The Mistaken Missionary

"out of such timbers/came our profane/ Genesis/ whose Adam speaks that prose/ which, blessing some sea-rock, startles itself/ with poetry's suprise,/ in a green world, one without metaphors;/ like Christopher he bears/in speech mnemonic as a missionary's/ the Word to savages" (10-18)


The passage I have chosen likens the relationship between Crusoe and his servant to a missionary and a savage. The image is not as simple as a kind Christian coming to share the good news, nor is his method as hideous as the missionaries who converted by the sword. Rather, his servant's conversion is a subversive tactic used by Crusoe to establish himself as superior. The missionary image seems tainted, as it says "out of such timbers/ came our first book, our profane Genesis/ whose Adam speaks that prose"(10-12). This suggests that Cruse is serving as Adam, who was the first human according to the Bible. The fact that he is not the first person on the island suggests that he considers himself to be the first human, in turn suggesting that he considers the natives to be subhuman. The "prose" he speaks, from his interpretation of the Bible, only adds up to a "profane" version of Genesis. Crusoe's interpretation of the Bible and his method of being a light unto the world is perverse, and does not parallel the Bible's message. The true Christian faith was not designed to make servants out of men, but rather enable its believers to serve others in humility. For Crusoe to convert the native into a servant is to completely take the Bible out of context only to meet his own ends. This is a concept that many European explorers struggled with, including the "Christofer" mentioned in the text (16). This is likely a reference to Christopher Columbus, who after his voyage to the Americas, failed at attempting to convert the natives by the sword. His attempts did not result in rescued souls, only the loss of life. To liken Crusoe's speech to "like Christofer he bears/ in speech mnemonic as a missionary's/ the Word to savages" (16-18), is to say that he uses the Word only as a tool to exert dominance over the "savages", not to present himself as the humble servant the Bible calls its missionaries to be.