SURVIVAL AS A TRIAL OF FAITH AND REASON: HUMAN–NATURE INTERPLAY IN THE NOVELS OF DEFOE AND MARTEL

Abstract

This article compares Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Yann Martel’s Life of Pi with attention to how extreme natural environments—an uninhabited island and the Pacific Ocean—act as crucibles that test and transform the protagonists’ faith and reason. It argues that while both texts stage survival as an ethical and epistemological trial, they deploy different narrative strategies: Defoe foregrounds pragmatic, providential self-fashioning that reconciles individual industry with Protestant teleology; Martel foregrounds pluralistic spirituality and narrative choice as instruments for meaning-making under duress. Together the novels illustrate divergent modern imaginaries of human agency, nature’s alterity, and the role of story in sustaining life.