under the threat of being thrown into the sea when Robinson escaped from slavery. Some critics would argue that “asking him swear otherwise threw him into sea” had no vicious intention but for prudence. In addition, Robinson had ever promised that he would make Xury a great man if Xury would be true to him. Nonetheless, we had learned that the fate of Xury was once more sold to the captain who helped them out of trap. Defoe described that “Robinson was reluctant to give the boy to the captain at first for he was loath to sell the boy's liberty, but after being offered a medium, the captain had him because he would give the boy an obligation to set him free in ten years if he turned to be a Christian.”(Defoe, 26) It told that it was the civilized religious faith—Christianity that delivered Xury and his liberty. Here was another expression of the white’s mythology. Meanwhile, Xury was written to be willing to go to him, which reduced the devil practice of slavery system. As a matter of fact, at his times, he had no right to decide his fate and in colonial literature, “the other” was always described as voiceless. Hence, it justified for the slavery system. （科教范文网 Lw.nsEAc.com编辑整理）
2. Enslaving the Savage—Friday
With the rising of Britain Empire, British people were confident in their race and culture. (陈兵, 2006: 71) They believed that they were superior to “the other”. They held the faith that God was on their side and called them to deliver the savages and civilize them.
Consequently, enslaving the savage—Friday was one essential step in Robinson’s plan to realize the task. Furthermore, the former part of the novel proved that owning a slave was reasonable. Friday lived in a primitive tribe with the nature of man-eating and also a victim of the bloody custom. Robinson represented the “Civilized Western Man”, who drove away the Indies with advanced arms—gun and powder, and then he was just to deliver Friday from the cannibals. When he met Friday, he said Friday was meant to be his servant. He claimed that he would make Friday lead a “happy” life. In order to thank for his deliverance, Friday became his servant. But from that moment, the liberty was deprived. Friday had left his hometown and his relatives forever. He was forced to suffer the extremely agony of homesick and missing relatives. As we know, Friday was a man who loved his relatives very much. In the novel, when he met his father, the affection he treated his father even touched Robinson. It depicted that:
“…but when Friday came to hear him speak, and look in his face, it would have moved any one to tears, to have seen how Friday kissed him, embraced him, hugged him, cried, laughed, hallooed, jumped about, danced, sung, then cried again, wrung his hands, beat his own face and head, and then sung and jumped about again, like a distracted creature. It was a good while before I could make him speak to me, or tell me what was the matter; but when he came a little to himself he told me that it was his father.
It is not easy for me to express how it moved me to see what ecstasy and filial affection had worked in this poor savage, at the sight of his father and of his being delivered from death; nor indeed can I describe half the extravagances of his affection after this; for he went into the boat and out of the boat a great many times.  When he went in to him, he would sit down by him, open his breast, and hold his father’s head close to his bosom, half an hour together, to nourish it; then he took his arms and ankles, which were numbed and stiff with the binding, and chafed and rubbed them with his hands; …”(Defoe, 191-192)
From the version of Friday met his father again, we can find that Friday rather missed his own motherland and relatives. The white didn’t release him from disaster but had him into another one: losing liberty and longing for relatives. Although Defoe tried to persuade that it was reasonable to enslave “the other”, we can still read the miserable life of “Friday”. The latter well tell us that their lives never turned out to easier when they changed into the slaves of the westerners and Christians; instead, they were reduced to much worse conditions since the colonists never plan to bring bless to them but for their own interests. They were sheer merchants only concerning more about profits. When it turned to the history, we would found that the evil practices of slave deal were proved pretty well.
3. The History of Evil Slave Deal and Slavery System 
During this period of history, slaves, particularly black slaves were born to being commodities that could be easily bought and sold at slave markets. The slave trade became a huge, lucrative business that did not take into account the immense suffering and humiliation of these poor human beings.
 The English, French and Portuguese had traded in slaves since the middle of the16th century. Sir John Hawkins, one of queen Elizabeth’s privateers, became the first Englishman to trade in African slaves. English sea captain traded cloth, guns and cheap iron goods for West African slaves captured by local slave traders. These wretched people were brutally captured, crammed into ships and chained to the lower decks for their entire journey across the Atlantic Ocean. From the 1500s to the 1800s, about 12 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic. Some of the slaves did not survive the ordeal. About two million died during the journey. Those who survived were sold to tobacco and sugar plantation owners, mainly in Jamaica and Barbados, where they worked incredibly long hours in a very hot climate. Their living conditions were appalling. However, in Robinson Crusoe, these conditions were erased completely.
Great Britain had set up colonies on the east coast of mainland America during the first part of the 17th century. The New England colonies engaged in a “triangular slave trade”, which involved slaves. Sugar cane was brought from the West Indies to New England where it was refined and made into rum. The rum was then traded on the West Coast of Africa for black slaves. The slaves who endured the extenuating journey across the Atlantic were sold to plantation owners in the West Indies.
Tobacco, cotton and sugar cane were the most important products of the British colonies of the southeastern American mainland. Black slaves on huge plantations cultivated them. The misery and suffering of the plantation slaves inspired the American author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, to write the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a touching story that intensified anti-slavery sentiment in the North. Slavery in the South was one of the reasons that led to the American Civil War of 1861. In 1865 the South lost the War and Slavery was abolished in the United States.
In Robinson Crusoe, Robinson was the spokesman of Defoe as well as those merchants and capitalists who supported slave trade and slavery system. Although there were no furious words as irritating as in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the evil practice of claiming “the other’s” human right and liberty was obvious.
B. The Superior Race and the Inferior Race
If the colonial discourse of master and slave was on account of economic factor, the white mythology of the superior race and the other peoples as the inferior races was the basic context that Western scholars often constructed. Especially when British from a small island country rose sharply and became an Empire, such accepted discourse was dominated their culture. Besides, English scholar Elleke Boehmer had ever pointed out that: “British are a nation that inherently identified the rest of the world as ‘the other’.” (陈兵, 2006: 72) Geographically, Britain was featured as a long and narrow island surrounded by the sea. Yet in their mind, provided that those races were belong to non-whites whose images were likely to suffer twisted as “the other” to stress the civilization and just of British people.

In Robinson Crusoe, like many other colonial literature, the whites were described as the “the superior race” and cliché as the just and kind people; by contrast, “the other”—the blacks along the African coast and the American Indies were identified as “the inferior race” and stereotyped as the barbarous creature with primitive lifestyle, uncivilized behavior, awkward and ugly way of dancing and the most inhumane convention of eating man’s flesh. （转载自中国科教评价网www.nseac.com ）
1. The Just and Kind Whites
In the story of Robinson’s adventuring life, he met four captains and an English widow，all of who represented the civilized and just westerners.
The first captain he met was the father of one of his friends, who served him to go to sea for the first time. The first trial was a failure: their ship met terrible storm and sank, though they were saved. Despite he was at a great loss, he still turned to Robinson with a very grave and concerned tone like his father to persuade him never to go to sea anymore. The second master he fell acquainted with was the master of a ship in London. This captain was an honest and plain dealing man. Although this captain died soon, they built a strict friendship. With the captain's integrity, honesty and hospital, he learned a lot and set up for a trader. Later, the captain’s widow continued to support him as kind as the captain, even if she was in unfavorable conditions. The third kind captain delivered Robinson from the sea when he escaped out of slavery. He was not only kind to save but also generous delivered goods for him without taking anything from him, for he believed that,
“‘I have saved your life on no other terms than I would be glad to be saved myself, and it may one time or other be my lot to be taken up in the same condition; besides,' said he, ' when I carry you to the Brazils, so great that a way from your own country, if I should take from you what you have, you will be starved there, and then I only take away that life I have given. No, no, Seignior Inglese,’ says he (Mr. Englishman), ‘I will carry you thither in charity, and those things will help you to buy you subsistence there and your passage home again.’”(Defoe, 25)
Defoe also depicted that this master was charitable not only in his proposal, but also just in his performance. In Brazil, he recommended Robinson to the house of a good honest man like himself. During his running the plantation, he brought him all sorts of tools, ironwork and utensils necessary for his plantation, and which were of great use to him. Before Robinson left Brazil’s plantation for sailing, he appointed the trustable captain as his heir. Then when Robinson came back, the integrated old man reclaimed all the property to him and also gave him useful advice.

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If above all were described as civilized people with good words for their deed good to them, the fourth captain was received the good deed from him still portrayed as the civilized westerners. This one was also a kind westerner with wise mind. Defoe repeatedly used the same words to describe those men in order to show westerners' kindness, honesty, integrity, and generosity, which showcased their civilization.
The second symbol showed their civilization was that they had the sense of making a contract. When the saved Spaniard was pointed to deliver other of his companions, they made a contract. Another example during saving the captain and reclaiming the ship, Robinson made two conditions as a verbal contract. At length, they carried out as what they made beforehand. Here strengthened the westerner civilization.
The third evidence of civilization was the great amount of narrative words to display the positive image of Robinson. Ingles once described this character was “a real capitalist”. (Ian, 1951) As the sole survivor of a shipwreck, he relied on his faith in God, intelligence and Protestant upbringing which decreed that the self-made man had to depend on himself, his own hard work and ingenuity in order to survive. He was not only mastered the skill of making tools, owning the modern science knowledge, emphasizing on humanism, order and law, and advocating honesty and loyalty. It narrated that he had all the noble and lottery personality of people. Defoe did a good job to create a situation where Robinson, who represented the 'Civilized Western Man', dominated nature and set up his 'colony' on the desert island. A large amount of details covered the evil colonial history as well as Crusoe’s colonial attitude—his possessiveness, his desire to exploit others, his willingness to enslave another human being. When he met Friday he felt that Friday was meant to become his slave, or servant, and that he had to be converted to Christianity.