Journey to the Center of the Earth (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Read Free Page B

chapter XXIX, mistakenly identifying him as English rather than American.) Such theories influenced not only Verne, but also other writers and were sporadically revived until the early twentieth century. Edgar Allan Poe’s “Manuscript Found in a Bottle” and Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym and Edgar Rice Burroughs’s At the Earth’s Core and Pellucidar are other examples. Yet by the time Verne published Journey to the Center of the Earth in 1864, hollow-Earth theories, while not entirely disproved, were not a central topic of debate among leading scientists.
    Verne, famous for his extensive and meticulous note taking, was surely not unaware of this fact; what led him to use the idea of a hollow Earth as the foundation for his novel was no doubt the way in which the notion allowed him to tie scientific exploration into some of the oldest and most significant motifs of the Western literary tradition. On the surface, the plot of Journey to the Center of the Earth seems relatively straightforward: Lidenbrock and his nephew by sheer coincidence discover an ancient cryptogram that points to the bottom of an Icelandic volcano as the entryway to a passage that will eventually lead to the Earth’s core. Axel prefers the safety of life above ground and is reluctant to leave his fiancee, the professor’s goddaughter Graüben, but Lidenbrock becomes obsessed with the idea of retracing the steps of his illustrious predecessor, the sixteenth-century Icelandic scholar Arne Saknussemm, [...] to the center of the Earth. Lidenbrock, Axel, and their Icelandic guide Hans penetrate deep beneath the Earth’s crust, where they discover an alternative world of plants, animals, and even human beings that have long gone extinct on the surface, and return to ground level through another volcano. Although this plot may at first appear to be quite linear, it derives much of its narrative force from the way in which it invokes some of the founding stories of Western culture: the quest narrative, the descent to the underworld, and the initiatory voyage.
    Professor Otto Lidenbrock is without any doubt a prime example of a hero on a quest so urgent that no one and nothing can stop it. His obstinacy in reaching the center of the Earth in spite of seemingly insurmountable obstacles puts him in the company of other literary figures whom we remember principally because of their overriding obsession with a single project: Jules Verne’s own Captain Nemo from Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea and Phileas Fogg from Around the World in Eighty Days provide the most obvious parallels, but one is also reminded of Captain Ahab, the protagonist of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. While these may well be more complex characters, Lidenbrock shares with them their stubborn single-mindedness, their iron determination, and the reckless imposition of their will on others who have no desire to take part in the pursuit but are dragged along regardless. Even seen through Axel’s reluctant eyes, however, Uncle Lidenbrock remains likable: His personal foibles, which Axel dwells on with a mix of gentle malice and affection, make him a more human figure than Nemo or Ahab, and the novel leaves us in no doubt that Lidenbrock is genuinely attached to his nephew and his ward Graüben—though his concern for them will never in the end deter him from his quest for knowledge.
    While there is no doubt something cliched about this portrait of the fierce scientist with the warm heart under his crust of social brusqueness, it is Lidenbrock’s enthusiasm and determination in the pursuit of science that gives the novel much of its propulsive energy (as literary critics have pointed out, his temper is compared to volcanic eruptions and electric discharges long before his expedition actually encounters these phenomena in their literal shape). Yet it is curious that Lidenbrock’s scientific obsession is not presented as a quest for genuine innovation and original discovery, but rather