Female Experience
Unlike Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe that centers on male experience in the context of male adventure, Coetzee’s Foe comes from the perspective of a female. By revisiting Robison Crusoe from this perspective, Coetzee calls attention to the absence of female experience in the iconic castaway tale. In his version, Susan is not only the protagonist and central subject of events, her experience is also objectified and analyzed by the character Foe. Foe wants to know her experience in Bahia and on the high seas so as to write a sensational story about it. Susan resists this objectification, feeling that the scandalous aspects of her experience are not relevant to the tale she wants told.
Slavery
Though experiences of the slave trade such as the plantation or the middle passage are not directly represented or dramatized in Foe, the theme of slavery is one of the most important in Coetzee’s reimagining of Robinson Crusoe. In Defoe’s original, the trauma of slavery is no source of tension; Friday is a cannibal who becomes a good Christian. In Foe, however, Friday - tongueless, castrated, scarred - is the clear victim of a broader historical trauma. The problem is that he is unable to tell his own story. The narrative suppression of the violence of slavery however is arguably one of the central experiences of slavery. While heavily metafictional, Coetzee’s novel thus becomes a historical novel, indirectly illustrating one of the most important aspects of slavery: the silencing of its victims.
Storytelling
The novel Foe, which revisits the canonical story Robinson Crusoe, is more than just a retelling of a familiar tale. Coetzee reimagines the novel to interrogate the process of narrative construction itself and to unveil the tyranny of authorship and reveal the manipulative powers of the storyteller. The struggle that ensues between Foe and Susan Barton over which story needs telling exposes the ethical responsibilities of writers, particularly in relation to the question of historical violence.
Primitivism
The story of Robinson Crusoe may be read as a romanticization of primitive experience and an escape from civilization. Coetzee’s Foe however turns that on its head. When Susan Barton arrives on Cruso’s island, a place with plenty of fish and no hostile animals, she is stricken by the tedium of the primitive good life as well as relentless wind, repetitive meals, and the overwhelming sense of meaninglessness. There’s nothing to write on and nothing to read. Cruso has renounced all attention to personal history and committed himself to the Sisyphean task of leveling the ground into useless terraces. Primitivism, as rendered by Coetzee, is a an experience of existential crisis, depressive boredom, and delusional madness.
Language
The powers and functions of language are continually examined in Foe as Friday’s inability to speak brings up questions about the usefulness of language. At one point Susan claims, “what I fear most is that after years of speechlessness the very notion of speech may be lost on him. When I take the spoon from his hand (but is it truly a spoon to him, or a mere thing? – I do not know), and say Spoon, how can I be sure he does not think I am chattering to myself as a magpie or an ape does, for the pleasure of hearing the noise I make, and feeling the play of my tongue, as he himself used to find pleasure in playing his flute?” (57) In the way that Susan questions the role of language in Friday’s experience, Coetzee's novel similarly questions the usefulness and recklessness of language in human society more broadly. What good is language if it doesn’t tell the truth of history—its violence and horror—but only spins yarns about paradise islands where cannibals learn to become good Christians? This might be one of the most important questions in Coetzee’s novel.
Fantasies of Colonialism
Daniel Defoe’s novel is arguably a fantasy of male independence and primitive survival that springs directly from experiences of colonialism. The high seas adventuring and remote island survival are romanticized scenarios related to colonial exploits. Coetzee’s novel brings realist questions into Defoe’s romanticized scenarios with his self-reflexive, metafictional interrogations of subaltern experience.
Humanitarianism
Has Susan Barton done a good humanitarian deed by taking Friday away from the island, bringing him to England where he is terrified and where they become vagrants on London's streets? When the ship that takes them away first arrives on the island, Friday runs and hides. Susan however insists they can’t leave without him, stating, “inasmuch as Friday is a slave and a child, it is our duty to care for him in all things, and not abandon him to a solitude worse than death” (39). Later, as she roams England with him entirely dependent on her, she questions her decision and frequently thinks he’d be better off on the island. Her initial impulse to bring him however is definitively a humanitarian one, insofar as she calls it a “duty,” a requirement of one human to another. Without considering the consequences, this humanitarian impulse is shown to be problematic. The life she wants Friday to have turns out not only to be totally unattainable, but also arguably not as good.
