What did Robinson family build? How did they do it?
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Answer:
The family's means of building their first house depends on a sound understanding of nature. First, the family choose a big tree with branches at a great height, so that a rope ladder could be strung from the branches. For temporary shelter, a sailcloth is slung over this tree to make a sort of tent, but this is only the first step. The family intends to find wood to build a house with, and possibly some rod to build a ladder with. Ernest finds some bamboo in the sand, and the family cut these to lengths of five feet and bring them back to the tree.
Using geometric calculations, they determine that they should build their house thirty feet up in the tree. They build a ladder and fix it to the ground with stakes. Then they fashion a pulley so that materials can be brought up into the tree.
Later, more wood is collected from the beach for building, and these planks are pulled up into the tree to be arranged as a "smooth solid floor." The sailcloth is then brought up to be slung over the highest branches in the tree and nailed down to the platform of planks. This makes a sort of treehouse or "nest" high up in the tree, enclosed on three sides by the sailcloth and the tree trunk, with the front left open to allow access down the ladder and to allow the sea breeze to blow in.Written by Swiss pastor Johann David Wyss, edited by his son Johann Rudolf Wyss and illustrated by another son, Johann Emmanuel Wyss, the novel was intended to teach his four sons about family values, good husbandry, the uses of the natural world and self-reliance. Wyss' attitude towards its education is in line with the teachings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and many chapters involve Christian-oriented moral lessons such as frugality, husbandry, acceptance, and cooperation
Wyss presents adventures as lessons in natural history and physical science. This resembles other educational books for young ones published about the same time. These include Charlotte Turner Smith's Rural Walks: in Dialogues intended for the use of Young Persons (1795), Rambles Farther: A continuation of Rural Walks (1796), A Natural History of Birds, intended chiefly for young persons (1807). But Wyss' novel is also modeled after Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, an adventure story about a shipwrecked sailor first published in 1719 and the source of the "Robinson" in the title "Swiss Family Robinson".[1]
The book presents a geographically impossible array of large mammals and plants that probably could never have existed together on a single island, for the children's education, nourishment, clothing and convenience.
Over the years there have been many versions of the story with episodes added, changed, or deleted. Perhaps the best-known English version is by William H. G. Kingston, first published in 1879.] It is based on Isabelle de Montolieu's 1813 French adaptation and 1824 continuation (from chapter 37) Le Robinson suisse, ou, Journal d'un père de famille, naufragé avec ses enfants in which were added further adventures of Fritz, Franz, Ernest, and Jack.[1] Other English editions that claim to include the whole of the Wyss-Montolieu narrative are by W. H. Davenport Adams (1869–1910) and Mrs H. B. Paull (1879). As Carpenter and Prichard write in The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature (Oxford, 1995), "with all the expansions and contractions over the past two centuries (this includes a long history of abridgments, condensations, Christianizing, and Disney products), Wyss's original narrative has long since been obscured."The closest English translation to the original is William Godwin's 1816 translation, reprinted by Penguin Classics.[2]
Although movie and television adaptations typically name the family "Robinson", it is not a Swiss name. The German title translates as The Swiss Robinson which identifies the novel as part of the Robinsonade genre, rather than a story about a family named Robinson.
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