The Genius of Jules Verne in Journey to the Center of the Earth

Genius is a word that is thrown around too often nowadays, but after reading Journey to the Center of the Earth, I think Jules Verne is one person who deserves that title.

This book was really fun to read and I’ve enjoyed seeing why it is such a Classic.

My first thought when I started reading this book was: Jules Verne is very smart. He created very intelligent characters, such as the savant Uncle Lidenbrock. As most writers know, to have intelligent characters speak intelligently, the writer has to be even more intelligent. And intelligible, if they want their readers to keep reading.

Verne talks about specific geological, geographical, and linguistic theories that most people don’t know, and you have to remember that he was writing in an era without internet. He had to learn about all of these things from studying.

Imagine– he read books! He had to have all of the information he includes in his book on hand.

Geological Overload

I enjoyed learning about some scientific ideas throughout this book, but at times I felt a little lost. Journey to the Center of the Earth is incredibly dense!

Journey to the Center of the Earth is pre-science fiction, but is one that people point to as an origin of this genre. I can definitely see why. There are many cool events in the narrative where Verne explores various scientific theories using his characters.

One example is when the narrator and main character, Axel, gets separated from his uncle and their guide. He tries to backtrack along the tunnel to find them.

Finally, Axel hears his uncle’s voice from a great distance, but is stumped at first as to how he is able to hear Lidenbrock.

“Then I understood it all. To make them hear me, all I had to do was to speak with my mouth close to the wall, which would serve to conduct my voice, as the wire conducts electric fluid…I went close to the wall, and I said, slowly and distinctly: “Uncle Lidenbrock!” And I waited with painful anxiety. Sound does not travel quickly here. The density of the atmosphere increases its intensity but not its velocity.”

Jules Verne. Journey to the Center of the Earth.

I can appreciate the amount of thought that went into crafting the imagined scientific discoveries of Verne’s characters. He accounts for scientific variables (such as an increase in atmospheric density as they travel deeper into the earth) to make his story seem more plausible.

Verne boldly has his characters debunk popular scientific theories of the day, such as that the Earth’s core is incredibly hot and that life could not be sustained down there. Instead, Verne’s characters discover that there is a whole other world deep underneath the Earth’s crust.

Tricky Linguistics

Another element I enjoyed was the linguistic knowledge Verne uses. Before Axel and his stubborn Uncle Lidenbrock discover the underground passage in Iceland, they find a dirty parchment in an old book the professor had purchased, which has an encoded message on it. To understand the message, they must crack the code.

It is Axel who discovers the cipher and is able to decode the message. This is no easy feat, as to get to this point, he had to track with his savant Uncle Lidenbrock, who transcribes the ruins and waxes eloquently about Latin, French, and Icelandic.

As a humorous, somewhat unrelated aside, Here are some truly tricky linguistics by some of my favorite comedians, Fry and Laurie (before Hugh Laurie became famous in the U.S. on the show House):

There are many other interesting elements to this story I’d like to discuss, but I think those will have to be in another post.

What about you?

• Have you read a book that had so much information and technical terms that it lost you at some points?
• Have you read/ enjoyed Journey to the Center of the Earth or other classics by Jules Verne?