It's a great story if you can work your way through old school writing style. And it helps to be somewhat of a Defoe fan I would think. ( )

This has remarkable similarities to Moll Flanders and this may partly account for its relative obscurity; an obscurity which I believe to be undeserved because this, more than any other novel I have recently read, filled me full of questions.

The first half of the novel *spoilers* is the story of a young man basically decent who is morally compromised by his circumstances into sin and of his struggle to reach a moral compromise with the world.

Then, at the end of the first Virginia episode he goes off to the wars and steals everything from the house he’s staying in. This had me thinking that Defoe had given up and cobbled an entirely different piece of writing onto a superb novel to bulk it up. The whole tone was different and the character of Jack is so wholly different as to be a different person altogether. This left me really dissatisfied because I couldn’t care about the events because I didn’t know who the protagonist was.

Now, here’s my theory. It’s important to remember that this novel was originally published with no indication that it wasn’t an autobiography, with its author as entirely lacking in self awareness as we are.

Just before leaving Virginia, Jack flirts with Christianity. He gives a perfectly reasonable explanation for abandoning it, but I think that explanation is a lie. When he considers murdering his wife he wonders if he is suffering a distemper of mind. I think he has subconsciously realised that the path of God is a narrow one, that it is not possible to compromise, and he has therefore abandoned any attempt at decency. I think his attempts at married life, his abandonment of his first child, his inability to stay on his slave plantation and his continual placing of himself in needless danger are signs of his self hatred.

Of course, I could be reading myself into the text and I’m sure other theories are available, but if I'm right, then this is one of the great tragedies in the English language. ( )