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Personification
Definition of Setting
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Setting
Explanation and Analysis:
Journey to the Center of the Earth navigates a path through a variety of real and fantastical settings. The story is set in the mid-1800s. When the novel begins, it’s 1863 and Axel, the protagonist, is living in Hamburg, Germany with his genius uncle, Professor Otto Lidenbrock. Hamburg is described as an idyllic center of learning, and their small but cozy house is full of books and rare minerals.
However, when the Professor discovers the secret hidden in the book of Icelandic sagas, he and Axel quickly decamp to Iceland. The novel spends a little time describing the different European cities the duo travel through, and then it transitions to the spooky and enigmatic landscapes of Iceland. Eventually, Axel and Verne’s readers enter an imaginary “world” under the earth, accessible through the volcano Snæfellsjökull. Much of the novel is spent exploring this area, until the group is blasted back to the surface of the earth near the Italian coast and returns to Hamburg in triumph.
The novel’s geographical settings mirror Verne's idealized vision of the intellectual context of the Victorian era. Verne depicts Lidenbrock and Axel as existing within an enormous and welcoming scientific community. The 1800s was a period marked by remarkable scientific discoveries and a collective fascination with exploration and knowledge. In this novel, Verne weaves a tale that champions the ideals of science and aligns them with the spirit of adventure. This association is particularly clear when the group encounters the terrifying underground dinosaurs. Charles Darwin had published the first book on the theory of evolution just five years before Verne published Journey to the Center of the Earth, permanently changing commonly accepted scientific understandings of early life on Earth.
The physical environments depicted in the novel are often described in complex scientific terms mixed with simple language. This evokes a sense of mystery and awe, as the known collides with the unknown for readers and for Verne’s characters. The novel also contains an explicit transition from purely academic knowledge to lived experience. Having spent his childhood looking at sparkling stones in his uncle’s house, Axel is suddenly literally surrounded on all sides by geology in action. From the intellectual sanctity and security of scholars’ offices filled with ancient texts and artifacts, the characters come to a land of volcanoes, caverns, mysterious “luminescence” and secret seas that blend the realistic with the mythological.
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