Previous
Chapter 3
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Journey to the Center of the Earth, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Science and Discovery
Maturity and Independence
Intuition vs. Evidence
Nature vs. Civilization
Adventure
Summary
Analysis
Axel wants to find Gräuben and tell her of the night’s events, but he worries what might happen if his uncle returns to find Axel gone. Axel stays in the study, classifying mineral samples. His mind keeps returning to the runes, so he lights his hookah and studies the document. The code seems impossible. Axel fans himself with the document and, while shaking the paper, sees the key to making sense of Lidenbrock’s translation.
Axel treats the runes with none of the reverence or obsession that Lidenbrock does. He smokes while studying them off-handedly, and simply by chance, he solves the cipher. Lidenbrock is a genius, and his initial work on the runes gives ordinary, unconcerned Axel the information he needs to, by total chance, solve the riddle. This echoes the novel’s emphasis on practicality. It also speaks to the story’s interpretation of genius, which suggests a person is a genius thanks to their ability to utilize evidence, not just because they’re innately brilliant.
Themes
Axel reads the decrypted message and is shocked at the sentence it reveals. He resolves not to tell Lidenbrock the message because the professor would not be content to just understand the sentence––he would have to undertake the journey it describes. Worse, Axel is certain Lidenbrock would bring Axel with him, and they would never return. Axel decides to burn the papers, and he is standing over the hearth when Lidenbrock returns.
Lidenbrock’s scientific curiosity inspires in him a spirit of adventure, and Axel knows this. Axel is also curious, but not to the same extent as his uncle, and thus he does not share Lidenbrock’s willingness to put himself in danger for the sake of scientific discovery. However, Axel doesn’t want to challenge his uncle directly, so he decides to burn the papers and avoid the issue altogether.
Themes
Literary Devices
