Foe by J M Coetzee

 

Introduction

Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe is often considered one of the foundational English novels. It is widely read as a tale of individual survival, colonial endeavour, divine providence, and the heroic European subject establishing mastery over nature and “others.”

J. M. Coetzee’s Foe, written in the late 20th century, is in many ways a rewriting, reimagining, or critique of Robinson Crusoe. Coetzee’s work deconstructs, problematises, and interrogates many of the assumptions in Defoe: about voice and silence; authorship and authority; identity, colonialism, and otherness; narrative and “truth.”

The contrast between the two allows for rich comparative analysis: what is assumed in Crusoe as natural, inevitable, heroic, even moral, Coetzee often unsettles or subverts. The rest of this essay will examine themes, narrative structure, characterization, colonialism, voice and silencing, gender and authorship, language, religion, and the philosophical implications of the two works.

For Background of Robinson Crusoe👇

Key Themes: Survival, Solitude, and Nature

Robinson Crusoe

• In Defoe’s novel, Crusoe’s survival against the elements, isolation, provision of food, shelter, domestication of animals, cultivation of the land, etc., are central. The natural world is something to be mastered, disciplined, made useful.

• Solitude is both trial and blessing; it forces self-reliance, reflection, and eventually, moral and spiritual growth. Crusoe comes to reflect on sin, providence, gratitude, repentance. He sees divine design in his rescue, in his ability to adapt to the island.

Foe

• Coetzee’s Foe also uses the island as a setting, but the way the island is presented is very different. It is harsher, less romantic. The simplicity or wildness of nature becomes oppressive, monotonous, existential. There is less triumphant mastery; more limitation, decay.

• Solitude does not lead to heroic self-improvement in Foe. The protagonist Susan Barton witnesses the deterioration of Cruso, and his inability to sustain decisive, coherent narratives. Nature does not easily yield. The island becomes a site of ambiguity, suffering, even psychological or moral unraveling rather than progress.

Comparative take: while Crusoe affirms the Enlightenment/colonial subject’s ability over nature, Foe shows the fragility of that subject, the porousness of the boundary between subject/object, speaker/silenced, between civilized and primitive. Survival in Foe is moral, symbolic, and narrative as much as physical; and often unsuccessful.

Narrative Structure, Authorship, and Truth

Robinson Crusoe

• The novel is presented as if Crusoe himself is narrating (with occasional digressions), chronicling his own experience in a first‐person voice. It claims to be “a true history,” or at least claimed accuracy (“his own journal,” etc.), though of course it is fictional.

• The narrative is linear, coherent: shipwreck, adaptation, meeting Friday, conversion, rescue, return. Crusoe is the central controlling consciousness.

Foe

• Foe is much more complex, metafictional. The narrative is layered: Susan Barton’s narrative to “Foe” (the author‐figure), letters, uncertain truths, contradictory stories. Coetzee plays with what can be told, who tells, how reliable the telling is. The reader is made aware of gaps, silences, uncertainties. 

• The character Foe, modelled on Daniel Defoe, is invoked as the person Susan wants to write her story. But Coetzee problematises what it means to write someone’s story. There is tension between Susan’s desire for her story (“her‐story”) and Foe’s literary/market interests, authorial prerogatives, what makes a “good story.”

Comparative take: Crusoe presents a confident authorial voice, an assumption of knowability, a belief that truth can be recounted in narrative form. Foe challenges this: there are multiple narratives, silences, missing voices; storytelling is not neutral but bound up with power — who writes, who is listened to, what is left unsaid.

Colonialism, Power, and “Otherness”

Robinson Crusoe

• Crusoe establishes dominion over the island, naming it, domestication, mastering the environment, bringing in European modes of living. The presence of Friday as the “Other” allows Crusoe to exercise his colonial subjectivity: Crusoe teaches him language (English), religion (Christianity), culture; he rescues him, civilises him. Friday becomes a subordinate, assisting Crusoe, learning from him.

• The novel reflects, and helps in its own way justify, colonial ideology: European superiority, civilization vs. savagery, the notion that a lone European can carve a domain out of wilderness.

Foe

• Coetzee’s novel critically inverts or complicates much of that. Friday is rendered voiceless in a very literal sense: he has had his tongue cut out. Thus, the power relations are shown in more violent terms: silencing, control, absence of voice, inability to represent. 

• Susan Barton, though white and from a colonizing background, seeks to give voice to Friday’s story. But even Susan’s attempt is mediated, limited. She struggles with expressing what Friday might want, what she might impose. She also contends with Foe’s reluctance to go with the truth if it is “boring” or unprofitable. 

Comparative take: While Crusoe more or less accepts the colonial power structure as natural and desirable, Foe exposes its violence, its exclusions, the erasures. Foe draws attention to what is omitted in Crusoe, what cannot be heard, who is marginalized, who is made invisible (or made voiceless).

Gender and “Her‐Story”

One of the major differences is the presence of a female protagonist/narrator in Foe — Susan Barton — and the near absence of women in Crusoe.

• Robinson Crusoe is overwhelmingly male‐centred. The few female characters are largely in the periphery (Crusoe’s family before his voyage, his mother, etc.). The narrative is male adventure, male survival, male identity.

• Foe introduces Susan as central. Her perspective is different: she asks questions of storytelling, what it means to be heard, what is the place of women. She is not simply a passive observer but actively trying to shape the narrative, resisting being objectified by Foe. Her voice is part of the critique of traditional narratives that have been male dominated. 

Thus, Foe participates in feminist as well as postcolonial critique: “her‐story” as counter‐history to “his‐story.” The tension between Susan and Foe about what should be told, and how, is part of Foe’s interrogation of authorship and authority.

 Language, Silence, and Representation

Language and its limits are central to Foe; also important in Crusoe, though in different ways.

In Robinson Crusoe

• Language is seen as part of civilization: Crusoe teaching Friday English, converting him; naming things; assertion of identity via speech.

• Crusoe’s narrative itself is confident; his descriptions, his interpretations are taken as reliable (by the book’s form).

In Foe

• Friday’s literal loss of tongue is a powerful symbol of colonial silencing. He cannot speak; he cannot narrate. His representation must be mediated through others (Susan, sometimes “Foe”). 

• The narrative draws attention to what gesture, mimicry, silence might communicate, but how often those are misunderstood. The limits of language – narrative voice, the framing, what gets selected – are central to Coetzee’s concerns.

• Susan is aware that the story Foe wants is not the same as the story she has, or the story Friday might want; the market, the authorial interest, the expectation of adventure, the requirement of spectacle distort what might be more truthful or more important.

 Religious and Moral Dimensions

Robinson Crusoe

• Providence, sin, repentance, gratitude. Crusoe often interprets events as acts of God; sees his survival as divine. He reads the Bible; he meditates. He attributes many of his insights to religion.

• There’s a moral arc: early recklessness (e.g. leaving home despite parental advice), spiritual crises, confession of sin, ultimately a kind of moral stability, via Christian belief.

Foe

• Religion is more ambiguous. Cruso is described as becoming more superstitious; there are rituals suggested, but they don’t have the same clarity or assurance as in Crusoe. The divine is not clearly benevolent; providence is ambiguous or non‐verifiable.

• Moral responsibility is more complex: Susan tries to do right by Friday; but is her understanding enough? Does her telling prevent injustice, or is it complicity? There is no easy certainty.

Time, Memory, and Legacy

• Crusoe has a strong sense of linear time, of progress: from shipwreck to mastery, from wilderness to plantation, from isolation to rescue. His past (before the shipwreck) is not so deeply troubling; the future is hopeful.

• In Foe, time is more ambiguous. Cruso’s age, decay; memory is unreliable. Susan worries about what will be remembered, what will be told, what will be lost. The past is not neatly recoverable.

• Legacy: in Crusoe, the legacy is the tale itself, of Crusoe’s domination, conversion of Friday, return to Europe. The adventurous narrative becomes part of colonial ideology. Foe problematises legacy: what stories get told, by whom, how they obscure/invent/compress history.

Critical Perspectives: Postcolonial, Metafiction, Trauma

Several critical frameworks are helpful when comparing the two:

1. Postcolonial Critique: Coetzee nearly explicitly takes on colonialism’s voice, its silencing of the colonized, the idea of imperial power in naming, disciplining, authoring stories. Foe shows that colonial narratives are not neutral; they erase, obscure, exploit.

2. Metafiction / Deconstruction: Foe does not only retell Crusoe, but reflects on what it means to retell. The presence of “Foe” the author‐figure, Susan’s letters, the refusal of fully coherent narrative – all these are metafictional elements.

3. Voice, Silence, the Subaltern: Friday is a subaltern figure; his voice, literally, is taken. Susan tries to mediate but can’t fully. This links Foe to theorists like Gayatri Spivak on “Can the subaltern speak?” The novel suggests maybe not, or at least that speech, when it exists, is mediated, always at risk of distortion. Scholarship points out that Foe vividly dramatizes erasure, silencing, and attempts to reclaim or reconstruct voice. 

4. Trauma and Violence: Coetzee shows colonialism not just as ideology but as violence: physical mutilation (Friday’s tongue), psychological suffering, displacement, loss. Robinson Crusoe has violence (Crusoe kills animals, subjugates others, etc.), but more often it is mediated as virtue, discipline, necessity, sometimes glossed over. Foe exposes the darker side.

5. Ethics of Storytelling: Foe forces the reader to question: Is it ethical to tell someone else’s story? What counts as truth in narrative? When is a story for sale, for entertainment, for profit, how does this distort? Susan’s struggle with Foe over the story is central.

Major Similarities

Despite the many differences, there are also important connections:

• Both revolve around a person or people stranded / alone (or isolated) on an island. The island becomes a site of testing, of transformation (though in different ways).

• Both involve the figure (Crusoe / Cruso) as central, with a subordinate (Friday) whose condition raises questions of dependence, power, alterity.

• Both use Christian ideas: sin, providence, repentance, redemption (though Foe complicates the clarity of those ideas).

• Both involve naming: Crusoe names Friday “Friday,” asserts dominion via naming; in Foe, naming is also important — Susan names Cruso, Foe, Susan, Friday. Names carry power; they are part of identity.

• Both texts engage with narrative: either in explicit telling (Crusoe’s journal) or in who tells, what is told, what is omitted.

Major Differences

Here are the principal points where Foe differs from, challenges, or rewrites Robinson Crusoe:

1. Voice / Silencing: Friday’s tongue is removed in Foe; in Crusoe, he learns English and speaks. The possibility of full communication is curtailed in Foe.

2. Gender Presence: Foe introduces Susan Barton, giving a female perspective which Crusoe lacks. This introduces questions of what women’s voice has been in such adventure narratives.

3. Certainty vs. Ambiguity: Crusoe tends to give a clear progression; Foe is fractured, uncertain in its telling. Events are filtered, contradictory.

4. Colonial Ideology: In Crusoe, colonialism, cultural superiority, mission civilisatrice are somewhat accepted; in Foe, these are critiqued, exposed, made problematic.

5. Authorial Authority: Defoe’s narrator is confident; Coetzee’s narrator(s) are less certain; there is tension over who has right to tell the story.

6. Nature / Environment: In Crusoe, nature is something that can be subdued and made to serve survival; in Foe, nature seems more indifferent, less yielding; the hardships of the island are more persistent, more oppressive.

7. Literary Form: Crusoe is more conventional in structure, older‐novel form; Foe is more experimental, postmodern, metafictional, intertextual.

Critical Interpretations & Scholarship

From the secondary literature:

Silencing and Alterity: Scholars have noted how Foe foregrounds the erasure of Friday’s voice, and raises the question of whether we can ever hear the true “Other,” or only what others tell. 

History/His‐Story vs. Her‐Story: The contrast between history written by men (colonizers) and the need to recover women’s voices, marginal voices. Foe explicitly contrasts Susan’s desire to tell her story vs. Foe’s agenda, what is marketable, what sells.

Metafiction and Deconstruction: Coetzee’s work is seen as “counter‐canonical”: it unsettles canonical texts like Robinson Crusoe, reveals their assumptions, ambiguities, omissions. 

Power, Naming, Ownership: The act of naming: “Crusoe,” “Cruso,” “Friday,” “Susan,” “Foe” has power. Occupying, naming, defining are forms of power. Scholars point out that Crusoe claims the island and names Friday, whereas Foe problematises that. 

The Limitations of Narrative Truth: What is truth in these stories? Is the story we get in Crusoe the whole story? Foe suggests no. The gaps, the silences, the unsaid, the unknown are as telling as what is said.    

 Philosophical and Moral Implications

• Human agency: How much control do we really have? Crusoe is optimistic about human agency (even placing faith in Providence); Foe is more skeptical—agency is limited, mediated, constrained by history and power.

• Ethics of rescue and care: Is America / Europe / colonizer’s rescue always benevolent? In Foe, Susan wants to “rescue” Friday, to bring him away, but is this respectful of his wishes? Even rescue here has complex implications.

• Memory and historical justice: How do we remember colonialism? How do we tell stories of those who were silenced? Coetzee suggests that some of those stories may be forever lost, or only partly recoverable. That raises moral questions: what obligations do we have in telling or preserving history, especially for those with no voice?

• Complexity of “otherness”: Foe resists the idea of Friday simply as “Other” in a romantic or noble sense. He is more ambiguous; his identity is more opaque; Susan cannot fully see him. It is a challenge to simple binary oppositions of civilized/barbaric, colonizer/colonized.

Criticisms of Foe (and of Robinson Crusoe)

Any comparative analysis should also consider what critics find problematic in each.

• Some readers find Foe frustrating: because the narrative is ambiguous, fragmented, and sometimes feels incomplete. Friday never speaks; Cruso’s past is vague; many questions remain unanswered. Some see this as a virtue; others as a limitation.

• Accusations of perhaps replicating the same power imbalances: even Susan, despite her sympathy, may impose her own vision on Friday’s story; Foe (author) may distort for literary effect. The risk of speaking for the Other is itself ethically fraught.

• In Robinson Crusoe, criticisms include: colonial arrogance; racism (depiction of “savages” and European superiority); moral self‐righteousness; religious proselytizing; the erasure of other voices; the notion that nature is there for human use; the celebration of individualism that ignores structural inequalities.

Conclusion

Putting Robinson Crusoe and Foe side by side gives a powerful view of how colonial and postcolonial literature engage with questions of power, voice, representation, identity, and narrative. Crusoe offers an adventure tale rooted in its time, a tale of survival, providence, and the colonial imagination. Foe, written nearly three centuries later, opens that tale up: it reveals what was excluded, the limits of the voice, the silences of colonial histories, the difficulties of telling one’s own story.

The critical lesson might be that every story, especially canonical ones, carries with it assumptions and exclusions. Literature is not just what is told, but what is left out; not just who speaks, but who is silenced. Foe does not provide easy answers, but forces readers to interrogate what they believe, what they read uncritically, and what histories they accept.

 References 

https://jflcc.thebrpi.org/journals/jflcc/Vol_8_No_2_December_2020/3.pdf?utm_

https://davuniversity.org/images/files/study-material/Foe.pdf

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/521/521-h/521-h.htm