The article on Mount Desert Island, an island off the coast of Maine, redirects here. Mount Desert Island, in Hancock County,Maine, is one of the largest islands in the United States. ...

A desert island is an island, usually placed in the Pacific (and thus tropical), that is uninhabited and sometimes uncharted. In the popular imagination, they are remote locales that offer escape and force people marooned or stranded as castaways to become self-sufficient and essentially create a new society. This society can either be utopian, based on an ingenious recreation of society's comforts -such as can be seen in the novel Swiss Family Robinson and in a humorous form, in the TV series Gilligan's Island- or a regeneration or even regression into savagery -a theme of William Golding's Lord of the Flies. For other meanings of Pacific, see Pacific (disambiguation). ... The tropics are the geographic region of the Earth centered on the equator and limited in latitude by the two tropics: the Tropic of Cancer in the north and the Tropic of Capricorn in the southern hemisphere. ... See Utopia (disambiguation) for other meanings of this word Utopia, in its most common and general meaning, refers to a hypothetical perfect society. ... The Swiss Family Robinson is a novel about a Swiss family who are shipwrecked en route for Australia. ... The cast of Gilligans Island. ... Sir William Gerald Golding (September 19, 1911 - June 19, 1993) is a Cornish novelist and poet and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1983) for his novels which, with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world... Lord of the Flies book cover Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel by the Nobel Prize-winning author William G. Golding. ...

Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe is the quintessential story of this kind. Since Defoe usually capitalized on current news events, it is likely that his real-life inspiration for Crusoe was a Scottish sailor named Alexander Selkirk, who was rescued in 1709 by Woodes Rogers' expedition after four years on the uninhabited island of Juan Fernández off the Chilean coast. The theme of being stranded on a desert island has inspired films such as Cast Away to the TV series Lost -and the driving force behind reality shows like Survivor. Daniel Defoe Daniel Defoe (1660 â€“ April 24, 1731) was an English spy, writer and journalist, who first gained fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. ... Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published in 1719 and sometimes regarded as the first novel in English. ... Alexander Selkirk, born Alexander Selcraig, (1676–December 13, 1721) was a sailor who spent 4 years as a castaway on an uninhabited island; he is supposed to be the prototype of Defoes Robinson Crusoe. ... Woodes Rogers, (b. ... The town of San Juan Bautista in Cumberland Bay, Robinson Crusoe Island Map of Isla Más Afuera / Selkirk Map of Isla Más a Tierra / Crusoe Orthographic projection centred over Juan Fernandez The Juan Fernández archipelago is located 670 km off the coast of Chile, and is composed... The Republic of Chile is a country in South America occupying a long coastal strip between the Andes mountains and the Pacific Ocean. ... Cast Away is a 2000 film by 20th Century Fox and DreamWorks about a FedEx employee who is stranded on a deserted island after his plane crashes somewhere in the South Pacific. ... Lost is an American drama/adventure television series set in the aftermath of a plane crash on a mysterious tropical island somewhere in the South Pacific. ... Reality television is a genre of television programming in which the fortunes of real life people (as opposed to fictional characters played by actors) are followed. ... Survivor is a popular reality television program produced in many countries throughout the world. ...

Lost has characters named John Locke and Danielle Rousseau, named after John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, respectfully, both of whom were social contract philosophers who dealt with the relationship between nature and civilization. Locke believed that, in the state of nature, all men had equal right to punish transgressors; to ensure fair judgment for all, governments were formed to better administrate the laws. Rousseau, on the other hand, argued that man was born weak and ignorant, but virtuous. Only after man develops society does he become wicked. John Locke John Locke (August 29, 1632 – October 28, 1704) was a 17th-century philosopher concerned primarily with society and epistemology. ... Jean-Jacques Rousseau (June 28, 1712 – July 2, 1778) was a Switzerland-French philosopher, writer, political theorist, and self- composer of The Age of Enlightenment. ...

As symbols of isolation, desert islands have inspired ponderings such as "If I ever went to a deserted island, the five things I would bring with me would be...", a parlor game that has resulted in the BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs. A message in a bottle is a form of communication often associated with people stranded on a desert island, attempting to be rescued. Desert Island Discs is a long running BBC Radio 4 programme. ... A message in a bottle is a form of communication whereby a message is sealed in a container (usually a glass bottle) and released into the sea or ocean. ...

Desert islands also figure largely in sexual fantasies, with the top "dream vacation" for men surveyed by Psychology Today being "marooned on a tropical island with several members of the opposite sex." (Clarke, Crusoe, 6) A sexual fantasy is a fantasy of a sexual nature. ... Psychology Today is a monthly magazine published in the United States. ...

Historical castaways

Real-life castaways were reduced to an extremely primitive condition, or lost the use of speech, in a space of a few years. One report describes a Frenchman who, after two years of solitude on Mauritius, tore his clothing to pieces in a fit of madness brought on by a diet of nothing but raw turtles. Another story has to do with a Dutch seaman who was left alone on the island of Saint Helena as punishment. He fell into such despair that he disinterred the body of a buried comrade and he set out to sea in the coffin. Another castaway, the Spaniard Pedro Serrano, was rescued after seven years of solitude. Families See text Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines, most of whose body is shielded by a special bony shell developed from their ribs. ... Spanish sailor supposed to have been marooned for seven or eight years in the sixteenth century on a small island. ...

Sources

• Clarke, Thurston, Searching for Crusoe (New York: Ballantine, 2001).