Cocos Island in Fiction
The book Desert Island proposed the highly detailed theory that Daniel Defoe used the Isla dell Cocoze as an accurate model for his descriptions of the island inhabited by the marooned Robinson Crusoe. However Defoe placed Crusoe's island not in the Pacific, but rather off the coast of Venezuela in the Atlantic Ocean.
Robinson's neighbouring Terra Firma is shown on the colour map of Joannes Jansson (Amsterdam) depicting the northeastern corner of South America, entitled Terra Firma et Novum Regnum Granatense et Popayan. It belongs to the early group of plates printed by William Blaeu from 1630 onwards. The properly called Terra Firma was the Isthmus of Darien. Crusoe's two references to Mexico are against a South American island as well.
The Michael Crichton novel Jurassic Park centers on the fictitious Isla Nublar that is off of the west coast of Costa Rica. Isla del Coco may be the inspiration for this island. Supporting this argument is the Dreamworks Interactive game Jurassic Park: Trespasser (1998) which used Cocos Island's topography as a substitute for the fictional island on which it takes place. Also, "Isla Nublar" is intended to mean "Cloudy Island", and Cocos Island is the only island with cloud forests in the eastern Pacific. The book The Silent Sea (2010) of Clive Cussler, uses the mystic pirate tales but puts the island in US north Pacific cost.
Read more about this topic: Cocos Island
Famous quotes containing the words island and/or fiction:
“The island dreams under the dawn
And great boughs drop tranquillity;
The peahens dance on a smooth lawn,
A parrot sways upon a tree,
Raging at his own image in the enamelled sea.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The beginning of human knowledge is through the senses, and the fiction writer begins where human perception begins. He appeals through the senses, and you cannot appeal to the senses with abstractions.”
—Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964)