ArticleOf all the reality TV shows, Alone must surely offer the harshest reality. Around the world, the franchise follows the same format: ten contestants attempt to live as long as possible in an isolated location, utterly by themselves, with only limited survival equipment and some cameras to record the ordeal. Season 1 of the Australian version on SBS was won by Gina Chick who lasted 67 days in the Tasmanian wilderness.
The popularity of the concept speaks to our horrid fascination with being completely removed from any semblance of civilisation—domesticated beings that we are—and the capacity of some people to endure not only the physical deprivation but the psychological stress of such isolation.
That fascination no doubt inspired Australian writer Francesca de Tores to tackle her latest novel Cast Away. Here de Tores imaginatively recreates the real-life story of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor who was marooned for four years on the uninhabited island Más a Tierra, off the Chilean coast between 1704 and 1709. Selkirk’s story is believed to have been the inspiration for the classic novel Robinson Crusoe, but in de Tores’s rendering we are presented with a far from romanticised narrative of humans against nature.
In Cast Away, as in real life, Selkirk is left on the island by his Captain after a dispute about the seaworthiness of their ship, and he is forced to watch as his shipmates disappear across the ocean. He is left with minimal possessions—a musket, a cooking pot, a small knife, some cord and a Bible. The early chapters of Cast Away are an endurance test for the reader, mirroring the experience of the protagonist as, in fine detail, de Torres skillfully portrays what Selkirk faces and the immense challenge of his mere survival.
The excruciating attention of rats and fleas, the challenge of gathering and keeping water, collecting wood, building shelters, starting a fire and finding food provide unrelenting obstacles. Selkirk dreams of having the “miracle” of a simple axe and how much his life would be made easier were he to possess one.
This is the shape of my days: labour and drudgery. I have at once too much time – these fearsome uncharted years, stretching on forever – and too little – for every task here is made longer by my lack of proper tools or materials. … You cannot imagine the tedium of it: the hide that I cured but a month ago now mildewing in the damp; the water bladder that I painstakingly stitched now chewed upon by rats; … I am trapped in a game with neither purpose nor end, and the familiarity of these days makes them no easier to endure.
And of course, it is the lack of human interaction that plagues even someone of such independent strength and capability.
Selkirk comes to learn what is lost when we are no longer seen by another person.
“I did not know what a deal of work is done by that witnessing: how a man is shaped by those expectations, and responses, so that he may measure himself against those who surround him.”
Selkirk’s existence as a sailor was no picnic, but life on his own on the island is brutal, bordering on barbaric. He maims goats to keep them close for his milking. Other goats provide an important source of meat, and even defenseless seals are reluctantly clubbed to death to provide for Selkirk’s needs. Survival depends on it.
Reminiscent of Terrence Malick’s film The Tree of Life that contrasted the tooth and claw “way of nature” with the more humane, compassionate “way of grace”, Cast Away searches for such grace and finds it in a most surprising place: a talking goat and cat. The goat, the Reverend Vicarious Cronch is a dignified, wise, compassionate and empathetic conversation partner. Less giving but no less important is Sleek the cat, the imperious, distant and objective assessor of Selkirk’s character, who will never let him get away with his obfuscations, excuses and self-deceptions.
This surprising device comes as a shock at first but is deployed with much artistry and opens us up to the life of Selkirk’s life, his memories, his many serious failings, and the sins that have brought him to where he now resides: physically and spiritually alone.
Unsurprisingly in a 21st century novel dealing with this period, there is a treatment of the harms of colonialism and an trenchant assessment of the rapacious, plundering Europeans in search of territory, power and wealth and the lengths they are prepared to go to and the harm they are willing to inflict on this path. The critique comes by way of the goat and cat, arguing with Selkirk.
“I am a man who know his business, and whose business is the nation’s. Like all men, I have wanted to make my mark on the world. Now, for the first time, I am set fair to do so.”
The goat sighs. “You men are very devils for wanting. You will sail the whole globe for it.”
“Is that not boldness?” I demand. “Enterprise, and courage?”
“More, more”, says the cat. “More and always more. A man’s hunger is a terrible thing. Too big for his skin.”
In these circumstances and with no sure hope of rescue Selkirk is haunted by questions he has never had to face before.
The most pressing: “who is a man, when all the things that make up his life are stripped away?” Selkirk faces his animal companions-cum-inquisitors with no point in hiding and plenty of reasons to talk. He is naked in every sense, and this produces a spiritual wrestle of a sort that is more agony than his physical circumstance.
He is full of guilt for a past littered with sins that are revealed gradually throughout the novel. The transgressions are real and serious and the guilt fitting.
Selkirk is desperate for expiation for the weight of shame he bears that makes life alone with his thoughts unbearable.
The only book in his possession is the Bible and he reads it assiduously, surprised to find more in the stories than when he daydreamed in church as a boy. He is fixated on the notion of repentance and forgiveness, mulling over King David’s pleas for God to deliver him from “bloodguiltiness”.
I turn that word over in my mind: bloodguiltiness. What a fitting word it is – what heft it has, and weight. Not just guilt … But bloodguiltiness. It is a graver thing, the word soaked in blood until it takes on the sharp, tannin stench of it.
Selkirk dwells on the scapegoats in the Bible and the way they carry the burden of people’s sins. “I know that weight, the dread heft of it – for a man did not end up on this island without his own cargo of sins,” he says. He develops a habit of taking passages from the Bible and with a piece of charcoal, blotting out sentences, leaving phrases and single words that form a kind of poem or perhaps prayer that reflect his musings and scattered thoughts.
This is a fascinating part of the story. Selkirk is aware that his practice of removing words from the sacred text could be thought of as simple blasphemy, or perhaps an absurd individualising of the material to suit his own paltry meditations. But he says he finds something true in the exercise as it reflects recognisable elements of his life.
At every point he is seeking to be saved, and any rescue from a ship can only partially achieve that. For Alexander Selkirk in Cast Away salvation appears to come from self-knowledge and an honest reckoning with one’s impact on the world. And letting go.
That’s not nothing. But had he the eyes to see, his blacked-out Bible would have offered a salvific vision based on God’s action to remove our “bloodguiltiness” by carrying it for us—as the ultimate scapegoat.
It’s true redemption that no amount of self-awareness can achieve, a rescue that must come from outside ourselves.
Cast Away is a haunting narrative that is conceived and delivered with immense skill and dexterity. De Tores makes clever use of this mysterious historical figure to gift us a story that not only captures the thrill of 18th century exploration and desert island adventure but provides a moving meditation on who we are at our core and from where we might find rest for our troubled souls.
Simon Smart is the Executive Director of the Centre for Public Christianity and the host of the Life & Faith podcast.