The Waiting Game

When I first really got into Foe, the pacing threw me off. It made me angry quite frankly. It started out as an extremely interesting story about a woman marooned on an island with a crazy old man and his slave. This could easily have been the entire content of the novel, and I was taken aback when the story changed suddenly to a series of boring letters. Of course, the title would make very little sense if it were not for the shift, and it picks up again in 30 pages or so, but those were the longest 30 pages of my life.

However, I realize now that they are crucial in conveying the fundamental irony of the book: Susan and Friday are more marooned within society than they were on the island. Friday misses the freedom he had on the island before his entry into the much bigger, much more intimidating human world. The island was his life. It seemed obvious that he would not be happy in England. But Susan is a much more interesting story. She finds herself missing the island despite its hardships, and her only endeavor upon her return is attempting to get her story published. Also, her relationship with Cruso was rough at times to say the least, but in her letters she is constantly defending his point of view. On the island, one of Susan’s strongest desires was to build a boat to leave; yet she points out to Foe that “we might have built a raft, a crooked kind of raft, but never a boat” (55). Thus, Susan and Friday play the exact same waiting game in England as they did on the island.