Are we all modern Robinsons?

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1, Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg (Institut für fremdsprachliche Philologien), course: Alternative and Parallel Englands: Swift's Gulliver and Defoe's Robinson in Historical Context , 11 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The 'foot' is a leading theme in Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe . The father of a friendly seaman told Robinson that he would 'not set [his] foot in the same ship with [him] again for a thousand pounds' . There were 'no footsteps of any human creature in that part of the country' where Robinson first landed with his boy Xury. In addition the shoes of his fellow seaman that drowned after the shipwreck have no feet in them. So there was no life and there were no fellows. But when Robinson Crusoe discovered a fresh footprint in the wet sand, he knew that there was another living creature on the island al-though he had not seen anybody. Probably he had to face contact with someone. Probably this footprint could change his life. Such footprints cross today's peoples' lives, too. Men of our times often see 'signs' of other creatures without knowing who they are or if they are still here. These signs need not to be real foot-prints; they also can be figurative ones: crop circles, reports of UFO observations or vestiges of water on Mars. We are afraid of these 'footprints', we are afraid of 'the other'. Those footprints are able to change our lives. No one knows if there are other living creatures in the universe. We only can assume that -- if there is for example water -- living is possible. We picture the others to be green men; but we only can assume. The footprint in the sand is for Robinson absolute proof of the existence of another human being. Religious people have the imagina-tion of a special 'Other', they see 'footprints' of God, covering the whole world, and declare them as proof of the existence of a Master. But whose footprint was pressed in the sand on Robinson's is-land? Which consequences had Robinson to face? Is there a relation between the discovery of the footprint and the discovery of extra-terrestrial beings? In this term paper I try to answer these ques-tions. The sources of literature adequate for my topic are rare. Therefore I have three main sources: For the first part: the essays by Peter Hulme and Wolfgang Mackiewicz; and for the second part: Wir alle sind Kinder der Götter, Wenn Gräber reden könnten by Erich von Däniken.