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Overview
When Axel’s uncle, Professor Liedenbrock, finds a coded journal describing a path into the center of the Earth, Axel hopes he’ll never be able to decipher it—because once the professor sets his mind to something, he’ll insist on carrying it out no matter the danger or difficulty. But when Axel himself ends up cracking the journal’s code, curiosity gets the better of him, and before he knows it, he and his uncle head to Iceland to find this secret route to unexplored territory.
After being joined by a local guide, Hans, the group descends into a volcano, where Axel is convinced they’ll find nothing noteworthy and face nearly certain death. Instead, what awaits is more incredible than any of the travelers could have anticipated.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781665934183 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Aladdin |
| Publication date: | 04/23/2024 |
| Series: | The Jules Verne Collection |
| Pages: | 368 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.12(w) x 7.62(h) x 1.00(d) |
| Age Range: | 10 - 18 Years |
About the Author
Date of Birth:
February 8, 1828Date of Death:
March 24, 1905Place of Birth:
Nantes, FrancePlace of Death:
Amiens, FranceEducation:
Nantes lycée and law studies in ParisRead an Excerpt
Chapter I: The Professor and His Family Chapter I THE PROFESSOR AND HIS FAMILY
On the 24th of May, 1863, my uncle, Professor Liedenbrock, rushed into his little house, number 19 Königstrasse, one of the oldest streets in the oldest portion of the city of Hamburg.
Martha must have concluded that she was very much behindhand, for the dinner had only just been put into the oven.
“Well, now,” said I to myself, “if that most impatient of men is hungry, what a disturbance he will make!”
“M. Liedenbrock so soon!” cried poor Martha in great alarm, half opening the dining room door.
“Yes, Martha; but very likely the dinner is not half-cooked, for it is not two yet. Saint Michael’s clock has only just struck half past one.”
“Then why has the master come home so soon?”
“Perhaps he will tell us that himself.”
“Here he is, Monsieur Axel; I will run and hide myself while you argue with him.”
And Martha retreated in safety into her own dominions.
I was left alone. But how was it possible for a man of my undecided turn of mind to argue successfully with so irascible a person as the Professor? With this persuasion I was hurrying away to my own little retreat upstairs, when the street door creaked upon its hinges; heavy feet made the whole flight of stairs to shake; and the master of the house, passing rapidly through the dining room, threw himself in haste into his own sanctum.
But on his rapid way he had found time to fling his hazel stick into a corner, his rough broadbrim upon the table, and these few emphatic words at his nephew:
“Axel, follow me!”
I had scarcely had time to move when the Professor was again shouting after me:
“What! Not come yet?”
And I rushed into my redoubtable master’s study.
Otto Liedenbrock had no mischief in him, I willingly allow that; but unless he very considerably changes as he grows older, at the end he will be a most original character.
He was professor at the Johanneum, and was delivering a series of lectures on mineralogy, in the course of every one of which he broke into a passion once or twice at least. Not at all that he was overanxious about the improvement of his class, or about the degree of attention with which they listened to him, or the success which might eventually crown his labors. Such little matters of detail never troubled him much. His teaching was, as the German philosophy calls it, “subjective”; it was to benefit himself, not others. He was a learned egotist. He was a well of science, and the pulleys worked uneasily when you wanted to draw anything out of it. In a word, he was a learned miser.
Germany has not a few professors of this sort.
To his misfortune, my uncle was not gifted with a sufficiently rapid utterance; not, to be sure, when he was talking at home, but certainly in his public delivery; this is a want much to be deplored in a speaker. The fact is that during the course of his lectures at the Johanneum, the Professor often came to a complete standstill; he fought with willful words that refused to pass his struggling lips, such words as resist and distend the cheeks, and at last break out into the unasked-for shape of a round and most unscientific oath: then his fury would gradually abate.
Now, in mineralogy there are many half-Greek and half-Latin terms, very hard to articulate, and which would be most trying to a poet’s measures. I don’t wish to say a word against so respectable a science, far be that from me. True, in the august presence of rhombohedral crystals, retinasphaltic resins, gehlenites, fassaites, molybdenites, tungstates of manganese, and titanite of zirconium, why, the most facile of tongues may make a slip now and then.
It therefore happened that this venial fault of my uncle’s came to be pretty well understood in time, and an unfair advantage was taken of it; the students laid wait for him in dangerous places, and when he began to stumble, loud was the laughter, which is not in good taste, not even in Germans. And if there was always a full audience to honor the Liedenbrock courses, I should be sorry to conjecture how many came to make merry at my uncle’s expense.
Nevertheless my good uncle was a man of deep learning—a fact I am most anxious to assert and reassert. Sometimes he might irretrievably injure a specimen by his too great ardor in handling it; but still he united the genius of a true geologist with the keen eye of the mineralogist. Armed with his hammer, his steel pointer, his magnetic needles, his blowpipe, and his bottle of nitric acid, he was a powerful man of science. He would refer any mineral to its proper place among the six hundred elementary substances now enumerated, by its fracture, its appearance, its hardness, its fusibility, its sonorousness, its smell, and its taste.
The name of Liedenbrock was honorably mentioned in colleges and learned societies. Humphry Davy, Humboldt, Captain Sir John Franklin, General Sabine, never failed to call upon him on their way through Hamburg. Becquerel, Ebelman, Brewster, Dumas, Milne-Edwards, Sainte-Claire Deville, frequently consulted him upon the most difficult problems in chemistry, a science which was indebted to him for considerable discoveries, for in 1853 there had appeared at Leipzig an imposing folio by Otto Liedenbrock, entitled, “A Treatise upon Transcendental Chemistry,” with plates; a work, however, which failed to cover its expenses.
To all these titles to honor, let me add that my uncle was the curator of the museum of mineralogy formed by M. Struve, the Russian ambassador; a most valuable collection, the fame of which is European.
Such was the gentleman who addressed me in that impetuous manner. Fancy a tall, spare man, of an iron constitution, and with a fair complexion which took off a good ten years from the fifty he must own to. His restless eyes were in incessant motion behind his full-sized spectacles. His long, thin nose was like a knife blade. Boys have been heard to remark that that organ was magnetized and attracted iron filings. But this was merely a mischievous report; it had no attraction except for snuff, which it seemed to draw to itself in great quantities.
When I have added, to complete my portrait, that my uncle walked by mathematical strides of a yard and a half, and that in walking he kept his fists firmly closed, a sure sign of an irritable temperament, I think I shall have said enough to disenchant anyone who should by mistake have coveted much of his company.
He lived in his own little house in Königstrasse, a structure half brick and half wood, with a gable cut into steps; it looked upon one of those winding canals which intersect each other in the middle of the ancient quarter of Hamburg, and which the great fire of 1842 had fortunately spared.
It is true that the old house stood slightly off the perpendicular, and bulged out a little toward the street; its roof sloped a little to one side, like the cap over the left ear of a Tugendbund student; its lines wanted accuracy; but after all, it stood firm, thanks to an old elm which buttressed it in front, and which often in spring sent its young sprays through the windowpanes.
My uncle was tolerably well off for a German professor. The house was his own, and everything in it. The living contents were his goddaughter Gräuben, a young Virlandaise of seventeen; Martha; and myself. As his nephew and an orphan, I became his laboratory assistant.
I freely confess that I was exceedingly fond of geology and all its kindred sciences; the blood of a mineralogist was in my veins, and in the midst of my specimens I was always happy.
In a word, a man might live happily enough in the little old house in the Königstrasse, in spite of the restless impatience of its master, for although he was a little too excitable—he was very fond of me. But the man had no notion how to wait; nature herself was too slow for him. In April, after he had planted in the terra-cotta pots outside his window seedling plants of mignonette and convolvulus, he would go and give them a little pull by their leaves to make them grow faster. In dealing with such a strange individual there was nothing for it but prompt obedience. I therefore rushed after him.
Table of Contents
| 1 | My Uncle Lidenbrock | 1 |
| 2 | The Stange Parchment | 7 |
| 3 | My Uncle is Baffled | 13 |
| 4 | I Find the Key | 21 |
| 5 | Hunger Defeats Me | 26 |
| 6 | I Argue in Vain | 33 |
| 7 | Getting Ready | 42 |
| 8 | The First Stage | 50 |
| 9 | We Reach Iceland | 58 |
| 10 | Our First Dinner in Iceland | 66 |
| 11 | Our Guide Hans | 72 |
| 12 | Slow Progress | 79 |
| 13 | Icelandic Hospitality | 85 |
| 14 | A Final Argument | 92 |
| 15 | The Summit of Sneffels | 99 |
| 16 | Inside the Crater | 106 |
| 17 | Our Real Journey Begins | 113 |
| 18 | Ten Thousand Feet Below Sea-Level | 119 |
| 19 | Upwards Again | 126 |
| 20 | A Dead End | 132 |
| 21 | The New Columbus | 138 |
| 22 | I Collapse | 144 |
| 23 | We Find Water | 148 |
| 24 | Under the Sea | 154 |
| 25 | A Day of Rest | 159 |
| 26 | Alone | 165 |
| 27 | Lost and Panic-Stricken | 169 |
| 28 | I Hear Voices | 173 |
| 29 | Saved | 179 |
| 30 | An Underground Sea | 184 |
| 31 | The Raft | 193 |
| 32 | We Set Sail | 199 |
| 33 | A Battle of Monsters | 207 |
| 34 | The Great Geyser | 215 |
| 35 | The Storm | 221 |
| 36 | An Unpleasant Shock | 228 |
| 37 | A Human Skull | 235 |
| 38 | The Professor Gives a Lecture | 240 |
| 39 | Man Alive | 247 |
| 40 | We Meet an Obstacle | 255 |
| 41 | Down the Tunnel | 261 |
| 42 | Going Up | 267 |
| 43 | Shot Out of a Volcano | 274 |
| 44 | Back to the Surface | 281 |
| 45 | Home Again | 288 |
Reading Group Guide
The intrepid Professor Lindenbrock embarks upon the strangest expedition of the nineteenth century: a journey down an extinct Icelandic volcano to the Earth's very core. In his quest to penetrate the planet's primordial secrets, the geologist—together with his quaking nephew Axel and their devoted guide, Hans—discovers an astonishing subterranean menagerie of prehistoric proportions. Verne's imaginative tale is at once the ultimate science fiction adventure and a reflection on the perfectibility of human understanding and the psychology of the questor. As David Brin notes in his Introduction, though Verne never knew the term "science fiction," Journey to the Centre of the Earth is "inarguably one of the wellsprings from which it all began."
1. Deciphering Arne Saknussemm's parchment does not come easily to Professor Lidenbrock, the profound analyst. Indeed, Verne has shown us, right from the start, that he will not take his audience's suspension of disbelief for granted. Discuss the role of logic in the novel; how does Verne's meticulous manipulation of science and history increase the believability–and ultimately the reader's enjoyment–of the adventure?
2. Dwelling on their shared hardships, Axel says, "My uncle bore them like a man who is angry with himself for yielding to weakness: Hans, with the resignation of his placid nature; and I, to speak the truth, complaining and despairing the whole time. I could not bear up against this stroke of ill-fortune." Compare Professor Lidenbrock, Axel, and Hans in terms of intellect, bravery, determination, and humor. How does each of their personal skills come into play in times of crisis, and how do theirshortcomings complicate the journey? Does Hans, the Icelandic guide of superhuman devotion, even have a weakness? If not, how does this affect your evaluation of him as a whole character?
3. Ingenuity and adaptability are vital to the explorers' success. Trace the many instances of resourcefulness in the novel, considering the adventurers' ingenious use of simple phenomena such as gravity, acoustics, and natural propulsion. How does this relate to David Brin's assertion in the Introduction: "Destiny– readers learned–was something you might craft with your own clever hands."
4. The long and often monotonous trek down to the earth's core poses some plot challenges for Verne. With only three characters, one goal, and little change in scenery, how does Verne create suspense in order to sustain the reader's interest?
5. Compare the competing characterizations of science in the novel: "When science has spoken, it is for us to hold our peace" versus "Science is eminently perfectible." Discuss how Verne's novel can be read as a tribute to scientific progress and the pluck of the explorer who contradicts accepted fact in search of greater truths.
6. Describe Axel's sublime hallucination on the subterranean ocean and the "abyss attraction" which overtakes him earlier in his descent. Why is Axel particularly affected by the romantic conception of the sublime?
7. How is Gräuben a "necessary" character, not only in the beginning but throughout the novel? Evaluate Brin's assertion in the Introduction that "science fictional women tend to be bolder than their eras, and science fictional men seem to like it that way."
8. Describe the subterranean world that the journeyers discover. How does Verne account for the underground ocean and the blanched species of flora and fauna? Did Verne's exposition of this primitive world meet your expectations? What surprises would have been in store in your own imaginative rendering of this peculiar environment?
9. How can Journey to the Centre of the Earth be interpreted as a psychological quest? Consider the roles of ambition, despair, and hope in the novel. Is the journey ultimately more important than the final outcome?
10. Jules Verne's extraordinary tales continue to fascinate readers because they capture the thrill of the unknown. In his Introduction, David Brin writes, "Verne knew what his contemporaries did not. . . . For his tales to continue taking hardy adventurers into strange locales, he would have to redefine the very idea of wilderness, the whole notion of a frontier." Why does the notion of the frontier continue to fascinate us? In this Internet age of globalization and routine space travel, what frontiers are left to science fiction? If not physical, might these remaining frontiers be mental and moral?