Robinson Crusoe, 1719, Robinson discovers a cave

The eighteenth century is marked by the rise of the lower middle class. This one is going to be more and more interested by the culture because it understands this one can offert a consiberable part of power. However, it is not trained enough to be interested by the seventeenth poetry, which has a impact on the type of literary production. It is in this favourable context that the novel can be born and thrive rapidly. Robinson Crusoe is known as the first novel realesed. The extract we are going to study takes place tweenty years after Robinson's shipwreck. The reader can see him gathering wood and at this moment, Robinson discovers a hidden cave. This passage shows the novel explores new ways, notably by its plot and its way of being written. Indeed, the democratisation of reading makes appear new subjects, inspired by usual life, which looks like this the new readers live. Nevertheless, it also differs from it. That is why we can wonder how the writer tries to give a feeling of verisimilitude, and why it is reinforced by the specific use of the religion. But we can also ask ourselves in what this extract contains a symbolical dimension which goes past the simple story. At first, we will show the ambivalence of the novel. Then, we will explain in what the presence of the religion serves the novel. Finally, we will see the symbolical dimention of live attented in this extract.

1. The ambivalence of the novel

a. The mystery
This extract is based on Robinson’s mysterious discovery of a cave and his inhabitants: it is only at the end of the passage that he can know, with the reader, what is present in this dark hole. Before that he has to front many mysteries that he can perceive thanks to his senses. At first, he asks himself what is hidden behind the “Brushwood”, he speaks about a “kind of hollow place”. When he is in the cave, two eyes appears and he wonders whom do they belong to. (maybe a