Gilles Deleuze’s Desert Islands is a brief foray into the philosophy of islands, that is physical islands. The piece naturally transcends a discussion of geographic features and finds a relationship between conceptions of islands – both external and native – and their temporality or remoteness. Deleuze begins the discussion by developing two ideas of what constitutes and island. The two physical classes featured are continental and oceanic islands, the differentiation being the formation’s proximity to land masses. While it is not denoted, the focus is directed to the latter, oceanic islands, diffuse, often small and fleeting on a geologic scale. Deleuze finds this class of island unique because of its isolation. The human condition on oceanic islands is distinct from that of continental or even coastal customs. Two novels are referenced to illustrate such identities, Robinson Crusoe and Suzanne and the Pacific. The former, Deleuze observes as tragic in its dependence on the material, a “world that resides exclusively in property,” one in which “everything is taken from the ship [upon which Crusoe is wrecked] and nothing is invented.” In contrast to Suzanne and the Pacific, Suzanne – the tale’s castaway heroine – “the deserted island provides her with the double of every object from the city.” “Double” meaning a different item with an equivalent application. Essentially, Suzanne handles the situation with more grace than Crusoe. In a final climactic point, Deleuze inspects linear and circular time. The experience of time differs depending on one’s outlook. To embrace the archaic, the dynamic aspects of the island is to observe time in a “circular” fashion. As opposed to a “linear” concept of time consistent with Crusoe in which an individual is not content with the present and rages toward an ever-present cannon of ambition.