Journey to the Center of the Earth

Journey to the Center of the Earth (Voyage au center de la Terre) is a novel by Julio Verne, published November 25, 1864; which deals with the expedition of a mineralogy professor, Otto Lidenbrock, his nephew Axel and a guide named Hans to the interior of the Earth.

Summary

Axel lives in an old house located on Königstrasse, in Hamburg, together with his uncle Otto Lidenbrock, a prestigious mineralogy professor whom he describes as a man feared for his strong character but very original; his goddaughter Gräuben and his servant, Marta. One day the professor calls him into his office, where he shows him a priceless manuscript of Heimskringla , by Snorri Sturluson. But that book hides a big surprise: a parchment of runic origin that hides a cryptogram. After many efforts and thanks to a chance discovery by Axel, they manage to decipher it; is a text by the Icelandic alchemist Arne Saknussemm who reveals how to reach the center of the earth. The professor, euphoric, decides to go to the place indicated on the parchment along with his nephew Axel.

Criptogram that appears in the work.

Axel is very scared and doesn't want to go, but he has no other choice, and they leave for the point indicated on the scroll: Iceland. After a long journey, they will arrive in Reykjavík, a city near Snæfellsjökull, a volcano through which they will have to enter to reach the earth's heart, following the indications for Saknussemm. There they hire Hans, a professional eider hunter, who will accompany them throughout their expedition. Equipped with food, tools, weapons, instruments, electric lanterns, and a first-aid kit, they set out on the journey to the volcano.

They climb a difficult path to the summit of Sneffels, after a painful march, they reach the top, where they discover an inscription with the name of Saknussemm which shows that their trip was real. Arriving at the bottom of the crater, where three chimneys open, they discover the correct one by following the instructions left by the alchemist on the parchment, which is the one marked by the shadow of Scartaris peak before the Kalends of July. By means of a rope, they slide down eight hundred and fifty-three meters in eleven hours. There they improvise a bed to sleep and regain strength.

The next morning, they continue to sink into the bowels of the globe, dropping down steep slopes, formed by dry lava that lines the interior of the crater. After a long descent, they reach the bottom of the chimney, where they meet two paths. Professor Lidenbrock decides to take the one to the East, and such a path turns out to be the wrong one, because on the third day they run out of water and have to go back to go West. When the characters are dying of thirst after several days without finding any water, Hans, the guide who accompanies them, finds a torrent under the rocks. They perforate the stone with the tools they carry and get water, but at a temperature of 100º; they let it cool and thus quench their thirst and fill the canteens, naming it Arroyo Hans.

The next morning, they continue their path descending and getting closer and closer to the center of the earth. Axel loses his uncle and Hans's uncle, and gets lost in a tunnel. However, the peculiar acoustics of the place allow her to talk with his uncle despite being very far from him. Following his instructions, he sets off. He accidentally falls down a well, but providentially its inclination will take him to where Hans and his uncle are. When he comes to, he sees that they are next to a sea: they are in a cavern capable of containing the amount of water in an ocean. Nearby, there is a mushroom forest where they find skeletons of animals and humans.

Hans builds a raft, and in this way they embark and begin a journey in order to reach new outlets on the opposite shores. The sea voyage takes longer than they thought. During the voyage they will fish for extinct fish of the pterichthyodes genus and meet huge sea monsters, such as an ichthyosaur and a plesiosaur, but luckily the animals are fighting among themselves and are unaware of the raft's presence.

Axel and his two companions continue the journey in their monotonous uniformity. They pass next to an islet, called by them "Axel Islet", on which there is a geyser of boiling water.

They continue on their way and a storm threatens them, the wind blows at an incalculable speed, the lightning does not stop, the heat increases. Suddenly they see a disk of fire move through space at the speed of a hurricane (possibly a ball lightning), which rips off their sail with the mast, and the three friends are swept along with great speed until the raft collides with the offshore reefs.

Axel and his uncle escape death thanks to the guide, Hans, who pulls them out of the abyss by lying on the beach sand. They manage to rescue the gunpowder, the compass, the manometer and food for four months, although they have lost their weapons.

With the help of the compass, they check their situation and see that they have returned to the shore from which they set sail. Furious and defying all dangers, Professor Lidenbrock says that they have to return to the raft to continue their journey, but first he wants to inspect the place where they had drifted. This place has more surprises in store for them: a cemetery of fossilized bodies in which they find first a human skull and then an entire semi-mummified corpse from the Quaternary era.

They continue to explore the terrain and move away from the seashore. They arrive at a forest of vegetation from the tertiary era with palm trees, pines, cypresses and ferns. Beneath those trees they see giant mastodons stirring and what they believe to be a human being more than four meters tall with a head the size of a buffalo herding them like sheep. It seems impossible to them and they think it could be a vision, but they flee at great speed towards the sea, where they have left the raft. In their flight they find a dagger that belonged to Arne Saknussemm, the alchemist who 300 years ago made that same trip to the center of the Earth, and later on they find his initials engraved on a rock, pointing the way once again.

According to Lidenbrock, to reach the center of the globe they still have to descend 1,500 leagues. To continue the journey they must take a gallery, but a huge rock obstructs the entrance and does not allow them to enter anywhere. They choose to break the rock with the gunpowder they have. They prepare everything, light the fuse and take refuge in the raft they have on the beach. However, the extreme instability of the terrain causes the explosion to cause an earthquake and the sea, turned into a giant wave, violently carries them along various galleries. Soon they will end up in a vertical gallery, but the water then, when it recovers its natural level, begins to rise at high speed, like a super-fast elevator. The three explorers consider themselves lost, seeing that due to the speed of their ascent they can hardly breathe and that the heat becomes unbearable.

The walls move, the vapors condense... These are the symptoms of an eruption, and they are inside the chimney of an active volcano. They then stop halfway, shoot off, and stop again, which is repeated several times. Suddenly, a whirling motion seizes the raft, bobbing on waves of lava amid a shower of ash, and they are shot out of the fiery orifice of the crater.

When Axel opens his eyes, he sees that they are out in the open, on the surface of the earth. But they are not in Iceland but on the island of Stromboli, Italy, in the middle of the Mediterranean. They had entered through a volcano, the Snæfellsjökull, and have left through the Stromboli located more than 1,200 leagues from the first. A cone of prodigious height, crowned with smoke, can be seen to the west: it is Etna.

Axel and his uncle return home. The news of his journey to the center of the Earth had spread everywhere, but no one had believed such an adventure. However, the presence of Hans and various reports from Iceland change public opinion. Professor Lidenbrock and Axel become famous men, and Hans returns to his homeland of Iceland.

At the end of the book they will discover that the indication of the compass by which they had thought they were going back was wrong: the luminous ball they encountered in the storm had altered the poles, causing it to point north where it actually was south.

Movies

Several adaptations of the novel have been made, among which these three that appeared in the cinema stand out:

• Travel to the center of the Earth (1959 film).
• Travel to the center of the Earth (1976 film).
• Travel to the center of the Earth (2008 film).

Main and minor characters

Main

• Axel: Professor Lidenbrock's nephew.
• Otto Lidenbrock: Professor of mineralogy, Axel uncle, godfather of Gräuben and organizer of the journey to the center of the Earth. He's a selfish sage.
• Hans: before hunter of Icelandic birds called eíderes and then Icelandic guide who hires Lidenbrock for the trip to the center of the Earth.

Secondaries

• Gräuben: Axel's girlfriend, goddaughter of Lidenbrock.
• Marta: employee of Professor Lidenbrock.
• Arne Saknusemm: parchment writer Otto Lidenbrock found to begin the journey to the center of the earth.