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A GUIDE TO THE DISCUSSION OF THE SCREEN VERSION OF
SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON
PREPARED BY EVELYN SPRADO
Richmond Hill High School, New York City
THE STORY
A crescent of coral reef, a blue lagoon, beyond that a tropical island, palms waving in a light breeze, brilliant flowers growing down to the edge of a white beach, and, over all, the cheerful chatter of parrots and monkeys — isn't that your picture of a perfect retreat? Ever since Daniel Defoe made desert islands so popular in his Robinson Crusoe, men have dreamed of pitting themselves against nature — winning food, clothing, and shelter by hard work and adventure. That is why many people go camping every year and why pioneering in some uncharted land is so frequently one of our dreams of escape from the turmoil of life.
In the late eighteenth century in the little town of Bern, Switzerland, lived Johann David Wyss, a clergyman, and his family of four sons. Like all boys, they loved stories, particularly adventure stories, and their father often whiled away the winter evenings with narratives of his own invention. One evening he hit upon the device of weaving all his tales about the
family of another Swiss clergyman named Robinson, who also had four sons. Following the style of Robinson Crusoe, which he knew well and loved, his "serial" dealt with the Robinsons' experiences when, shipwrecked and deserted by captain and crew, they land on a desert island. With wonderful ingenuity they use the ship's stores and the natural resources of the island to build two remarkable homes, one in a giant tamarind tree and another in a huge cave. By cultivating the wild plants on the island and taming its wild animals, they live so happily (even luxuriously) that only two of the sons can be persuaded to leave when a rescue ship arrives. Although he occasionally jotted down this day-by-day account of the Robinsons' life on the island, Wyss had no thought of publication. It was only after his death that one of his sons, Johann Rudolf Wyss, unearthed these notes, revised them, and published them in German in two parts (in 1812 and 1813) under the title Swiss Family Robinson. So great was the book's popularity, however, that