Exploration of Values in Robinson Crusoe, Odyssey,...

Exploration of Values in Robinson Crusoe, The Odyssey, The Tempest and Gulliver’s Travels In the novels and epics of Robinson Crusoe, The Odyssey, The Tempest and Gulliver’s Travels the reader encounters an adventurer who ends up on an island for many years and then returns back home. These four stories have another point in common: they are all unusually popular. There is something very appealing to the popular imagination about such narratives. In this essay I will explore the vision of life (or at least some aspects of it) which this novel holds out to us and which is significantly different from the others, no matter how apparently similar the narrative form might be. Very simply put, these four stories have a†¦show more content†¦In some cases he may be so transformed in the wilderness that he does not want to return (e.g., Gulliver) and remains permanently estranged from the society he left or else has to be dragged protesting back to civilization. One major source of interest is the way in which the hero copes with the very different physical world in which he finds himself. He brings to the island certain attitudes, certain perceptions, certain skills—things we are familiar with—all of which have enabled him to cope more or less successfully in the civilized world. These, together with his character, are now exposed and tested as never before, for he has no habitual