Journey To The Center Of The Earth

Journey to the Center of the Earth

• Genre: Fiction; classic adventure/science fiction
• Originally Published: 1864
• Reading Level/Interest: Lexile 960L; grades 9-12; college/adult
• Structure/Length: 46 chapters; approx. 241 pages; approx. 10 hours on audio
• Protagonist and Central Conflict: Professor Otto Lidenbrock tells the story of his quest to find a path to the center of the Earth, starting at a crater in Iceland and continuing to the discovery of a subterranean sea and forest.
• Potential Sensitivity Issues: Dated, racist language (Chapter 38)

Jules Verne, Author

• Bio: 1828-1905; born in Nantes, France; expressed a strong desire for adventure at a young age; studied law but soon turned to writing stories and plays; worked at the Théâtre Lyrique and produced his plays there; also became a stockbroker; collaborated with editor and publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel and found success with a series of adventure stories, Extraordinary Voyages (which includes Journey to the Center of the Earth), and other “scientific fictions”; commercially successful in his lifetime, but not critically acclaimed until years after his death; now regarded as a highly influential forerunner of the modern science fiction genre
• Other Works: Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863); Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870); Around the World in Eighty Days (1872); The Mysterious Island (1875); Lighthouse at the End of the World (1905)

CENTRAL THEMES connected and noted throughout this Teaching Unit:

• Travel and Descent Into the Unknown
• The Overlaps Between Science, Knowledge, and Art
• Speculations About Time and History

STUDY OBJECTIVES: In accomplishing the components of this Unit, students will:

• Develop a sense of the emotional and psychological context regarding venturing into the unknown and facing one’s fears.
• Engage with paired texts and other brief resources to make connections via the text’s theme of Descent Into the Unknown and motif of light and darkness.
• Create a map and research a scientific problem to show the scope of the travelers’ physical journey and demonstrate the ambition of the author’s approach to science fiction based on text details.
• Analyze and evaluate character details, themes, motifs, and author’s purpose and techniques to draw conclusions in structured essay responses regarding character interactions, the inclusion of scientific reasoning, reader engagement, and other topics.