A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
"A Journey to the Centre of the Earth," written by Jules Verne in 1864, is a seminal work of adventure literature that explores the scientific imagination of the Victorian era. The story follows Professor Lidenbrock, a passionate and somewhat eccentric academic from Hamburg, who discovers an ancient runic manuscript suggesting that the Earth's center can be accessed through a crater of the extinct Snaefell volcano in Iceland. Along with his reluctant nephew Axel and a stoic guide named Hans Bjelke, Lidenbrock embarks on an extraordinary expedition filled with geological wonders and prehistoric marvels.
As they descend into the Earth, the travelers encounter a series of caves, an underground sea, and remnants of ancient life, including colossal creatures reminiscent of Earth's distant past. Throughout their journey, they face numerous challenges, including a lack of water and dangerous natural phenomena. Ultimately, their adventure concludes with a dramatic escape from the depths via the volcanic eruption of Stromboli. This novel blends elements of fantasy and scientific exploration, capturing the spirit of curiosity and the quest for knowledge that characterized its time. Verne’s work has not only influenced the genre of science fiction but also sparked the imaginations of readers across generations, encouraging exploration of the unknown.
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A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
First published:Voyage au centre de la terre, 1864 (English translation, 1872)
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Science fiction
Time of plot: May-September, 1863
Locale: Hamburg, Germany; Iceland; an extensive cave system far below the earth’s surface
Principal characters
Otto Lidenbrock , a professor of chemistry and mineralogy at the Johanneum collegeAxel , his young nephew, the narratorGraüben , the object of Axel’s affectionsHans Bjelke , an Icelandic guideArne Saknussem , a sixteenth century Icelandic alchemist
The Story:
Professor Lidenbrock, a polymathic teacher at the prestigious Johanneum College in Hamburg, purchases a copy of the Heimskringla (a record of Icelandic kings) at a secondhand bookstore. In this copy, he finds an encrypted runic manuscript and deciphers the cryptogram, which proves to be the work of a celebrated (fictitious) alchemist, Arne Saknussem. The decrypted text claims that the center of the earth might be reached by means of one of the several craters of the extinct volcano Snaefell in Iceland.
Lidenbrock suggests to his nephew Axel that they should mount an expedition to follow in Saknussem’s footsteps and journey to the center of the earth. Axel is initially horrified, but he is persuaded to risk the enterprise by a girl named Graüben, whose affection he craves and who judges that it will make a hero of him. Axel and his uncle then set sail for Reykjavik, eager to get there by the first of July, when the angle of the sun’s rays will indicate the correct crater.
After conferring with local scholars, Lidenbrock hires a taciturn guide, Hans Bjelke, and assembles an extensive collection of scientific instruments. The members of the party then make their way to Snaefell, where a sign specified by Saknussem’s manuscript informs them into which crater they must descend. As they do so, they make various geological observations, but the expedition seems doomed to failure when they run out of water. They are saved when they find a hot spring, the downward course of which they begin to follow.
Eventually, the expeditionaries reach a series of caves beneath the Atlantic Ocean, at a depth previously believed to be the lower limit of the earth’s crust; instead of encountering the molten rock of the mantle, however, the travelers follow the mazy series of galleries down to an interior sea illuminated by a wan light produced by some kind of natural electrical phenomenon. On the shore of this sea, they find a fungal forest and other vegetable relics of Earth’s Secondary Epoch. They improvise a raft and set sail upon the sea, witnessing a contest between a plesiosaur and an ichthyosaur in the water.
By mid-August, the three travelers calculate that they are somewhere beneath England. Their raft is wrecked by an electrical storm, and they find further relics of eras that are long past on the earth’s surface, including a giant humanoid skull. Soon afterward, they glimpse a living giant tending a herd of mastodons. The travelers repair their raft, but when they try to blast their way through a rocky obstruction they provoke a major seismic disturbance and are nearly killed. Instead of dying, however, they are borne hectically upward by a flood of water and eventually expelled from the Italian volcano Stromboli. From there, they make their way home.
Bibliography
Butcher, William. Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Self: Space and Time in the Voyages Extraordinaires. New York: Macmillan, 1990. An elaborate account of Verne’s work that makes much of the exemplary quality of A Journey to the Centre of the Earth—as might be expected from one of the novel’s more responsible translators.
Evans, Arthur B. Jules Verne Rediscovered: Didacticism and the Scientific Novel. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1988. Comprehensive study of Verne’s proto-science-fiction works, relating them to the burgeoning field of the popularization of science, which progressed faster and more elaborately in France than anywhere else.
‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, ed. “A Jules Verne Centenary.” Science Fiction Studies 32, part 1 (March, 2005): 1-176. A collection of essays and a roundtable discussion summarizing the current state of Verne scholarship, including a useful annotated bibliography of translations of the author’s work and a commentary on the various kinds of distortion contained therein, both by Evans.
Evans, I. O. Jules Verne and His Work. London: Arco, 1965. A succinct critical biography, of particular interest because its author was the editor of the very extensive “Fitzroy Edition” of Verne’s works, issued by Arco, which included many previously untranslated works that Evans himself rendered into English.
Fitting, Peter, ed. Subterranean Worlds: A Critical Anthology. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2004. Although it contains samples of text from the relevant works, this is more a history of its theme than an anthology and is very scrupulous in that regard. Chapter 12 deals specifically with A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, but the book is valuable for its provision of a literary context for the novel and some discussion of its influence.
Unwin, Timothy A. Jules Verne: Journeys in Writing. Liverpool, England: Liverpool University Press, 2005. Considers Verne to be an important contributor to the “nineteenth-century experimental novel”; offers a useful account of the sources from which Verne obtained the scientific information contained in the novel.