Moll Flanders Review
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With his story Moll Flanders, Daniel Defoe emphasizes that the question of who's to blame for an individual's wrong doings is more difficult to answer than we credit it to be. Through the role of Moll Flanders, Defoe describes the bad choices a woman was faced with, and with this he raises the question of who's to blame for criminal behavior, society or her? Defoe explores the complexity of the question and furthermore leaves us wondering if the question could even be answered.
It's obvious that Defoe understands the difficulty of the question as he alludes to it repeatedly throughout the novel but leaves it for us to answer. Defoe thoroughly describes the conflict Moll faces between the importance of moral values and the struggle to survive. He seems fascinated by the difficulty in deciding whether choosing morals or a "life of pleasure" is more important. As Moll's life of crime continued to develop, so did her ambitions. She started off wanting just enough to survive and soon "found [most] things generally empty of value". With this semi- autobiographical novel, Defoe seems to excuse the immoral choices Moll made as he explains how she continued to make theses choices and did not face any consequences until the end, at which point she still managed to manipulate her way out of trouble and ended up living a happy life.
Through his effective use of ordinary diction and syntax, Defoe successfully conveys the reality of the story...