The story ends nicely John, and, having just finished Robinson Crusoe (I'm teaching it this fall), I have to say that your story stays much more within the spirit of Defoe's story than that dopey Gilligan theme song ("Like Robinson Crusoe, it's lonely as can be").

Like Gilligan at the end of the story, Crusoe, even without Friday, learns not to be lonely and to love and appreciate his island and his life there. The accounts of the real life Robinson Crusoe on whom Defoe based his book, a Scottish sailor named Alexander Selkirk who was left all alone on the island of Juan Fernandez from 1714 to 1718, also corraborate the truth in John's tale.

Richard Steele, who interviewed Selkirk upon his return to England, described him in the following terms: "The Man frequently bewailed his Return to the World, which could not, he said, with all its Enjoyments, restore him to the Tranquility of his Solitude. . . . This plain Man's Story is a memorable Example, that he is happiest who confines his Wants to natural Necessities; and he that goes further in his Desires, increases his Wants in Proportion to his Acquisitions; or to use his own Expression, 'I am now worth 800 Pounds, but shall never be so happy, as when I was not worth a Farthing.'"