rogerb
I'm re-reading the book after goodness knows how long.
It seems to me blatantly obvious that since a storm shipwrecked the family on the island, the next one might very well destroy the wreck.
Following directly from that, the family's first priority ought to be salvage. The resources of the island will, since they survived the storm that caused the wreck, well be assumed to survive the next one.
Instead of that, they muck about, building bridges, a tree house, taming a monkey and so on, ignoring (the third trip to the wreck only happens in chapter 14) the once for all opportunity to salvage the cargo carried by the ship - equipped to meet all the needs of new settlers.
The stupidity continues. The father decides that it is important, for understanding and brevity, to name the features of the island (chap. 11), but, "to abstain from giving names to places on the coast, for it is not unlikely that European navigators have already discovered them and christened them, and in that case we must be careful to respect the work of our predecessors." Having argued thet, the first name suggested is for the bay, "where we debarked from the wrecked vessel" surely on the coast! The third location to be named is, "the small island in the bay) - another coastal feature.
Yet again, it is only on the third visit to the wreck that they discover wheel-barrows and the pinnace. I'll readily grant that items retrieved earlier *might* be more important, but a complete inventory and retrieving everything of value, ought surely have been given a higher priority than shelter from rain (and so on and so on) while in the tropics, where a chill seems likely to be unlikely.
The book, at least so far, seems to give evidence of outstanding incompetence, mitigated only by outstanding good luck, rather than any laudable foresight and planning.
Am I alone in this assessment, or do others agree?
I'll continue to read, BUT...
R
It seems to me blatantly obvious that since a storm shipwrecked the family on the island, the next one might very well destroy the wreck.
Following directly from that, the family's first priority ought to be salvage. The resources of the island will, since they survived the storm that caused the wreck, well be assumed to survive the next one.
Instead of that, they muck about, building bridges, a tree house, taming a monkey and so on, ignoring (the third trip to the wreck only happens in chapter 14) the once for all opportunity to salvage the cargo carried by the ship - equipped to meet all the needs of new settlers.
The stupidity continues. The father decides that it is important, for understanding and brevity, to name the features of the island (chap. 11), but, "to abstain from giving names to places on the coast, for it is not unlikely that European navigators have already discovered them and christened them, and in that case we must be careful to respect the work of our predecessors." Having argued thet, the first name suggested is for the bay, "where we debarked from the wrecked vessel" surely on the coast! The third location to be named is, "the small island in the bay) - another coastal feature.
Yet again, it is only on the third visit to the wreck that they discover wheel-barrows and the pinnace. I'll readily grant that items retrieved earlier *might* be more important, but a complete inventory and retrieving everything of value, ought surely have been given a higher priority than shelter from rain (and so on and so on) while in the tropics, where a chill seems likely to be unlikely.
The book, at least so far, seems to give evidence of outstanding incompetence, mitigated only by outstanding good luck, rather than any laudable foresight and planning.
Am I alone in this assessment, or do others agree?
I'll continue to read, BUT...
R