Defoe, Wickramasinghe and foe

Daniel Defoe published Robinson Crusoe in the year 1719. It is sometimes considered to be the first novel in English. The book is a fictional autobiography of the title character – a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Venezuela, encountering Native Americans, captives and mutineers before being rescued.

There are many interpretations for the story of ‘Robinson Crusoe’, including one related to Sri Lankan history.

Some say that a source for Defoe’s novel may have been Robert Knox’s account of his abduction by the king of ‘Ceylon’. ‘Robinson Crusoe’ contains a very complicated narrative style. Also it does not have a strong love story.

But still ‘Robinson Crusoe’ is one of the most widely published books in the world apart from some of the sacred texts. Although it has been published nearly 300 years ago, still is subjected to literary discussions.

When Robinson Crusoe set foot on the island and declared it his own, a new page was inscribed in the history of colonisation. This novel has been considered as a pure symbol for European Colonialism. James Joyce has noted that Robinson Crusoe is the true prototype of the British colonist. Crusoe wanted to replicate his very own society on the island where he was forced to live.

Several times in the novel, Crusoe refers himself as the ‘king’ and at the very end of the novel the island is explicitly referred to as a colony. The exact relationship between coloniser and the colonised is depicts between Crusoe and his servant Friday.

As always colonisers believe, Crusoe saw the natives of the island as cannibals. The only natives in the story are the members of two separate warring tribes, who landed occasionally on his island in order to have cannibalistic feasts.

The novel ‘Robinson Crusoe’ represents the canon of colonist discourse. The canon of English literature has encountered over time a considerable amount of readings that challenge the traditionally established perspective towards canonical works.

In the perspective of postcolonialism, literature has always been a deeply political and cultural phenomenon.

Postcolonial theories in literature have been one of the forces that have shaken assumed attitudes towards canonical texts, questioning, for example, the image that they project of the process and consequences of European colonisation.

Using a character or characters, or the basic assumptions of a British canonical text, writers from the former colonies rewrite those canonical works.

This is precisely what authors such as J. M Coetzee and Samuel Selvon accomplished with, respectively, ‘Foe’ (1986) and ‘Moses Ascending’ (1975) in regard to Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’. Postcolonial literature provides an avenue for the orient/other to represent itself, instead of the hitherto practice whereby the west would represent the other.

Many people will wonder how our Gamperaliya and ‘Robinson Crusoe’ are interrelated.

As professor Wimal Dissanayake claims in his article named ‘Towards a Decolonised English: South Asian Creativity in Fiction’, Martin Wickremasinhge is a novelist who has worked on uniting the imported form of novel and native consciousness. Gamperaliya inaugurated a new chapter in Sinhalese fiction. Gamperaliya depicts the collapse of feudal society and rise of the trader class.

It visualises the changing village with the decay of the rural aristocracy symbolized by the Kaisaruwatte Walauwa and the emergence of an English educated middle class symbolized by the young schoolmaster Piyal.

Piyal who represents the newly emerged middle class, which is financially strong, but belongs to an inferior social class but, Piyal possesses something exclusive what the inhabitants of Kaisaruwatte Walawwa never ever possessed. It is the most powerful thing that passed to the colonies.

It is English, the colonial language. English gave superiority to Piyal, and so he got the opportunity to get close to Nanda, the second daughter of Kaisaruwatte Walawwa. English became a great incentive to many Sri Lankans, just like Piyal in Gamperaliya.

Prior to the colonial period, one’s occupation was determined by his caste, and changing one’s social position was tremendously difficult. Piyal who is involved in a non-traditional employment like trading essentially needed the glamour of English to achieve a higher social position. Therefore one can conclude that, English or the language of colonial master was the main resource for Piyal’s success.

On the other hand, Kaisaruwatte Mohandiram could not under estimate the value of English. This portrays by his wish of arranging English lessons for his daughters. The study of English, therefore offered considerable material advantages for Sri Lankans.

While Piyal was tutoring Nanda in English, he passes a book or two on to her. Unable to express his feelings for her in speech, he smuggles love letters inside those books.

Wickramasinhge mentions the name of a book that Piyal gives, ‘Robinson Crusoe’.

I am pretty sure that the mention of ‘Robinson Crusoe’ is not a random selection by Martin Wickramasinghe. Wickramasinghe, who wrote all of his books in a great awareness of colonialism and its impact on the Sri Lankan society, has chosen the particular book ‘Robinson Crusoe’ to pass his code to his readers.

From the very beginning of his novel, Wickramasinghe implies his intentions, and gives a clear vision of his prospective works, Kaliyugaya and Yuganthaya.

The great trilogy is a replica of the social change of postcolonial Sri Lanka.

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