Cruso’s terraces, intended to make the desert island something more like an English garden, represent the connection between labor, legacy, and community. For Susan Barton, island life comes with only two goals: to escape, and to create some written record of her time there. By contrast, her companion Cruso and Friday, the man he’s enslaved, spend all their time leveling ground and moving stone to make their terraces—even though they have no crops to plant on the terraces (as Cruso explains, “the planting is reserved for those who come after us […] I only clear the ground for them”). And tellingly, while Cruso devotes hours to these terraces, he has not created a single writing implement for himself—nor, to Susan’s frustration, does he have any interest in writing down the details of his time on the island.
Susan believes that narrative is the only way to be remembered, but Cruso’s focus on the terraces suggests that he is interested in leaving a different kind of legacy. Whereas Susan wants to get a good story out of the island and then abandon it, Cruso only wants to be remembered as a part of his island. Ultimately, then, Cruso’s labor on the terraces symbolizes a form of legacy building that is generous instead of extractive: “not every man who bears the mark of a castaway,” Cruso explains, “is a castaway at heart.” At the same time, though, because the terraces remain unused, they also suggest the impossibility of giving back in isolation; without the seeds that other people might bring, Cruso’s terraces can never be truly productive or meaningful.
Terraces Quotes in Foe
“The planting is not for us,” said [Cruso]. “We have nothing to plant—that is our misfortune…the planting is reserved for those who come after us and have the foresight to bring seed. I only clear the ground for them. Clearing ground and piling stones is little enough, but it is better than sitting in idleness…I ask you to remember, not every man who bears the mark of the castaway is a castaway at heart.”
Day by day the wind picks at the roof and the weeds creep across the terraces. In a year, in ten years, there will be nothing left standing but a circle of sticks to mark the place where the hut stood, and of the terraces only the walls. And of the walls they will say, These are cannibal walls, the ruins of a cannibal city, from the golden age of the cannibals. For who will believe they were built by one man and a slave, in the hope that one day a seafarer would come with a sack of corn for them to sow?
Dubiously I thought: are these enough strange circumstances to make a story of? How long before I am driven to invent new and stranger circumstances: the salvage of tools and muskets from Cruso’s ship; the building of a boat, or at least a skiff, an adventure to sail to the mainland; a landing by cannibals on the island, followed by a skirmish and many bloody deaths; and, at last, becoming of a golden haired stranger with a sack of corn, and the planting of the terraces? Alas, will the day ever arrive when we can make a story without strange circumstances?
I must go, Friday. You thought that carrying stones was the hardest of labours. But when you see me at Mr. Foe’s desk making marks with the quill, think of each mark as a stone, and think of the paper as the island, and imagine that I must disperse the stones over the face of the island, and when that is done and the taskmaster is not satisfied (was Cruso ever satisfied with your labours?) must pick them up again (which, in the figure, is scoring out the marks and disposed them according to another scheme), and so forth, day after day; all of this because Mr. Foe has run away from his debts. Sometimes I believe it is I who have become the slave. No doubt you would smile, if you could understand.
Terraces Symbol Timeline in Foe
