Defoe expressly states in his Serious Reflections that the story of Friday is historical and true in fact—­

“It is most real that I had ... such a servant, a savage, and afterwards a Christian, and that his name was called Friday, and that he was ravished from me by force, and died in the hands that took him, which I represent by being killed; this is all literally true, and should I enter into discoveries many alive can testify them.  His other conduct and assistance to me also have just references in all their parts to the helps I had from that faithful savage in my real solitudes and disasters.”

It may be added that there are strong grounds for believing Defoe to have had about this time assistance in his literary work.

All this is very neatly worked out; but of course the really important event in Crusoe’s life is his great shipwreck and his long solitude on the island.  Now of what events in Defoe’s life are these symbolical?

The ‘Silence.’

Well, in the very forefront of his Serious Reflections, and in connection with his long confinement in the island, Defoe makes Crusoe tell the following story:—­

“I have heard of a man that, upon some extraordinary disgust which he took at the unsuitable conversation of some of his nearest relations, whose society he could not avoid, suddenly resolved never to speak any more.  He kept his resolution most rigorously many years; not all the tears or entreaties of his friends—­no, not of his wife and children—­could prevail with him to break his silence.  It seems it was their ill-behaviour to him, at first, that was the occasion of it; for they treated him with provoking language, which frequently put him into undecent passions, and urged him to rash replies; and he took this severe way to punish himself for being provoked, and to punish them for provoking him.  But the severity was unjustifiable; it ruined his family and broke up his house.  His wife could not bear it, and after endeavouring, by all the ways possible, to alter his rigid silence, went first away from him, and afterwards from herself, turning melancholy and distracted.  His children separated, some one way and some another way; and only one daughter, who loved her father above all the rest, kept with him, tended him, talked to him by signs, and lived almost dumb like her father near twenty-nine years with him; till being very sick, and in a high fever, delirious as we call it, or light-headed, he broke his silence, not knowing when he did it, and spoke, though wildly at first.  He recovered of his illness afterwards, and frequently talked with his daughter, but not much, and very seldom to anybody else.”

I italicise some very important words in the above story.  Crusoe was wrecked on his island on September 30th, 1659, his twenty-seventh birthday.  We are told that he remained on the island twenty-eight years, two months and nineteen days. (Compare with duration of the man’s silence in the story.) This puts the date of his departure at December 19th, 1687.