Michel Tournier's Friday

Summary

Michel Tournier's first novel came out in 1967. Its full French title is Vendredi; ou, Les limbes du pacifique; the subtitle has been translated into English as The Other Island, no doubt to avoid the belletristic word “limbo.” “Limbo,” strictly speaking, denotes the area on the borders of hell where unbaptized souls dwell, especially those born before the coming of Christ the Redeemer, who, if they had had the chance of being baptized, would have gone to heaven. Tournier probably wants to suggest this theological sense, but his emphasis is more on the general idea of the unformed, special, or marginal nature of the island itself, as well as the imagined “other” island.

Friday, of course, is but one of innumerable modern versions of Defoe's story, such as Muriel Spark's Robinson (1958) and J. M. Coetzee's Foe (1986); but Tournier's version has a particular interest, partly because of its remarkable literary quality, and partly because Tournier is exceptionally explicit both about his changes from Defoe and about his general view of myth.

Tournier takes account of Rousseau's objections to Defoe's story; he begins with the wreck and ends with the offered escape. More important, he gives us a new attitude to the character of Friday. “What did Friday mean for Defoe?” Tournier asks, and answers indignantly: “Nothing: an animal, a being at any rate who waited to receive his human qualities from Robinson, from Western man.” Tournier's main aim, we presume, is to correct Defoe's complacent colonialism in his treatment of Friday.