In the following excerpt, Rogers outlines various positions that critics have taken in interpreting Robinson Crusoe and discusses Defoe's religious background and the novel's treatment of sin.

Here, McKeon discusses Crusoe's spiritualization of events and life on the island and explores possible identifications of original sin in the novel.

In the following excerpt, Zimmerman explores problems in narrative consistency in Robinson Crusoe and contends that The Farther Adventures adds psychological aspects to the theological ideas found in the first novel.

Below, Hunter discredits certain assumptions about what inspired Robinson Crusoe as well as the notion that the book falls into the tradition of travel literature; he asserts that Crusoe is a Christian work in which geographical facts are introduced primarily for their narrative function.

In the following excerpt, first published in 1957 and reprinted in 1962, Watt discusses the influences of capitalism and Protestantism on the rise of the individual and explores how Robinson Crusoe embodies economic individualism in his quest to better himself through seeking profit.

In the following excerpt, Birdsall discusses Crusoe's realization that there can be no wholly successful defense against the human predicament of living in a hostile world.

In the following excerpt, Foster contends that Crusoe exhibits conflicting impulses—one toward submission, the other toward self-assertion—and that Defoe himself enacts the same division throughout Robinson Crusoe.

In the excerpt below, Seidel discusses the depiction of the exile in literature and the use and function of allegorical history in Robinson Crusoe.

In the following article, Maher traces popular response to Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) in the nineteenth century, charting both criticism of the novel and its eventual influence on Victorian adventure fiction for boys.

In the excerpt below, Boardman considers some of the differing views of the meaning of Robinson Crusoe and argues that Defoe uses a threefold narrative strategy incorporating reportorial, personal, and interactive techniques.

In the following excerpt, Damrosch considers Robinson Crusoe's "desacralizing" of the world, which in the novel becomes a workplace of men and an equivocal Providence.

In the following excerpt, Brown explores the need of Defoe's characters for isolation, concealment, and guarded exposure as defenses against threats of "menacing otherness."