The Swiss Family Robinson

The entire narrative is Robinson’s account, in journal form, of their decade-long adventure. A first-person point of view in literature in necessarily limited. The reader sees the world solely through the eyes of the narrator, and the gaps are filled in only by Robinson’s account of what his sons or his wife tells him. If certain events are left out or distorted, readers never know; they must trust the narrator’s account to provide some reasonable version of the truth. Like much of world history in which the events we remember are the events told by the colonizers and the military victors, Robinson’s account is only part of the story. One may wonder what new information would be revealed if Ernest or Elizabeth had their say. Robinson may have seemed less like a calm, loving husband and father if someone else told the story. Historian Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States was radical precisely because it gave historical voice to people who have been traditionally voiceless. With that book’s approach in mind, it is crucial for readers to question usual colonial narratives like Robinson’s.