Friday's Blackness
“The man squatted down beside me. He was black: a Negro with a head of fuzzy wool, naked save for a pair of rough drawers.” (6)
This image of Friday opens the story. We know nothing of him when we see him at this moment and we know nothing of Susan’s whereabouts. It is almost a natural image and yet it is inflected with Susan’s socially conditioned view: she remarks on his race. His race is what defines him in her eyes at this moment; indeed his race is central to the entire narrative. It is relevant that we see his blackness and that Susan remarks upon it in the beginning of a novel that is about the determining aspect of race.
Cruso's Terraces
“The terraces covered much of the hillside... twelve levels of terracing at the time I arrived, each some twenty paces deep and banked with stone walls a yard thick and at their highest as high as a man’s head. The stones that made up the walls had been dug out of the earth and borne from elsewhere one by one.” (33)
The image of the terraces that Cruso builds all over the island for no purpose depicts the absurd condition of Cruso’s existence on the island—and of the Robinson Cruso fantasy more broadly. The terraces serve no purpose whatsoever as there is nothing to plant on them. The image reveals the tedious reality of the island paradise fantasy: there’s nothing to do on the island. It also illustrates the stubborn irrationality of Cruso’s character.
Cruso as King
“One evening, seeing him as he stood on the Bluff with the sun behind him all red and purple, staring out to sea, his staff in his hand and his great conical hat on his head, I though: He is a truly kingly figure; he is the true king of the island.” (37)
This image of Cruso staring out at the sea stands out - indeed, as Susan represents it - as an image of “the true king of the island,” the island with only two other inhabitants. Cruso is the leader of the other two, the one who gets the last word, as Susan consciously concedes in any disagreement and as Friday can’t disagree. He’s a mad king and his mandate is absurd. There is certainly something comical in the “conical” hat as his crown, but the image captures the essence of his reign.
Friday's Wound
“What I did not tell you was that for his dancing he would wear nothing but the robes and wig, When he stood still he was covered to the ankles; but when he spun, the robes would stand out stiffly about him, so much so that one might have supposed the purpose of his dancing was to show forth the nakedness underneath.” (118)
This pivotal image has an epiphanic effect in the novel. Friday’s character is difficult to read but in many ways this is the result of the fact that he’s being mediated through Susan. We only get to know Friday in the way that she knows him, which has its limitations due to her lack of imagination and her often stilted interactions with him. When we see his robes fall open, we face an aspect of his condition that Susan hasn’t yet been able to articulate. This image comes late. She tells it to Foe. She hasn’t revealed it prior to this, as though she’s been in denial until the conversation with Foe. When we learn the extent of Friday’s mutilation ourselves, we can come to see him more fully. One of the other striking aspects of the image is that it shows Friday dancing freely, exposing his scars in a state of innocence, as though he has forgotten or has grown oblivious to his own traumatic history.
