This
suitably ambiguous expression adequately sums up how Crusoe feels right after his shipwreck. On
the one hand, he has been delivered from what at one point seemed like near-certain death. But
on the other, it's a dreadful deliverance in that he finds himself marooned on a desert island,
far from the civilization whose benefits he'd always taken for granted.
Note
also how Crusoe, in using this expression, shifts responsibility for his predicament onto
Providence. Yet he's only in this mess because of his own recklessness and greed. Had he not
embarked upon such a risky slave-trading expedition then he wouldn't have ended up being
stranded on a desert island in the first place.
At this stage, Crusoe is
quite happy to blame his misfortunes on Providence, but not as yet willing to acknowledge that
that...
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