Jules Verne's Great Novels example essay topic

Jules Verne: The Father of Science-fiction "My uncle leaped three feet off the ground, then ran about the room wildly, knocking over tables and chairs, and tossing his book up in the air. ' We start at once! ' he cried. 'And you will share my glory. ' 's tart for where?' I asked, afraid of the answer. ' To the centre of the earth. ' " Jules Verne, French science-fiction writer of Journey to the Centre of the Earth, bases his novels on adventure, geography, and science. In the mid-19th century, when Verne was alive, everybody was travelling to unknown lands.

All these new ideas and explorations inspired Jules Verne, and this spirit is captured in his novel, Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Jules Verne was born in 1828, in France, and died in 1905. He was the eldest of five brothers. His mother was the daughter of shipbuilder and captains, and his father was a lawyer. Verne studied law, but he preferred writing, so he quit law school, and published his first book in 1863. He spent his entire life writing and learning and expressing his ideas in eighty books.

Verne's passion was geography, yet everything he learned was from reading. He read fifteen newspapers a day, which gave him a good knowledge in many fields. Furthermore, Jules Verne directly influenced many authors with his engaging charm, his playful use of intellect, his adventurous imagination, his unlimited energy and his enduring characters. H. G Wells was inspired with Verne's way of taking science to the impossible; after meeting Jules Verne, Raymond Roussel confessed that he worshipped him, Edgar Rice Burroughs feels indebted to him; and Michael Crichton says that he owes, in his novels, an enduring legacy to Verne. Verne's first adventure story was Five Weeks in a Balloon (1862), then, came Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865), Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (1869), and finally, Around the World in Eighty Days (1872).

Among these works, Journey to the Centre of the Earth combines science-fiction, and geography to produce a wonderful adventure story. This story is about an eccentric old scientist named Hardwigg that finds directions to the centre of the earth in an old book. He sets out along with his nephew Henry / Harry, and a guide named Hans, to Iceland, where he enters an extinct volcano, that supposedly leads to the centre of the earth. After many weeks of travelling, they come to a huge sea in the middle of the earth where they have a lot of problems and obstacles. Eventually they got out, by getting caught in a lava stream of a volcano that is about to erupt. When they come out, they find themselves thousands of miles away from their starting point, in Stromboli, Italy.

Finally, they come back to Germany and are received like heroes. The structure of this novel is simple, it is easy to follow, and also, the relationship between the characters is seen in close-up with no other people to complicate the focus. Journey to the Centre of the Earth is not only a model of well-crafted writing but a model of the kind of adventure stories that now are so popular in movies and books. This French literature classic of the nineteenth century can as well be read as a psychological quest, or on a deeper level, as a man's journey into himself, because man is always probing a deeper level for what lies at his centre. Verne was fascinated and curious about the world; he shared his knowledge through his novels, and his goals were the entertainment and instruction for the readers. With Journey to the Centre of the Earth, an adventure story of obstacles, encounters, and wonders, the readers will appreciate Verne's ability to put into the story information and questions about science, they " ll understand how far ahead of his time Verne was comprehending it.

If we look carefully to Verne's works, we " ll see two things: First, that Verne mixed his adventures and inventions with what was known at that time (1864); second, that Verne has a remarkable accuracy with many scientific achievements of the 20th century. He anticipated flights into outer space, submarines, helicopters, air conditioner, guided missiles, and motion pictures before they were developed. After reading and understanding all his works, readers will see why Jules Verne is considered by many, the father of science-fiction. In addition, Journey to the Centre of the Earth owes to mythology, science of that time and predecessor literature. In its scientific influences, this novel owes something to geology and astronomy. Astronomy is touched in this adventure story for the 17th century astronomer Edmond Halley who suggested that magnetic phenomena could be explained by the planets, and with Darwin's theories of evolution, Geology was a hot topic.

A most poetic source of inspiration is mythology, the idea of a world deep underground appears from the Greek Hades to the Christian hell. Verne's great novel is in debt with its literary predecessors like Ludwig Holmberg who wrote A Journey to the World Underground in which a young Norwegian goes down an inactive volcano in Iceland and falls down to the centre of the earth. Additionally, Verne was greatly influenced by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe is famous for his terror tales but he also wrote an icy pole adventure called The Sphinx of the Ice Fields from which Verne wrote a sequel.

In conclusion, Jules Verne's great novels are the product of his charm, imagination, intellect and passion. Since Verne was a child, he knew that he wanted to be writer, and that he wanted to spend the rest of his life writing about the thing that he most loved: geography. Jules Verne's goals were the entertainment and instruction of the readers, and he made it because his novels are something that nobody will forget or get bored of. The imagination and intellect with geography, technology and science are the pieces that make his adventure stories complete. Without it, Jules Verne wouldn't be JULES VERNE, and he wouldn't be considered as he know is, the father of science-fiction.