Introduction: Modernity beyond Salvage

Abstract

A resourceful loner, a dangerous voyage, a shipwreck, a desert island, a life of almost unimaginable solitude, desperate scavenging, despair, hope, the discovery of a footprint, conquest in the guise of love, bloody warfare, escape. These are the iconic plot elements of what many regard as the first novel written in the English language, Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe, published in 1719. We are approaching its three-hundredth anniversary, a fact that might seem to relegate the Crusoe narrative to the musty recesses of history. Yet striking allusions to these elements of Defoe’s landmark text have appeared in very recent novels by some of the world’s most prominent authors, including Oryx and Crake (2003) by Margaret Atwood, Cloud Atlas (2004) by David Mitchell, The Road (2006) by Cormac McCarthy, The Stone Gods (2007) by Jeanette Winterson, Zone One (2011) by Colson Whitehead, and the Ship Breaker series (2010, 2012) by Paolo Bacigalupi. Along with references to the story of the ill-fated adventurer, these novels have something else in common. They are all about the end of the world as we know it.