ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ...

for near a hundred miles together upon this coast we saw nothing but a waste,
uninhabited country by day, and heard nothing but howlings and roaring of wild
beasts by night. 176
Crusoe is unclear as to where his pursuers hail from. Geographically, he is probably
imagining the traditional peoples of Western Sahara, but the dominant tribe of the region,
the Saharawi, is never mentioned by name in, nor suggested by descriptions in, the text.
Sarg seems unconcerned with geographical accuracy. His images may be based
on an authentic African tribe, such as the Azande, the dominant tribe of the southwestern
Sudan. Images of African warriors would have been available to Sarg as a consequence
of Colonialism. Yet, given the elaborateness of the skin and face paint on Sarg’s
marionettes, it seems more likely that he drew his from the elaborately painted bodies of
Papua New Guinea’s tribal warriors, an island nation just north of Australia.
It is a matter of speculation whether Sarg used careful research, general
collections of influence, or an exceptional imagination to develop his images. He was
notoriously cosmopolitan, using African drums and Chinese wind harps in his puppet
orchestras. He was equally noted for his high artistic standards and his willingness to
share his puppetry secrets. If he was given to multicultual research, he never mentioned
this as a necessary strategy for puppeteers, despite numerous publications on the subject.
His exoticism succeeds in limiting stereotypes, but it seems unlikely that cultural
authenticity was ever on his mind.
What definitely influenced Sarg was his vast collection of dolls. His marionettes
have the wide eyes of early twentieth-century dolls (see figure 29). Building on the same
copresence, Sarg limits their racial characteristics to one or two specific qualities. As
176 Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, 14.1-11.
137