Friday by Michel Tournier
"Friday" by Michel Tournier is a novel that reimagines the classic tale of "Robinson Crusoe" originally penned by Daniel Defoe. Tournier retains the adventurous spirit of the original while fundamentally altering its moral and philosophical framework. Instead of focusing solely on themes of environmental conquest and social order, the novel delves into Robinson's psychological and existential struggles as he confronts loneliness and the transformative impact of his relationship with Friday, a character who represents a different worldview. The narrative begins with Robinson aboard a ship bound for the New World, where he ultimately finds himself marooned on an island he names Speranza, or "Hope."
Robinson becomes a self-proclaimed ruler of his new domain, crafting a structured life despite his isolation. The arrival of Friday, a young half-caste whom Robinson rescues, complicates his existence. While initially viewing Friday as an inferior being to be molded, Robinson eventually learns from him and embraces a more interconnected way of living. The dynamic between Robinson and Friday raises questions about identity, culture, and the nature of civilization itself. Tournier's novel emphasizes the importance of mutual respect and understanding between different cultures, positioning Friday as a key figure who challenges Robinson's established beliefs and ultimately leads him toward self-discovery. The book has garnered critical acclaim, winning the French Academy Prize for best novel in 1967 and is often viewed as the first part of a thematic trilogy exploring complex human relationships and morality.
Friday by Michel Tournier
First published:Vendredi: Ou, Les Limbes du Pacifique, 1967; revised, 1972 (English translation, 1969)
Type of work: Mythological re-creation
Time of work: 1759-1787
Locale: “Speranza,” an island located off the coast of Chile
Principal Characters:
Robinson , a Puritan English fortune seeker stranded on SperanzaFriday , a mestizo servant, companion, mentor, and alter ego to Robinson
The Novel
Michel Tournier’s Friday adapts Daniel Defoe’s original masterpiece Robinson Crusoe (1719) and re-creates the whole myth of Robinson Crusoe as it also appears in Johann Wyss’s Der schweizerische Robinson (1812-1827; The Swiss Family Robinson, 1814, 1818, 1820) and Jules Verne’s L’Ile mysterieuse (1874-1875; Mysterious Island, 1875). Tournier retains the adventure story of his predecessors but alters their system of values and makes significant additions of an ethnological and psychological nature. Where his sources focused on environmental conquest and social conformity, Tournier emphasizes Robinson’s personal experience of solitude, his dejection, and the rediscovery of his youthful virility through exposure to the alien perceptions of Friday.
The novel opens with a prologue at sea. Robinson is aboard the brig Virginia, en route from Lima. He has abandoned his wife and children in England to seek his fortune in the New World. In the midst of a formidable tempest, the ship’s captain, Van Deyssel, reads his passenger’s future from the tarot: “Crusoe,...take heed of what I say. Beware of purity. It is the vitriol of the soul.”
The storm wrecks the ship two hundred miles off the South American coast. Save for the ship’s dog, Tenn, Robinson is the sole survivor. He surveys his new home and labels it “Desolation.” Later, he rechristens the island “Speranza,” naming it for an Italian lover whose name means “hope” and calls to mind the philosopher Baruch Spinoza.
Robinson domesticates the island. He breeds goats; grows crops; catalogs the flora and fauna; maps the terrain; constructs a mock municipality complete with private villa, storage depot, town hall, temple, and fortress; and writes legislation for a population of one. In short, he is master of his universe: Governor, Pastor, Engineer, and Defense Minister combined. His life is rigidly controlled by the dripping of a water clock.
One day, some Araucanian Indians land on the island to rid themselves of a presumed evil influence. Their intended victim is Friday. Robinson rescues the crossbreed and “cultivates” him as he did the island. Friday must wear clothing, respect the Sabbath, and polish the flagstones. Friday is docile but considers his master to be a “madman.” Robinson views Friday as a “devil” but, at the same time, sees in him the possibility of a completely different world. When Friday accidentally touches off an explosion that destroys the entire artificial township, Robinson recognizes that it is a blessing in disguise and yields to his other self. Henceforth, Robinson is Friday’s attentive pupil. He learns to live as a subject of the sun and in symbiosis with the island.
After twenty-eight years, the English schooner Whitebird, a slave trader, lands on the island. Robinson, shocked by the coarseness of the crew and alarmed by the prospect of sudden aging, elects to stay. Friday, intrigued by the speed and airiness of the boat, chooses to depart. Jaan Neljapaev, a mistreated galley boy who sees kindness in Robinson, steals ashore and takes Friday’s place. “I shall call you Sunday,” determines Robinson. It “is the day of the resurrection, of the youth of all things, and the day of our master, the Sun.” The two remain on the island, frozen in eternity.
The Characters
Tournier’s published commentary and the novel’s title would argue that Friday is the primary character, but this conclusion is not supported by the novel itself. There is quantitatively less material devoted to Friday. Friday does not have his own narrative voice and is seen only in Robinson’s terms; Robinson keeps the logbook; Friday’s identity is constructed in counterpoint to that of Robinson; Friday’s longest episode with Andoar the he-goat is designed to kill the old Robinson and empower the new; and finally, Friday was replaced. Nevertheless, Friday’s role is massively greater than it was in Defoe’s work, and it is not unfair to think of Friday as the “hero” of the novel, since it is he who wins the internal battle under way within Robinson.
Robinson is a red-haired, light-skinned English Quaker, twenty-two years old at the beginning of the story and fifty at the end. At first, his morals are the sum of his Puritan virtues, and his functions are programmed by societal stereotypes. Production is good, consumption is bad, and nonprocreative sex is punished. He can play supply clerk, census taker, cartographer, and stenographer with equal ease. Very early in the novel, however, another person begins gestating inside Robinson. This other expresses itself through behavioral leakages: Robinson’s first nudity on the island is joyful; his first journal entry replaces Christian virtue with male virility; he mocks John Bunyan’s Slough of Despond by wallowing in a slime bog; he has sex with plants. His psyche is composed of a few childhood images: the taboo on wearing (ocean) blue, his longing to be a baker, the sensual sight of his mother kneading dough, his father impotently praying while the house burns, his desire to be the bean baked inside his mother’s Epiphany cake. Friday’s arrival merely actualizes a strong potential for subversion that was already implicit in Robinson.
Friday is fifteen years old when rescued, a half-caste (or “twin blood”), named for the day he was found, for the day of Venus, and for the day of the death of Christ. As seen by Robinson on first encounter, Friday is “the most rudimentary form of companion, midway between person and object.” He is as loyal a subject of Robinson as Robinson is of civilization. Nevertheless, Friday also shows early signs of breakaway originality: He uses a red-ant nest for garbage disposal, is adept at the bola, and makes a shield by cooking a turtle alive. Friday is a wonderful clown and satirist: He dresses flowers in Robinson’s clothes, smokes Robinson’s pipe, and enrages Robinson by sleeping in the latter’s conjugal flower bed. In the end, Robinson comes to appreciate and emulate Friday’s own brand of culture and integration with the animal world and sees in him a condenser of possible embodiments of otherness: father, son, neighbor, and brother. As a paired unit, Friday and Robinson reflect Cain and Abel, Castor and Pollux, and Tournier’s own Jean and Paul from the novel Les Meteores (1975; Gemini, 1981).
Critical Context
Tournier’s original version of Friday won the esteemed French Academy Prize for best novel in 1967. It is often considered to be the first installment of a trilogy including Le Roi des aulnes (1970; The Ogre, 1972) and Gemini. Vendredi: Ou, La Vie sauvage (1971; Friday and Robinson: Life on Esperanza Island, 1972), an important adaptation created for children, deletes Robinson’s private journal and adds seven scenes of interpersonal exchange in which Friday transfers to Robinson his knowledge of gourmet cooking, metaphor, and mime. These modifications strengthen Friday’s role as mentor and mirror. Tournier’s autobiographical essay Le Vent Paraclet (1977) includes comments on Friday in terms of urban isolation and problems of the Third World.
The novel is highly discussable, and comparison to Gemini is especially indicated. Friday and Robinson become twins with two bodies and two souls, whereas Jean and Paul have two bodies and one soul. Important theories of morality, perception, and sexual composition can be extracted from the novel. Speranza can be studied independently as an ecological system, and each of the behaviors exhibited by its two main inhabitants (nudity, urination, mimicry, mating, signal systems, death rituals, and so on) count as formal objects of ethnological inquiry. Most important, through its case history of solitude, its laboratory encounter between two cultures, and its structure of creation through compensation, Tournier’s Friday continues Freudian thinking on the origins of neurosis in technological societies. As Sigmund Freud wrote, “It is easy...for the barbarian to be healthy; for the civilized man, the task is a hard one.”
Bibliography
Cloonan, William. “Vendredi: Ou, Les Limbes du Pacifique,” in Michel Tournier, 1985.
Koster, Serge. Michel Tournier, 1986.
Shattuck, Roger. “Locating Michel Tournier,” in The Innocent Eye: On Modern Literature and the Arts, 1984.
Stirn, Francois. Vendredi: Ou, Les Limbes du Pacifique, Tournier, 1984.
Sud. January, 1986. Special Tournier issue.