Journey to the Center of the Earth

Summary

On 24 May 1863 Otto Liedenbrock, a hot-tempered professor of mineralogy at the Johannaeum in Hamburg, rushes home to his house in the Königstrasse with a rare manuscript of Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla. Out of it falls a scrap of parchment covered in runes. Liedenbrock and his nephew Axel, who tells the story, transliterate it into a jumble of letters, and the Professor locks the household in without food until the cipher is solved. Axel, fanning himself with the paper, sees by accident that it is Latin written backwards: a message from the sixteenth-century Icelandic alchemist Arne Saknussemm saying that a bold traveller who descends into the crater of Snaefells, where the shadow of the peak Scartaris falls before the first of July, will reach the centre of the earth, as he did. Axel argues that the earth's interior must be molten; his uncle replies that he and Humphry Davy had agreed the core cannot be liquid. Gräuben, the Professor's god-daughter and Axel's sweetheart, encourages Axel to go. Uncle and nephew travel by Kiel and Copenhagen, where Liedenbrock makes Axel climb a church spire to cure his giddiness, to Reykjavik, and engage the calm eider-down hunter Hans Bjelke as guide. At the end of June the shadow of Scartaris marks one of the crater's three chimneys, and they descend. They follow old lava tunnels, take a wrong branch, nearly die of thirst until Hans hears and taps an underground stream they name the Hansbach, and go on through primitive rock. Axel loses his companions in a side passage, wanders alone in darkness, and is found through the acoustics of a whispering gallery. Below lies a vast cavern lit by electric light, with forests of giant mushrooms and a sea the Professor names after himself. On a raft they cross the Liedenbrock Sea, watch an ichthyosaurus and a plesiosaurus fight, pass a geyser on an island named for Axel, and are driven by an electric storm back to the coast. There they find fields of bones, a preserved fossil human, a giant herdsman of mastodons glimpsed among the trees, and a rusted dagger and Saknussemm's carved initials beside a blocked tunnel. They blast the rock with gun-cotton; the explosion drains the sea into an abyss, and the raft is carried up a volcanic chimney on rising water and lava until the travellers are flung out of Stromboli in Sicily. They return to Hamburg in September as celebrities, and the Professor's puzzling compass, which had pointed the wrong way, is explained by the storm's reversal of its poles. The novel was published by Hetzel in Paris in November 1864; the library text is the 1877 English translation by the Rev. Frederick Amadeus Malleson, issued by Ward, Lock as A Journey into the Interior of the Earth.

Plot or Argument

• Chapters I-V: The runic cryptogram

  In Hamburg Liedenbrock finds Saknussemm's parchment in a copy of the Heimskringla, starves his household while he works on the cipher, and is shown by Axel that the message reads backwards and directs travellers down the crater of Snaefells.

• Chapters VI-VIII: The debate and the departure

  Axel argues for central heat and Liedenbrock for a cool core, citing Humphry Davy; Gräuben urges Axel to go, and in Copenhagen the Professor drills his nephew against giddiness on the outside stair of a church spire.

• Chapters IX-XV: Iceland and the guide Hans

  In Reykjavik the travellers consult the scholar Fridriksson, hire Hans Bjelke, and ride across barren country to Stapi and the foot of Snaefells, which they climb.

• Chapters XVI-XX: Down the crater

  The shadow of Scartaris marks the right chimney at the end of June; the party descends by ropes, follows a lava gallery, takes the eastern tunnel, and finds its water nearly gone.

• Chapters XXI-XXV: Thirst and the Hansbach

  Axel collapses with thirst; his uncle gives him the last of the water; they return to the right tunnel, and Hans breaks open a hot spring in the granite, which leads them deeper.

• Chapters XXVI-XXIX: Lost in the dark

  Axel loses his way, wanders without light, hears his uncle's voice through a whispering gallery four miles off, falls down a steep shaft and wakes in his companions' care.

• Chapters XXX-XXXVI: The Liedenbrock Sea

  They reach a subterranean sea under an electric sky, build a raft, see the battle of two marine reptiles and the geyser of Axel Island, and are wrecked back on the shore by an electric storm.

• Chapters XXXVII-XL: Bones, a giant and Saknussemm's mark

  On the shore they find a plain of fossils and a preserved human body, glimpse a giant herdsman with mastodons, and discover Saknussemm's dagger and initials at a passage blocked by rock.

• Chapters XLI-XLV: Explosion, ascent and return

  Gun-cotton opens the passage and drains the sea; the raft rides upward through a volcanic shaft and the travellers are thrown out on Stromboli, then return to fame in Hamburg, where Hans takes his leave.

Characters

• Axel, narrator

  The Professor's young nephew and assistant, timid and doubting at first, who grows in courage during the descent.

• Professor Otto Liedenbrock, leader of the expedition

  Impatient, learned Hamburg mineralogist who will let nothing stand between him and the centre of the earth.

• Hans Bjelke, guide

  Imperturbable Icelandic eider-down hunter who saves the expedition more than once and asks only his weekly wage.

• Gräuben, Axel's betrothed

  The Professor's seventeen-year-old god-daughter, who urges Axel to take part in the venture.

• Martha, housekeeper

  The Professor's servant in Hamburg, who spreads word of the expedition.

• Arne Saknussemm, sixteenth-century Icelandic alchemist

  The traveller whose runic cipher sets the journey in motion and whose initials mark the way.

• Mr. Fridriksson, Reykjavik scholar

  Professor of natural science who receives the travellers and helps find their guide.

Lessons

• Science grows by correcting itself

  Uncle and nephew disagree about the earth's interior from the first chapters to the last: Liedenbrock trusts that the core is cool, Axel that it is molten. Their journey neither proves nor quite disproves either view, and the Professor says that science is built on errors that were good to fall into because they led to the truth. Verne shows argument and observation as the normal life of science, not a sign of failure.

  • What reasons does each man give for his view of the earth's centre?
  • What does Liedenbrock mean when he says the errors of science led to the truth?
  • At the end Axel still believes in central heat. Is he stubborn or honest?

• Courage can be learned

  Axel begins as a nervous young man who fears heights and the dark and hopes the voyage will be cancelled. Through the climb on the Copenhagen spire, the descent of the crater, the ordeal of thirst and his solitary wandering in the tunnels, he learns to master his fear. By the end Gräuben can call him a hero.

  • How does Liedenbrock train Axel not to fear heights?
  • What is Axel's worst moment underground, and how does he survive it?
  • Can courage be practised the way a skill is practised?

• The quiet strength of Hans

  Hans speaks little, wants only his weekly pay, and never panics. It is he who finds water, guides the way, tends the injured Axel and steers the raft. Verne sets the Icelander's steadiness against the Professor's fire and Axel's nerves, showing that faithfulness and calm can be as heroic as genius.

  • List three times Hans saves the expedition.
  • Why does Hans refuse a large reward and return to Iceland?

• Reading the earth like a book

  The journey begins with a coded parchment and continues as a reading of rock strata, fossils and minerals, each layer a page of the earth's history. The travellers go down through time as they go down through stone, until they meet creatures of earlier ages. Verne teaches that the earth itself is a record that patient students can learn to decipher.

  • How does Axel decode Saknussemm's message?
  • Why does the Professor treat each layer of rock as evidence of a different age?
  • What creatures from earlier ages do the travellers meet beneath the earth?

Context

Verne wrote at a time of intense debate about the earth's interior and age. Many geologists held that the planet had cooled from a molten state and kept a hot, liquid core, while others, following arguments that Verne puts into Liedenbrock's mouth and credits to Humphry Davy, doubted that the interior could be fluid. Discoveries of fossil reptiles, the classification of rock strata, and in 1863 the much-discussed human jawbone found at Moulin-Quignon near Abbeville, which the Professor cites, fed public interest in the depths of the earth and the antiquity of humankind. Iceland, with its volcanoes and saga literature, offered a natural doorway.

Composition

Voyage au centre de la Terre was published by Pierre-Jules Hetzel in Paris in November 1864, the second of the Voyages extraordinaires. An enlarged edition of 1867, illustrated by Edouard Riou, added the chapters on the fossil human and the giant herdsman. The first English version, published by Griffith and Farran in 1871, freely rewrote the story; the Rev. Frederick Amadeus Malleson's translation of 1877, published by Ward, Lock as A Journey into the Interior of the Earth, follows the French much more closely, though Malleson supplied the chapter headings, adjusted some biblical allusions and added a few touches of his own, as the Project Gutenberg editor's note explains.

Reception

The book became one of Verne's most popular and helped establish the scientific adventure for young readers. The 1959 film with James Mason and many later adaptations kept its outline, and the phrase journey to the centre of the earth became proverbial for any descent into the unknown.

Comparisons

• twenty-thousand-leagues-under-the-sea

  Five years later Verne sent another scientist-narrator into a hidden world, the ocean depths instead of the earth's interior, again with a calm servant-companion and a commanding leader whose passion drives the voyage.

• around-the-world-in-eighty-days

  Phileas Fogg's journey races across the known surface of the globe on a timetable, while Liedenbrock's goes straight down into a world no map records; both turn a wager or a cipher into a test of nerve.

• lyell-principles-of-geology

  Lyell's account of slow, uniform change in the earth's crust is the kind of geology the travellers read in the rock walls, layer by layer, as they descend through what they take to be the ages of the globe.

• the-divine-comedy

  Dante's pilgrim also descends with a guide through the earth to its centre and climbs out to see the sky again; Verne's descent replaces moral cosmology with mineralogy, but the shape of the journey is old.

• the-time-machine

  Axel's dream on the raft, running backward through the ages of the earth, anticipates Wells's Traveller looking forward to the dying earth; both books make geological time something a character can see.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• How Axel solves the cryptogram by accident in Chapter V while fanning himself with the paper.
• The argument between uncle and nephew over central heat in Chapter VI, and whether either changes his mind.
• The shadow of Scartaris on the crater floor at the end of June.
• What the Professor does with his last water in Chapter XXI.
• Hans's few words and many deeds throughout the descent.

Key terms and names

Cryptogram

A message in code; Saknussemm's is written in runes, and its Latin letters must be read backwards.

Snaefells (Sneffels)

An extinct volcano in western Iceland whose crater is the entrance to the underground world.

Scartaris

A peak near the crater whose shadow, just before July, falls on the right chimney for the descent.

Central heat

The theory, held by Axel, that the earth's interior is intensely hot and molten; his uncle rejects it.

Hansbach

The underground stream Hans finds when the party is dying of thirst, named in his honour.

Ichthyosaurus and plesiosaurus

Marine reptiles known in Verne's day from fossils; two of them fight in the Liedenbrock Sea.

Stromboli

A volcanic island off Sicily from which the travellers are thrown back to the surface.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension Where is Saknussemm's message found, and what does it tell the reader to do?
2. Comprehension How does Hans save the expedition when the water runs out?
3. Comprehension How do the travellers return to the surface of the earth?
4. Interpretation Why does Verne make the story's narrator the timid nephew rather than the bold Professor?
5. Interpretation The Professor is harsh to Axel in Hamburg but gives him his last water underground. What does this reveal about Liedenbrock?
6. Interpretation Why might Verne leave the question of the earth's central heat unsettled at the end?
7. Big Question Is the desire to know worth risking one's life, and who has the right to decide that for others?

Faith Connections

• Job 28:1-11 (Scripture)

  Job describes miners who cut through rock, overturn mountains by the roots and bring hidden things to light. Liedenbrock's descent is that passage acted out, and Job's chapter goes on to ask where wisdom itself is found.

• Psalm 95:4 (Scripture)

  In his hand are the deep places of the earth. Every wonder the travellers find below, from the electric sky to the hidden sea, lies within the psalmist's claim.

• Psalm 130:1 (Scripture)

  Malleson titled one chapter De Profundis, the Latin opening of this psalm, Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord. The translator, a clergyman, gives the physical depths a prayerful echo.

• Dante, Inferno XXXIV (Great Conversation)

  Dante and Virgil pass the centre of the earth and climb out to see the stars again. Verne's travellers never reach the centre, but they too return to the sky through a passage of fire and rock.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: If the earth's interior is not molten, as Liedenbrock and Davy argue, then a traveller might descend through volcanic passages toward its centre; Saknussemm claims to have done so; therefore the expedition is a rational test of a scientific claim rather than a madman's errand, and the evidence of rock, fossil and temperature along the way can decide between uncle and nephew.

Rhetorical device: first-person retrospective narration. Axel tells the story after his return, so passages such as his account of being alone in the tunnel in Chapter XXVI combine the terror of the moment with the calm of the survivor.

Debate: Resolved: that Professor Liedenbrock was right to take his nephew on so dangerous an expedition.

Memory Work

Science, my lad, has been built upon many errors; but they are errors which it was good to fall into, for they led to the truth.

Descend, bold traveller, into the crater of the jokul of Sneffels, which the shadow of Scartaris touches before the kalends of July, and you will attain the centre of the earth; which I have done, Arne Saknussemm.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Trace Axel's growth from the nervous nephew of Chapter I to the hero Gräuben welcomes home, using the spire in Copenhagen, the thirst in the tunnel and his solitary wandering as evidence.

Comparison with Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea: Compare Axel and Professor Aronnax as narrators of hidden worlds: how does each describe what he sees, and how does each judge the leader he follows?

Medical Lens

Verne treats the body under stress with some care. In Hamburg the Professor's household is kept without food while he works on the cipher, and Axel records the effects of hunger on his own mind. Axel's fear of heights is handled as a nervous weakness that can be trained away: in Copenhagen his uncle makes him climb the outside stair of a church spire daily until the giddiness lessens, a period form of graded exposure, and Axel notes the benefit when he looks down the crater. The thirst in the eastern tunnel is the novel's most clinical episode, with weakness, burning mouth, collapse and hallucinatory confusion before the Professor gives him the last water. After his fall in the whispering gallery Axel wakes bruised and feverish under his uncle's and Hans's nursing. He also describes nights of delirium and dreams of abysses before the departure, and on the raft a waking dream in which the ages of the earth run backward. At the end Hans leaves Hamburg seized by mal de pays, the homesickness that nineteenth-century medicine still discussed as a real disorder under the name nostalgia; reading it in modern terms is an interpretation.

• Chapter IV, The Enemy to Be Starved into Submission

  The Professor keeps the house locked and unfed while he struggles with the cipher, and Axel describes the effect of hunger on his thinking.

  Starvation Nutrition
• Chapter VIII, Serious Preparations for Vertical Descent

  Liedenbrock trains Axel against giddiness by making him climb the open spiral stair of the Vor Frelsers Kirk in Copenhagen.

  Neurosis Anxiety
• Chapters XX-XXI, The First Signs of Distress; Compassion Fuses the Professor's Heart

  Water fails in the eastern tunnel; Axel collapses and his uncle revives him with the last mouthful he has saved.

  Starvation Nutrition Nursing Caregiving
• Chapter XXXII, Wonders of the Deep

  On the raft Axel falls into a waking dream in which he passes back through the geological ages to the beginning of the world.

  Dreams Nightmares
• Chapter XLV, All's Well that Ends Well

  Hans leaves Hamburg suffering from mal de pays, homesickness, and returns to Reykjavik.

  Melancholia Depression

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Draw a cross-section of the earth beneath Iceland and Sicily and mark the route of the travellers: Snaefells, the lava gallery, the Hansbach, the whispering gallery, the Liedenbrock Sea and the shaft to Stromboli.

• Classroom

  Write a short Latin or English sentence, reverse it and scramble it as Saknussemm did, and trade with a classmate to decode.

• Fiction

  Retell the battle of the ichthyosaurus and the plesiosaurus from Hans's point of view, in as few words as Hans would use.

• Essay

  Who is the true hero of the expedition: Liedenbrock, Axel or Hans?

Further Reading

• Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne

• From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne

• The Lost World, Arthur Conan Doyle

  A later adventure in which explorers find prehistoric creatures surviving in a hidden region.

• At the Earth's Core, Edgar Rice Burroughs

  An American pulp descendant of Verne's hollow-earth journey.