why the condition of Crusoe was pitiable?
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Answer:
The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe,
by Daniel Defoe
Title: The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
Author: Daniel Defoe
CHAPTER I—START IN LIFE
I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my
father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull. He got a good estate by merchandise,
and leaving off his trade, lived afterwards at York, from whence he had married my mother, whose
relations were named Robinson, a very good family in that country, and from whom I was called
Robinson Kreutznaer; but, by the usual corruption of words in England, we are now called—nay we
call ourselves and write our name—Crusoe; and so my companions always called me.
I had two elder brothers, one of whom was lieutenant-colonel to an English regiment of foot in
Flanders, formerly commanded by the famous Colonel Lockhart, and was killed at the battle near
Dunkirk against the Spaniards. What became of my second brother I never knew, any more than
my father or mother knew what became of me.
Being the third son of the family and not bred to any trade, my head began to be filled very early
with rambling thoughts. My father, who was very ancient, had given me a competent share of
learning, as far as house-education and a country free school generally go, and designed me for the
law; but I would be satisfied with nothing but going to sea; and my inclination to this led me so
strongly against the will, nay, the commands of my father, and against all the entreaties and
persuasions of my mother and other friends, that there seemed to be something fatal in that
propensity of nature, tending directly to the life of misery which was to befall me.
My father, a wise and grave man, gave me serious and excellent counsel against what he foresaw
was my design. He called me one morning into his chamber, where he was confined by the gout,
and expostulated very warmly with me upon this subject. He asked me what reasons, more than a
mere wandering inclination, I had for leaving father’s house and my native country, where I might
be well introduced, and had a prospect of raising my fortune by application and industry, with a life
of ease and pleasure. He told me it was men of desperate fortunes on one hand, or of aspiring,
superior fortunes on the other, who went abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make
themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out of the common road; that these things were all
either too far above me or too far below me; that mine was the middle state, or what might be called
the upper station of low life, which he had found, by long experience, was the best state in the
world, the most suited to human happiness, not exposed to the miseries and hardships, the labour
and sufferings of the mechanic part of mankind, and not embarrassed with the pride, luxury,
ambition, and envy of the upper part of mankind. He told me I might judge of the happiness of this
state by this one thing—viz. that this was the state of life which all other people envied; that kings
have frequently lamented the miserable consequence of being born to great things, and wished they
had been placed in the middle of the two extremes, between the mean and the great; that the wise
man gave his testimony to this, as the standard of felicity, when he prayed to have neither poverty
nor riches.
He bade me observe it, and I should always find that the calamities of life were shared among the
upper and lower part of mankind, but that the middle station had the fewest disasters, and was not
exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind; nay, they were not
subjected to so many distempers and uneasinesses, either of body or mind, as those were who, by
vicious living, luxury, and extravagances on the one hand, or by hard labour, want of necessaries,