Coetzee´s Foe and Defoe´s Robinson Crusoe Contrasting Stories of Friday

“Speak” is book about a young girl who loses her voice after being raped and slowly gains it back over time. Laurie Halse Anderson uses an internal voice throughout the book to show the havoc that is attacking Melinda’s mind. This adds to the theme of being outcast and isolated because the she has no one to really talk to.

Danticat uses her Uncles loss of voice, to show us how different and hard it can be to not have a voice at all. When Danticat was 9 years old, her uncle was diagnosed with throat cancer and the doctors told him that he would need a radical laryngectomy to save his life. Danticat recalls her uncle, a bishop, having a grand voice, a voice that would invoke people to listen when she states, “he would model Fignolé’s forceful and direct Creole diction and speak in a clear, powerful bass, allowing only a few well-chosen pauses” (Danticat p.31) However, as a bishop, her father recalls a time when he’d watched his brother give a

Our actions are what define us as humans. Words are part of our actions. Therefore, our voice defines who we are, so when we change our voice we change the fabric of who we are. Zadie Smith, the author of “Speaking in Tongues”, knows this first hand when she moved from a working class district of London to Cambridge. She felt that she was able to have both, the Cambridge voice and the Willesden voice, and use them to expand her base of knowledge; like learning a new language. However, as she became more engrossed in her studies the core of her personality that kept her at her roots disappeared and she was consumed by the Cambridge life style. She lost herself in Cambridge because she was imitating the Cambridge life style and according to Susan Blackmore’s essay “Strange Creatures” humans imitate naturally to learn. As humans imitate they change and because they change, their voices change as well; building an idea within us that our voices need to be unified, or singular. When we change voices we change mindsets making it incredibly difficult to switch between two mindsets on a whim. Our voices must be singular in order for us to correctly display our identity to the world.

“We feel that our voices are who we are, and that to have more than one, or to use different versions of a voice for different occasions, represents, at best, a Janus-faced duplicity, and at worst, the loss of our very souls” (Smith 133).

In Frederick Douglass’ The Heroic Slave, readers are first introduced to Madison Washington, an enslaved black man, through the perspective of the narrator, Mr. Listwell, a white, northern traveller. It is through this description of his physical features that we are able to catch a glimpse of Washington’s personality - one which defies and breaks stereotypes of black men in the nineteenth century.

In the book, Day by Elie Wiesel, the author talks about a man name Eliezer who is faced with issues weather if he can embrace his holocaust survival. Eliezer is a survivor from the holocaust who faces emotional struggle with life or death. This will begin his journey in which he will embark challenges he shall face. A challenge that’s a major part in this novel is having to deal with physical and metal issues which were conflicted by the world he once lived thru that causes suicidal thoughts and an end to his life.

become a tedious mass of words. Voice is a logical facet of writing which, when

Winston Churchill once said “If you are going through hell, keep going.” Within the novels The Man Who Was Thursday, Brave New World, and 1984, there are characters who both do and do not embody and give truth to Churchill’s statement.

This is an extremely important piece of the story in developing the theme of the story that he is going through a religious transformation. All of the diction syntax and figurative language is geared toward making this earthquake seem as bad as Defoe can make it sound. It has all of that build up and then at the end he states that he never had one serious thought of religion. It shows that he is still on the island and still learning from his previous sins, still in metamorphosis. For example, he uses the word overthrown instead of something like undone or destroyed, it has a more negative connotation.

Does Robinson Crusoe change throughout the novel? The tale of Robinson Crusoe was published 298 years ago, it’s no surprise many people have developed their own arguments as to whether Crusoe had evolved over the course of the story or not. Some believe before Crusoe took to the sea, he was an unreligious man who had no respect for God or his Father. Then at the end of his time on the island, Crusoe had been converted into a firm believer of God. There are valid arguments made against this theory that Crusoe had changed, such as the fact he approved and used slaves himself without ever any change of heart. Crusoe’s character goes from unbelieving in God to the complete opposite and this can be contributed to his experiences at sea and on

Admire- “To have a high opinion of; feel great respect for.” –American Heritage Student Dictionary

It has been observed that when placed in harsh or unusual conditions, people tend to look to spiritual support to help them overcome adversity. In Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe not only depicts the struggle of a man abandoned on a deserted island, but also depicts Crusoe's repentance for past disobedience against his father and humanity as well as his acceptance of religion into his life. Crusoe's religious beliefs, however, do not remain consistent; in fact, he later uses religion as a justification for murder and other immoral acts. Crusoe accepts religion into his life, repenting for his sins throughout the novel, however his faith is not genuine, only becoming strong when he experiences misfortunes.

Characteristics of the genre adventure, consist of a heroic protagonist, a journey or quest, unusual locations, and action and danger. Characteristics of the genre realistic fiction consist of events that could happen in real life, and the themes represent human experiences.

John Maxwell Coetzee is a South African essayist, novelist , linguist, literary critic and translator. He has also won the Noble prize in the Literature category. The following lecture ‘The Novel in Africa’ was given by him in the University of California in Doreen B.Townsend Center for the Humanities.

The theme of "man’s relationship to God and the universe" presented in Epistle 1 of Alexander Pope’s "An Essay on Man" complements Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Crusoe is an inconsistent character who turns to God whenever he is in need, yet fails to maintain respect for nature and for his fellow man. In the first year of Robinson Crusoe’s solitary life on the island, he falls ill and has a terrifying dream that alters his awareness of his place in the universe and God’s control of it. This experience leads him to contemplate his past ingratitude and to embark on a life of piety, reading the Bible daily, though without a drastic or permanent change in his character.