CRUSOE'S ORIGINAL SIN Crusoe's conversation with his father about leaving home can be interpreted from a religious perspective as well from an economic perspective. Crusoe repeatedly refers to leaving home without his father's permission as his "original sin"; he not only associates God and his father but regards his sin against his father as a sin against God also. Remembering his first voyage, Crusoe comments: "...my conscience, which was not yet come to the pitch of hardness to which it has been since, reproached me with the contempt of advice and the breach of my duty to God and my Father" (5). In the Puritan family structure, the father was regarded as God's deputy; in rejecting his father's advice, Crusoe is committing Adam and Eve's sin of disobedience. For Crusoe, as for Adam, and Eve, disobedience grows out of restlessness and discontent with the station God assigned. When Crusoe is cast ashore on a deserted island, he sees his situation as the fulfillment of his father's prediction that if Crusoe disregarded his advice, Crusoe would find himself alone with no source of help. Alone on the island, is Crusoe Everyman, alienated from God because of sin? Alternately, Michael McKeon offers possible interpretations of Crusoe's original sin which are related to social motivation: an expression of capitalistic industry an anticapitalist impulse to ramble and evade his capitalist calling an anti-Puritan motive to evade his Puritan calling, with a general unregenerate waywardness with no social significance. Once the process of conversion begins, it follows a typical pattern. After his dream and the beginning of his regeneration, Defoe reviews his life (89-94) and his understanding and sense of God deepen. But reason alone is not sufficient to result in conversion, and Crusoe turns to the Bible; studying it reveals God's word and will to him, and he finds comfort, guidance, and instruction in it. For the first time in many years he prays, and he prays, not for rescue from the island, but for God's help, "Lord be my help, for I am in great distress" (88). After thinking about his life, he kneels to God for the first time in his life and prays to God. His next step toward conversion is asking for God's grace. He comes to realize that spiritual deliverance from sin is more important than physical deliverance from the island. A little later, when he is about to thank God for bringing him to the island and so saving him, he stops, shocked at himself and the hypocrisy of such a statement. Then he "sincerely gave thanks to God for opening my eyes, by whatever afflicting providences, to see the former condition of my life, and to mourn for my wickedness, and repent" (110). Does this incident indicate that Crusoe's faith is fervent and honest?
