This essay attempts to develop a reading strategy by means of which aspects of the implied worldview of a literary text – especially a narrative text – can be systematically analysed. Taking Lotman’s notion of the world-modeling function of literature as its point of departure, the article argues that with regard to a given worldview topic such as ‘belief in God’ and the ‘essence of life’, a literary text is ultimately determined by an overriding hypothesis. It then applies this working assumption to a foundational work of the English novel, Daniel Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’, and to two twentieth-century re-writings, Michel Tournier’s ‘Vendredi’ and Stephen King’s “Survivor Type ”. The article concludes that the assumption of such a dominant hypothesis can indeed serve as a helpful tool in order to access and describe the ideological deep structure of narrative texts, although further testing is required.