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Friday 2016
Friday 2016
S.M. Adams once remarked, “One of the penalties of any great work of art is that it lends itself to
various interpretations.” In Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe along with the character of Crusoe, Friday
has been the subject of various interpretations. He is the aboriginal man rescued by Crusoe from the
cannibals on the deserted island and civilized to a great extent.
Crusoe’s encounter with ‘My man Friday’ on the uninhabited island shows the European’s covert
design to Europeanize the island and civilize a barbaric community. If Crusoe represents the first
colonial mind in fiction, Friday represents all the natives from the colonized world. Crusoe’s meeting
with Friday represents the interaction of white culture with the black experience. As a subaltern or semi-
human character in the eyes of the European novelist, Friday can be compared with the character of
Caliban in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
Crusoe saved Friday miraculously from being eaten up by the cannibals. He then does not ask the
Red-Indian his name, but calls him Friday to exercise his right over him. A dogged pursuer of profit,
Crusoe thinks the able-bodied Friday will act both as a human companion and a slave.
Friday became a devoted slave because he saw Crusoe as the giver of his life. Crusoe was
delighted in Friday’s careful service and says, “Never man had a faithful, loving, sincere servant than
Friday was to me.” But Crusoe never treated him as a normal human being, but calls him “the