Gene Regimes

Abstract

"This chapter describes a tragedy that is analogous to how Crusoe survives decades left to himself after his shipwreck by getting involved in breeding and brewing until the day he finds a footstep in the sand. It is only a footstep, as he puts it, that took the edge off his inventions. He repeats several times that it is on the account of the Print of a Mans foot that he leaves behind his earlier designs. Henceforth it is not innovation for his own convenience but his own Preservation that preoccupies him, which is to say that he abandons his efforts and instead works on his defenses against the savages that might come to his island. The novel describes in detail how Crusoe begins to plant rings of trees in hedges that become so thick and strong that they are like walls of fortifications wherein he could hide himself and enclose himself, his cattle and his crops -- as if no Accident could intervene. He admits to himself that this Wall I was many a weary Month a finishing, and yet never thought my self safe till it was done."