First novel

A mcpoyle!

I remember reading it on cosy autumn days at my little school in the countryside. There were only 40 students, aged from 4 to 12, in the whole school. One day, when I'd finished the schoolwork before the rest of the class, my teacher gave me a green hardback copy of Robinson Crusoe to read. I immediately loved it. Instead of playing with the other nine children in my class at lunch, I would find a quiet spot in the small woods beside the school to read it. The sound of the wind through the trees completely transported me into the pages of the book. I'd hear the occasional thud of chestnuts hitting the ground, and imagine it was the sound of coconuts falling from palm trees on the island. I read it over and over during my time there.

Relax, I didn't say he was my role model. When you read it, you just have to admire his self-sufficiency and sense of 'entrepreneurship.'

Why is the idea of being stranded so fucking comfy? I know I would probably die in a day if it happened to me irl, but it's so pleasant to think about creating your own little self-sufficient world.

The Martian is just as patrishian.

Where are you from, user? Sounds comfy

For me it was quite the opposite. I had just started school at kindergarten, and was completely demoralized by it. They wouldn't even let us use the bathroom except at designated times, and my grandma had already taught me most of the first few grades during the time she practically raised me. There's no school that makes up for parenting. I would read all night and spend all day dreaming of escape from this hellhole of an urban school, with bars on the doors and windows, as if the school anticipated my intentions. It's a pity I never did take the plunge, spirits once crushed never fully reinflate. I wanted to build my fence of logs and stones and hide away in my cave to protect myself from what ended up happening anyway, the destruction of will, abandonment of purpose, a slow withering away.

I want to write an essay about this but I think the desire for self-sufficiency in a harsh world (ex: our cultural fascination with how we would survive a zombie apocalypse) comes from a desire to escape the escapism of modernity

Ireland.

It's a pity you were exposed to such an environment at so early an age. I didn't enter that world until I started secondary school at the age of thirteen, and even then it did irreparable damage.

It was such a change. Before we were treated like adults. For instance, we were allowed to use the bathroom whenever we pleased without ever having to ask. Those of us who finished our work quicker than the rest were given interesting and more challenging work, or sometimes even allowed to leave the room and mess around on the computer in private. We were taught lessons on the most diverse of subjects - one day, it might be learning how to recognize all the different types of local fauna and flora. The next, we might learn abou pre-Christian Gaelic myth, and after that, it might be how to apply for a drivers license or fill out an insurance form.

It was a shock to go from that to an institution which treated young men like mentally-disabled toddlers.

I read an abridged version to my son when he was 5, and he really loved the parts about the cannibals. To avoid awkward conversations with his preschool teacher I changed "niggert" to "savage" or "tribal people" or similar.

Might be because it seemed like you think only one class teaches that it's a racist and colonial work when this is in fact the standard view today.

>escape from modernity
I wonder when this desire started. Did Neanderthals dream about going back to being monkeys?

>I know I would probably die in a day if it happened to me irl
If you were stranded on a tropical island, as long as there was a ready source of fresh water, you'd likely survive.

he literally gets saved by a deus ex machina--his former ship, that and the fact that his island has.... everything