The Tongue (Symbol)
The tongue is one of the strongest symbols in the novel, representing the power of speech, truth, and narrative. Friday’s lack of a tongue is more than a physical handicap. The effect of having his tongue removed is spiritual and psychological, shaping who he is as a person. His inability to tell his own story is a part of what defines him as a character, transforming him into someone whose story is forever unknown, a mystery, apart from one glaring fact: he has suffered. The removal of the tongue in this way stands in for the silencing of a history of abuse.
Repressed Female History (Allegory)
The broad narrative of the novel, in which an unknown female castaway survives harrowing trials, works as an indirect allegory for female versions of history. It is indirect because it functions through the meta-scope of the novel, rather than through the novel’s central narrative. It is by inserting a female view of things into an iconic, classic male narrative that we are able to glimpse a female view of history, and to consider the broader effect of its suppression. Without the female perspective, Robinson Crusoe is a masculine, colonial fantasy. It’s by being held up against this new female revision that the suppression of female narratives and other realities becomes apparent. It’s possible to see that a masculine fantasy such as Robinson Crusoe is only possible through the suppression of other views: the female, the subaltern.
Storytelling (Motif)
The construction of stories is a recurring motif in the novel: how they are built, who builds them, and the decisions that effect their meaning and proceeding histories. In contrast to Friday who can’t tell his own story is Foe, the expert author who is known for hearing confessions and turning them into famous, sensational tales. This pairing of a mute man beside a virtual magician illuminates the power of storytelling. In the middle is Susan, the mediator, the “Muse” (as she calls herself), the one who delivers the stories to Foe and resists his version. She argues against his plan to sensationalize her life events in favor of telling the story for the man who has no voice. The questions surrounding storytelling are brought up in the first chapter and continue through to the final passage.
The Island (Symbol)
Though Susan begins to reminisce about her time there, the island in Coetzee’s novel doesn’t work in the way that it works in Defoe’s novel as an idealized space, if not a utopia, outside of civilization and human society, where a man can learn to live primitively. The island in Foe works instead to interrogate and deconstruct that classic island symbolism. In Coetzee’s novel, the simple life that Cruso lives is shown to be tedious and boring, rendering his existence absurd. Rather than living some pure existence by living apart from human society, Cruso is shown to be anti-social if not mildly tyrannical, devolving into dementia. The wind is incessant, and all there is to eat is the same bitter lettuces and fish every day. The only person for whom island life is arguably preferable is Friday, who has no place in the society of his captors. Susan thinks more than once that he would have been better off left on the island, a place where he may experience a form of freedom—freedom from the society of the slaver and colonizer.
Cannibalism (Motif)
Discussion of Friday’s alleged cannibalism and of other cannibals recurs throughout the novel. Cruso claims that there are more cannibals on the island, though they never see them. Throughout the novel, Susan is afraid that Friday harbors a latent cannibal mentality. She imagines on different occasions that once you have a taste for human flesh you may never lose it. The idea is put into her head by Cruso, along with many of his other mixed-up versions of Friday’s past. The idea of cannibalism works as a motif in the novel to show the fearful mindset of the white colonizer toward a person of African origin. Though Susan travels far and wide with Friday and though she’s never seen him do anything aggressive, the fear nonetheless returns. Susan’s irrational fear reflects the broader fears of a colonial, slaver society. The fear of cannibalism acts easily as a justification for enslaving and “taming” the alleged cannibal; but as Susan’s irrational fear shows, the fear is internal to the white colonizer, the haunting of a guilt-ridden mind.
