Foe by J M Coetzee

 ➡️ Foe by J M Coetzee (ThA)

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A Comparative and Critical Analysis of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and J. M. Coetzee’s Foe

💠 Introduction 

Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) and J. M. Coetzee’s Foe (1986) exist in an intricate intertextual relationship. While Defoe’s novel is often celebrated as the foundational text of the English realist and colonial adventure tradition, Coetzee’s Foe functions as a postmodern and postcolonial rewriting of that narrative. Coetzee takes Defoe’s tale of survival, civilization, and empire and reimagines it through the lens of silence, marginalization, and authorship. This comparative analysis explores how Foe critiques Robinson Crusoe’s colonial and patriarchal assumptions, re-centering the story around issues of language, gender, and power.

💠 Revisiting Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe

Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe is often read as a product of the Enlightenment spirit of adventure and individualism. Crusoe, the protagonist, embodies the ideals of self-reliance, rationality, and industriousness. Stranded on a deserted island, he creates his own miniature empire  naming the island, domesticating nature, and ultimately “civilizing” the native Friday. His conquest over nature mirrors the colonial impulse of the 18th century: to claim, categorize, and control.

However, beneath this triumph lies a distinct Eurocentric worldview. Crusoe’s mastery over Friday and his assumption of superiority reflect the ideological structures of colonialism  the belief that Western civilization has the right and duty to dominate others. Moreover, Defoe’s text erases voices outside this male, Christian, European perspective  a silence Coetzee’s Foe later challenges.

💠 Coetzee’s Foe: Rewriting from the Margins

Coetzee’s Foe is not merely a retelling but a radical revision of Defoe’s narrative. The story introduces a new protagonist  Susan Barton, a woman who survives on the same island as Cruso (without the “e” in his name) and Friday. Through Susan’s eyes, the reader witnesses a world stripped of Crusoe’s heroic certainty. Cruso is weary, his “civilizing” efforts are pointless, and the island feels barren rather than bountiful.

Coetzee transforms Defoe’s narrative of adventure into a meditation on storytelling, authorship, and silence. The character “Foe” in the novel represents Daniel Defoe himself  the author figure who seeks to reshape Susan’s story into a marketable narrative. This metafictional layer exposes how stories are constructed, manipulated, and owned  particularly by those in positions of power.

💠 Language, Silence, and the Voice of the Other

One of Coetzee’s most striking interventions is his treatment of Friday. In Foe, Friday’s tongue has been cut out, rendering him literally voiceless. His silence becomes a haunting symbol of the colonized subject  deprived of speech, agency, and history. While Defoe’s Crusoe teaches Friday English and names him, Coetzee’s Susan struggles to communicate with him, realizing that Friday’s story can never truly be told by others.

This silence becomes a metaphor for the limits of representation. Coetzee questions whether a writer  especially a Western one  can ever authentically speak for the oppressed. Friday’s silence thus resists appropriation; it stands as a reminder of the countless histories silenced by colonial discourse.

💠Gender and Authorship

By introducing Susan Barton, Coetzee also critiques the absence of female perspective in Defoe’s narrative. Susan’s struggle to tell her own story  and Foe’s insistence on reshaping it  reflects the patriarchal control over authorship. She becomes a metaphor for the colonized subject and for women writers who have historically been denied narrative authority.

Her repeated plea  “I wish to be the author of my own story”  encapsulates Coetzee’s feminist and postcolonial challenge to canonical literature. Where Crusoe represents the confident male conqueror, Susan embodies the marginalized storyteller seeking validation in a literary world dominated by men.

💠Colonialism and Power

Defoe’s novel presents colonialism as an act of civilization  Crusoe brings order to the island and teaches Friday Christianity and labor. Coetzee’s Foe dismantles this illusion by depicting Cruso’s futility and Friday’s enduring silence. The island becomes a space of loss rather than triumph, and the colonial relationship is stripped of its moral justification.

Coetzee exposes the violence behind the act of “civilizing”  both literal, as in the cutting of Friday’s tongue, and metaphorical, as in the rewriting of Susan’s narrative. The “master-slave” dynamic in Robinson Crusoe transforms in Foe into a writer-character dynamic, illustrating how storytelling itself can become an act of domination.

💠 Metafiction and the Act of Writing

Coetzee’s Foe is deeply self-reflexive. The text constantly questions who has the right to narrate history. By portraying Defoe as “Foe,” Coetzee critiques the process of literary creation  the way writers shape truth, impose order, and silence inconvenient voices. The novel ends ambiguously, with a narrator diving into the depths where Friday lies, suggesting that the real story  the story of the oppressed  remains submerged, unreachable through language.

This metafictional structure highlights how history and literature are always partial, constructed, and political. Coetzee thus transforms Robinson Crusoe from an imperial adventure into a postcolonial inquiry into truth and authorship.

💠Conclusion

Through Foe, J. M. Coetzee reclaims and reinterprets the legacy of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Where Defoe celebrated conquest, mastery, and civilization, Coetzee mourns the silences and exclusions those narratives produced. Foe transforms the adventure of survival into a meditation on the ethics of storytelling  who speaks, who is silenced, and who controls meaning.

Ultimately, Coetzee invites readers to look beyond the heroic myth of Crusoe and listen instead to the silences of Friday and Susan  voices that history has long ignored. The comparison between Robinson Crusoe and Foe thus becomes more than literary  it becomes a dialogue between empire and resistance, voice and silence, author and subject.

Thank you.

Be learners!!