Book Review : Jules Verne - A journey to the Center of the Earth

 This week I finished the most interesting book I want to recommend to everyone, read it. This book is for all ages, from small to large. In it you can find yourself. It makes you travel in a magical world full of adventure, experience and self-knowledge.

A Journey to the Center of the Earth (Voyage au center de la Terre in French) is a novel written by Jules Verne in the Extraordinary Journeys series and published in 1864. Originally published in in-18 on November 25, 1864, it was republished in octavo. on May 13, 1867. The text of 1867 differs from that of 1864, with two additional chapters.

After discovering an ancient rune manuscript, a scientist, his nephew and their guide embark on a journey to the center of the Earth, using an Icelandic volcano.

As Jules Verne usually does, the novel is a clever mix of scientific facts, extrapolations and adventures. The introduction of the novel reflects the concern for a young science, cryptology (Edgar Poe also dedicated a novel to him, The Golden Beetle). The continuation presents a description of Iceland in the late nineteenth century, then focuses on two rising sciences, paleontology and geology.

 The novel contains forty –five chapters, without a title. The book was inspired by Charles Lyell's Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of Man, published in 1863 (and may have been influenced by Lyell's earlier work, Principles Of Geology, published between 1830-33). At the time, geologists had abandoned the literal interpretation of the Bible regarding the formation of the Earth, and it was generally accepted that the end of the last glaciation marked the appearance of mankind, but Lyell discovered new evidence that sent humans back in time. Lyell's book also influenced the second edition of Louis Figuier's work, La Terre avant le déluge (1867), which included illustrations of savages wearing animal skins and wielding stone axes, instead of the Garden of Eden in the 1863 edition.

Jules Verne A Journey to the center of the Earth. Form the discovery of a strange parchment in an old book to the fantastic descent though a dormant  volcano into a subterranean world of danger and beauty, A journey to the Center of the Earth is as wonderfully entertaining today  as when  it was  first published.

One of Jules Verne’s finest novels, its unique combination of “hard” science  and vivid imagination helped establish this brilliant Frenchman as the father of modern science fiction. A high-tension odyssey, it depicts three men who venture into an unknown, fearsome underworld to discover what lies at the mysterious center of the earth- while risking  their chances of ever returning to the surface alive.

A Journey to the Center of the Earth, the next of the “ Extraordinary Journey’s, is a combination of a clearly formulaic mode of writing and wonderfully imaginative adventures. In his old age, Verne acknowledged that all along he had adhered  to a specific formula in his writing. He knew clearly  what the beginning middle and end of his story would be before  he put to paper. He made an outline, which he filled  in chapter by chapter, and then he rewrote.  One can see evidence of this method in the text.

There is a mapped-out, cyclical nature to all that occurs throughout the journey, if the story points are begin connected  before our eyes. The characters are driven  by a devotion to scientific research and rational deduction, which leads them to an obvious  course of action, which  leads them into danger and misadventure, which  leads to accidental good fortune, which  leads once again to a scientific deduction… and so on and so on until the characters reach their final destination.

What’s so unusual is that  a writer of such a scientific and methodical nature would, albeit perhaps unwittingly reveal so much of his personal experience in his scientifically oriented adventures. Was it accidental that a story about the exploration of Earth’s interior also expose the inner workings of the mind of a boy who need to become a man?

For there are many clear echoes in A Journey to the Center of the Earth of Verne’s own life. Most evident throughout the story is Verne’s relationship to his father. A Journey to the Center of the Earth is filled with the moments of “great good fortune”. Without those moments the adventures  would not be able to move forward and neither would the story. Perhaps the most important moment of “great good fortune “is an event disguised as a dangerous mistake.

Otto Lidenbrock, a professor of mineralogy, and Axel, his nephew, embark on the strangest journey of their lives, on the road depicted in a mysterious manuscript ... The target of the fantastic journey is the center of the Earth. Accompanied by Hans, an experienced guide, the two explorers penetrate, deeper and deeper, under the earth's crust, towards another world. The many adventures that the three heroes have in the miraculous and unsuspected world from the depths, the dangers and unusual events they go through are the delight of the book, which, like all of Jules Verne's novels, is read breathlessly.

                                                  Written by Bogus Elena