A Journey to the Centre of the Earth

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A Journey to the Centre of the Earth

A fiction book that teaches you things about the earth and life that you did not know before.

The original title of this book is “Voyage au centre de la terre” and is written by the famous writer Jules Verne. The book was published in 1864 in French, and was later translated into English, which is the language of the book I read. As I have not read the original version of this book, I cannot compare the languages of the two books. Something I can tell you, is that I could not notice that it was a translation, as the language used in the book was extremely good.

Jules Verne was a French author who was born in 1828 and died in 1905. He is considered to be one of the world’s greatest book writers ever, after having written many famous novels. Jules has also written plays, that are unfortunately have not become as popular as his many books. The genres of his novels are many; teenager books, popular books and scientific ones. His pieces of work have been translated to a large number of languages. This book, A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, has been presented as a movie in 1959.

When he wrote many of his books, they were like fiction, as the things they were about had not been done at that time. Today, more than a century later, the situation is not the same any more. Jules Verne wrote his books about imaginary things, that have now turned into reality, like trips to the moon for instance. This, to me, was very fascinating to know at the time I read my book, all though this trip, to the centre of the earth, has not been done yet. The thought of this happening sometime in the future is, according to me, a bit scary as I can not imagine doing such a trip myself.

While reading this book, I realised that Jules Verne was a really talented man, and that he had done a lot of research to be able to write about the scientific and historical matters.
The book is written in such a way, that even though I am living in the 21st century, I ask my self if this journey would be possible to do or not.

The first chapters of a Journey to the Centre of the Earth took place in Edinburgh in Scotland in the year of 1880. The book was about Professor Oliver Lindenbrook and his top student, and nephew, Alec McCuen who tried to interpret a text on a cryptic paper that had fallen out of a new book that they had bought. After much effort on that task, the finally manage to read the text on the paper.

“Descend into the crater of Yocul of Sneffels, which the shade of Scartaris caresses, before the kalends of July, audacious traveler, and you will reach the center of the earth. I did it.” - Arnie Saknussemm

This immediately caught the professor’s attention, and he started planning their departure right away. Axel was not as in to this idea, though, as he could not understand how they could survive such a journey as Lindenbrook planned. Through out the book, you followed them on their trip, and found about the problems they met and how they managed to solve these.

In the book it is described how you can complete things that you have planned by having a lot of hope, even though your plans may seem impossible. This is one of the things that show that hope is the main theme of this book. Lindenbrook and Alex’s hope of reaching the centre of the Earth was the thing that made them continue to struggle, even though the chance of reaching it was not very big. I, myself, have experienced times, when hope is what leads me to my goal. An example of this is when I study for a big exam, which might seem impossible to get a good grade on. By believing in myself and being aware of the thought of being capable of scoring high, I continue to study, which hopefully will give me a good grade. This is why I can understand their eager of continuing their journey. Other themes that are included in this book are joy, action and adventure as well as sadness.

The language in this book is very simple, all though it describes all the scenes and items in detail. This makes this book as easy read by children as by adults, all though the level of understanding varies, as it is a very factual book. I learned a lot of history along with the increase of my understanding of the earth.

The main characters are very well described. Professor Lindenbrook was described as a very peculiar person, who was also quite famous in Germany, and his nephew, Alex, was a very bright person who too...