Foe

“The stranger (who was of course the Cruso I told you of).”

Susan’s narration has an intended audience. As well as the speech marks that begin each new paragraph, she occasionally addressed the unnamed “you,” which may be either the reader or Foe. These asides remind the reader that Susan is not a traditional literary storyteller. She is not narrating as if she were composing a novel; she is sharing a personal story with an acquaintance. This sense of intimacy and familiarity lends a verisimilitude to Susan’s storytelling and makes her a more empathetic narrator.

“Nothing I have forgotten is worth the remembering.”

In his dilapidated mental state, Cruso has no interest in self-preservation. He is willing to let his identity erode into nothingness, partially due to an unspoken self-loathing. Nothing he has done is worth the effort of remembering, he tells Susan, by which he means that the act of remembrance costs more to him than the preservation of his self. He does not want to remember, and he wishes to stay on the island because the island gives him an opportunity to obliterate his identity and his memories. Lost on his lonely island, he can revel in his nothingness and punish himself for whatever painful memories he wishes to forget.

“Touches like these will one day persuade your countrymen that it is all true, every word.”

Even while still on the island, Susan demonstrates that she thinks like a novelist. Before she has any thought about the possibility of sharing her story with others, she has considered the ways in which she can make such a story seem more authentic and engaging. Cruso does not have a mind like Susan. He has no interest in sharing his story, so, to him, such details are meaningless. Susan’s eye for detail suggests that she is as fated to become a writer as she was fated to end up on the island.

“This is not England, we have no need of a great stock of words.”

On his island, Cruso has cultivated an atmosphere of silence. Friday knows few words and has no tongue with which to communicate, regardless of whether he would want to talk. Cruso actively refrains from teaching Friday more words so as to cultivate his silence, and Susan threatens to destroy his cultivation. In contrast to England, a land where he might he held accountable for his actions, Cruso abandons himself to the silent lack of consequences for his actions.

“Or perhaps they grew weary of listening to Friday’s wails of grief, that went on day and night.”

When Cruso tells the various stories about Friday’s missing tongue, his words sound almost like a confession. He is projecting the motivation for his own actions onto the supposed enslavers. Cruso’s past is shrouded in obscurity, with Susan never explicitly learning (or, at the very least, stating) why Cruso might have been aboard the same slave ship as Friday. Instead, the narrative implies that Cruso may have been responsible for enslaving Friday, kidnapping him aboard the ship, and then cutting out his tongue to stop the “wails of grief” from causing him to feel guilt.

“I ask you to remember, not every man who bears the mark of the castaway is a castaway at heart.”

In his conversation with Susan, Cruso reveals that he does not consider himself to be a true castaway. He does not adhere to the stereotype of adventurer but presents himself as a man who is resigned to his fate. The island is his purgatory, a place where he can atone for the sins of his past in solitude. A castaway’s story is one that has an ending, a narrative that implies rescue. Since Cruso does not deem himself worthy of rescue, then he cannot be—and does not want to be—a true castaway.

“Cruso rescued would be a deep disappointment to the world.”

Through her talks with Cruso, Susan has dismantled any thought of the man as a stereotypical castaway. He has no hopes of rescue, nor of returning to any form of civil society. Susan is already comparing the true Cruso to the fictional Cruso that any novel will demand, realizing that reality is infinitely more complex than the traditional narrative of men stranded on islands. She is beginning to feel the need to tell another story, the irony of the text being that this need is recontextualizing the most famous castaway story of all.

“He was a prisoner, and I, despite myself, his gaoler.”

By the time of their rescue, Susan realizes that the dynamic between herself and Cruso has changed. Whereas she was once at his mercy on his island, she now holds the power in their relationship. She has taken him from the island against his will, essentially kidnapping him in an inversion of the traditional castaway narrative. For Cruso, rescue is the punishment, and Susan—who orchestrated his departure from the island—is his unintentional tormentor.

“We will plant the terraces and make them bloom.”

Though Susan insisted to the captain that she did not want her story to be filled with lies, she feels willing to whisper mistruths to Cruso to comfort him in his final hours. She knows that he is dying, and she knows that they will never be able to return to the island, but she wants him to take comfort in the idea of his life’s work—his terraces—being put to purpose. Through her lies, Susan tries to give meaning to Cruso’s death. Her absolutist stance on truth is more nuanced than she is willing to admit, as she accepts that lies may sometimes be necessary when a powerful story can help a person in need.

“I seem to exist only as the one who came, the one who witnessed, the one who longed to be gone: a being without substance, a ghost beside the true body of Cruso.”

In her early letters to Foe, Susan wrestles with the idea of herself as the protagonist. She cannot imagine herself as an important figure in the telling of the story of the island, she suggests, because she continually wanted to leave. She was a transient presence, someone defined by her desperate desire to escape, rather than someone who could connect with the real truth of the place. This, she realizes, is only understood by Cruso (and, she later realizes, Friday).

“I brought back not a feather, not a thimbleful of sand, from Cruso’s island.”

Susan notes that she did not bring anything with her to the island, but she neglects to mention the most important takeaway of her experience. Her time on the island has profoundly reshaped the way in which she sees the world, causing her to view everything through the lens of stories and their storytellers. This change is not material, but it is a legacy of the island she wishes to show the world. She does not only want to tell the story of herself, Friday, and Cruso, but she also wants to acknowledge why certain stories are told by certain people.

“In a year, in ten years, there will be nothing left standing but a circle of sticks to mark the place where the hut stood.”

Cruso dedicated his meagre life to the construction of a set of terraces and gardens which, Susan believes, will barely last more than 10 years. She has viewed his work, and in a similar desire to create something for future generations, she does not want to mimic Cruso’s gardening. Rather than terraces, she wants to leave behind a story. The right story, told in the right way, she believes, will create a more lasting legacy than any physical construction.

“Somehow the pen becomes mine when I write with it.”

Susan wrestles with her status as a storyteller. She insists that she cannot possibly tell a story, yet she is the narrator and the protagonist of Foe. When she picks up a pen, she confronts ideas about ownership. She is desperate to own the way in which her story is told, even as she asks Foe to write it on her behalf. When she holds the pen, however, she feels a sense of agency and ownership like never before. By picking up the pen, Susan is picking up the story. The pen becomes hers as the story becomes hers as well.

“I am wasting my life on you, Friday, on you and your foolish story.”

Susan feels indebted to and responsible for a man who makes her life a misery. She cannot communicate with Friday, yet this same inability to communicate makes her feel as though she cannot abandon him. She is plunged into poverty as she tries to tell the “foolish story,” even though Friday cannot even begin to understand what she is attempting to do. Susan’s frustrations come from the tension between her sense of responsibility for doing the right thing and Friday’s inability to even comprehend her actions enough to show anything resembling gratitude.

“She is more your daughter than she ever was mine.”

Susan tells Foe that the young girl is more Foe’s daughter because, in the context of her life, he is the author of her story. Susan believes that Foe has sent the girl to Susan to play the role of her daughter, creating not just a backstory for the girl but also a happy ending. This reflects the idea of the author as a parent, with Foe holding such influence over her life that he should be considered her progenitor.

“On my excursions I wear a black dress and bonnet.”

Susan has criticized Foe for his willingness to lie in pursuit of a good story, but she demonstrates that she is not completely averse to lying. When she needs to sell Foe’s possessions to survive, she invents an elaborate backstory with herself as a widow. She even adds props to her story to add authenticity. In this respect, she is no different than Foe when he casts the little girl as a fictional daughter in Susan’s life. Susan may criticize Foe’s lies, but she occasionally engages in hypocrisy.

“He does not understand that I am leading him to freedom. He does not know what freedom is.”

Susan wants to believe that she is helping Friday and that her actions are altruistic, but she wonders how she can even think in such a way when Friday cannot even comprehend what she is trying to do. As such, she is trying to free a man who fundamentally does not understand freedom and who cannot express his desire for freedom. Susan may be as guilty as everyone else of imposing upon Friday something that he neither wants nor understands, as much as Cruso imposed a lack of freedom upon him. That Susan approaches the matter in such a fashion, however, and that she has such concern make her actions significantly different. She is capable of self-reflection and striving to understand Friday’s actual desires, rather than simply denying him any form of human agency.

“I am alone, with Friday.”

Susan announces herself at Foe’s door with a subtle illustration of the tension within her mind with regard to Friday. Alone among the characters, she recognizes Friday as a human being. Even when he is with her, however, she struggles to view him as an actual person. When she is with him, she feels alone. She does not feel as though he is another person who is with her in any meaningful way. While others think in this manner because of slavery or racism, Susan feels this way because of Friday’s inability to communicate. This subtly differentiates her from the rest of the world while also showing that Susan has the capacity to dehumanize Friday at certain moments.

“They lose their vivacity when deprived on human flesh.”

Foe discusses fiction, noting that any cannibal who does not eat meat will soon lose interest for readers. This comment is an allegory for the readers themselves, however, who crave the red meat of violence and racism lest they lose interest. The readers sustain themselves on human flesh, which is why Foe feels the need to alter the story to make it more tantalizing. The readers’ interest, Foe believes, will wither away and die without the human flesh of violence, conflict, and racism.

“I am a free woman who asserts her freedom by telling her story according to her own desire.”

In her discussions with Susan, she gives voice to her belief that freedom derives from the capacity to dictate the way in which one’s story is told. Her freedom is linked to her story and the way in which the world will view her. Without the capacity to determine how her story is told, she loses agency over how the world understands Susan Barton. Susan craves agency over her life and her story in equal measure, which she then extends to Friday.

“Mr. Foe, do you truly know who I am?”

Susan asks Foe whether he truly knows her, but the same question can be turned around to Susan herself. After all her experiences, both on the island and in England, she has changed a great deal. Susan may no longer understand herself and may no longer truly know who she is in comparison to the Susan who set sail from Brazil. Importantly, however, the question of true understanding may not even matter when the story is told. Foe can tell the story as he pleases, with a fictionalized version of Susan; only she cares whether he portrays her accurately, and to do so, she must better understand herself.

“If he was not a slave, was he nevertheless not the helpless captive of my desire to have our stories told?”

Susan has gained a better understanding of her relationship with Friday. While Cruso kept Friday captive in a very explicit sense, having no delusion about their enslaver-and-enslaved dynamic, Susan is concerned that her desire to tell Friday’s story—particularly given that he does not understand the nature of her endeavor—makes her his new enslaver. She worries that she has become Cruso, re-enslaving Friday in a new and more abstract manner, one he cannot hope to understand at this point in time. However, Susan’s concern for her “helpless captive” demonstrates that she can at least empathize with Friday on a human level.

“Dear Mr. Foe, At last I could row no further.”

The unnamed narrator of Part 4 of Foe finds a manuscript in Foe’s lodgings. The manuscript is addressed to Foe and recontextualizes Part 1 of the novel. In her letter to Foe, Susan begins with the novel’s opening sentence. In this way, the entirety of Part 1 is Susan telling her story to Foe on her own terms. She speaks to the reader (while speaking to Foe), setting the parameters of her story in the way she sees fit. Part 1 of Foe is, in the context of the novel, an epistolatory narrative, written as a first draft to an author to petition his services. The reader, in this moment, becomes Foe, reading Susan’s experiences for the first time. What follows is Susan’s efforts to publish a story that the reader has already read.