Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne

(Book Review)

Before I get into this book itself, I’m going to give

 A Quick Summary of My History with Jules Verne

            When I was around 7 and 8, I read many of Jules Verne’s stories in the Children’s Classic Editions  (classic books abridged and re-written for children).

            I also was a big fan of movies based on Jules Verne’s books.  (Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea  for example.)

            Around 5th grade or so, I read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (the unabridged version) and really struggled with it.  I found it boring, confusing and just hard to get through.  My mind kept wandering as I tried to focus on the page.  In the end I forced myself to finish it.  (Partly because we were at family camp that week, and I didn’t have any other reading material with me.)  But it put me off Jules Verne for years.

            But that was back in 5^th grade.  I’d like to think I have matured slightly as a reader since then.

            And so, I decided to give Jules Verne another try, and I picked up Around the World in Eighty Days.  (I have actually read a children’s version of this book once, but I don’t remember it at all, and so the story was more or less completely fresh to me.)

The Review

            Well, after avoiding Jules Verne for the past 20 years, the good news is that this little book was totally readable.  Charming, funny, easy to read, less than 200 pages, and I finished it off within a week.

            It wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, but that’s ok.  It would be a boring world if everything was exactly what you were expecting.

            I was expecting an “exotic-adventure-in-foreign-lands” type book, but this book is more of a comedy than an adventure story.  And even then, the comedy centers on the various eccentricities of the 3 main characters, and the different countries they travel to barely get a mention.  (One of the re-occurring jokes is how little interest Englishman Phileas Fogg has in any of the places he visits.  He simply wants to stay in his compartment on the train or boat and play cards at each place he travels through.)

            The premise of the book locates it very nicely within the time it was written.  In 1872, when it was published, it was a big deal that it could only take 80 days to travel around the world.

            The story is started by a report in the Daily Telegraph, which announces that with the completion of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway, it is now theoretically possible to travel around the world in only 80 days.

           Phileas Fogg, who acts as the stereotype of the phlegmatic Englishman throughout the book, causes great irritation to his cards partners at the reform club by insisting stubbornly that it is possible in practice as well as in theory, and refusing to take seriously their objections.  This conversation, which starts out innocently enough, ends with Phileas Fogg announcing he will travel around the world in 80 days just to prove a point.

            The passage in which this conversation takes place is typical of the humor of the book.

            “Be so good as to play, Mr. Stuart,” said Phileas Fogg.

            But the incredulous Stuart was not convinced, and when the hand was finished said eagerly: “You have a strange way, Ralph, of proving that the world has grown small.  So, because you can go round it in three months--.”

            “In eighty days,” interrupted Phileas Fogg.

            “That is true, gentlemen,” added John Sullivan. “Only eighty days, now that the section between Rothal and Allahanbad, on the Great Indian Peninsula Railway, has been opened.  Here is the estimate made by the Daily Telegraph:--

[…]

            “Yes, in eighty days!” exclaimed Stuart, who in his excitement made a false deal.  “But that doesn’t take into account bad weather, contrary winds, shipwrecks, railway accidents, and so on.”

            “All included,” returned Phileas Fogg, continuing to play despite the discussion.

            “But suppose the Hindoos or Indians pull up the rails,” replied Stuart; “suppose they stop the trains, pillage the luggage-vans, and scalp the passengers!”

            “All included,” calmly retorted Fogg; adding, as he threw down the cards, “Two trumps.”

            Stuart, whose turn it was to deal, gathered them up and went on. “You are right theoretically, Mr. Fogg, but practically –.”

            “Practically also, Mr. Stuart.”

            “I’d like to see you do it in eighty days.”

            “It depends on you.  Shall we go?”

            “Heaven preserve me! But I would wager four thousand pounds that such a journey, made under these circumstances, is impossible.”

            “Quite possible, on the contrary,” returned Mr. Fogg.

            “Well, make it then!”

            “The journey around the world in eighty days?”

            “Yes.”

            “I should like nothing better.”

            “When?”

            “At once.  Only I warn you that I shall do it at your expense.”

            “It’s absurd!” cried Stuart, who was beginning to be annoyed at the persistency of his friend. “Come, let’s go on with the game.”

            “Deal over again, then,” said Phileas Fogg.  “There’s a false deal.”

            Stuart took up the pack with a feverish hand; then suddenly put them down again.

            “Well, Mr. Fogg,” said he, “it shall be so: I will wager the four thousand on it.”

            “Calm yourself, my dear Stuart,” said Fallentin. “It’s only a joke.”

            “When I say I’ll wager,” returned Stuart, “I mean it.”

            “All right,” said Mr. Fogg; and, turning to the others, he continued, “I have a deposit of twenty thousand at Baring’s which I will willingly risk upon it.”

            “Twenty thousand pounds!” cried Sullivan. “Twenty thousand pounds, which you would lose by a single accidental delay!”

            “The unforeseen does not exist,” quietly replied Phileas Fogg.

            “But, Mr. Fogg, eighty days are only the estimate of the least possible time in which the journey can be made.”

            “A well-used minimum suffices for everything.”

            “But, in order not to exceed it, you must jump mathematically from the trains upon the steamers, and from the steamers upon the trains again.”

            “I will jump—mathematically.”

            “You are joking.”

            “A true Englishman doesn’t joke when he is talking about so serious a thing as a wager,” replied Phileas Fogg, solemnly. 

            (pages 12-14)

            As you can imagine from the terms of the bet, our hero can afford to take very little time for sight-seeing, and must simply hop from one train to the next.  But Phileas Fogg is described as someone who hates sightseeing anyway, and is just undertaking this journey to prove a point to his friends at the Reform Club.

            Phileas Fogg is accompanied by his French servant Passepartout. 

            They are also trailed by the English detective Fix, who is convinced that Mr. Fogg is a bankrobber trying to flee the authorities by travelling around the world.

            One or two small mishaps and adventures occur, and there are some brief descriptions of foreign lands, but on the whole the book is simply about catching the next train or boat, and the humor is mostly just based on the 3 eccentric main characters.

            So, although the characters travel through Egypt, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Yokohama, they interact very little with each of these places.  Some adventures occur in India, but the place where the characters have the most adventures is actually the United States.  (About a 4^th of the book takes place within the boarders of the US).

            If you’re from America (as I am) you may not think of America as a particularly exotic place, but doubtless from the perspective of 19^th Century Europe the American West probably seemed just as exotic and dangerous as India, and so it is interesting to see America as viewed through the eyes of these European travelers.  Mormonism is evidently one of the things that attracted Jules Verne’s interest, because the Mormon settlement in Salt Lake City is one of the few places where the book devotes some attention to the culture and history of its inhabitants.

            A lot of fun is also had making fun of national characteristics of the British, French, and Americans respectively. 

            Although Jules Verne is a Frenchman himself, he uses the character Passepartout to make fun of a lot of stereotypical French characteristics.

            Americans are repeatedly described as being rash and imprudent.  When the Frenchman Passepartout discovers that an English steamboat is going too slow because some steam is hissing out of the valves, he exclaims,  “The valves are not sufficiently charged! Oh, these English! If this was an American craft, we should blow up, perhaps, but we should at all events go faster!” (page 83).

            Later, when an American train comes to a stop because of a faulty bridge, the narrator comments,   “He [the signal man] did not in any way exaggerate the condition of the bridge.  It may be taken for granted that, rash as the Americans usually are, when they are prudent there is good reason for it.” (Page 146).

            [Sidenote: I wonder, is this still the way the rest of the world views us, or in 2012 is the more common stereotype of the American as fat, lazy, and sedentary?]

Other Notes…

Racism? 

            I don’t like to make racism accusations frivolously, but it is worth noting that the non-white races in this novel are not always portrayed in the best of terms.

            The subcontinent Indians come off mixed.  Some of them are portrayed in very positive and noble terms, some of them are portrayed as savages.

            The American Indians are described simply as savages.

            The Papuans (of the Islands near the Bay of Bengal) get a brief one sentence remark: “the savage Papuans, who are in the lowest scale of humanity, but are not, as has been asserted, cannibals” (page 74).

           

            On the other hand, given how Jules Verne also makes fun of French, English and American national stereotypes, maybe we should just call him an equal opportunity offender and cut him some slack on this?

 I don’t know.

This Book as History

            It is interesting to read this book as a time piece. There were a few things that caught my eye.

            One of the main plot points of the book is that English detective Fix is trying to arrest English citizen Fogg, and must do so on British soil.  What’s interesting about this time period is just exactly how far British soil extends.  Fogg travels through India, Singapore, and Hong Kong, and is on British land the whole time.  Only once he finally sails from Hong Kong does Fix lose his opportunity to make an arrest on British soil.  Times have changed now of course.

            Also apparently at this time, neither bananas nor mangos were available in Europe.  Or at least so I’m guessing, because Jules Verne feels the need to explain to his reader exactly how what these fruits taste like when his characters eat bananas in India and mangos in Singapore.

Wolves

            When traversing the American plains on a sledge…

           

            Sometimes flocks of wild birds rose, or bands of gaunt, famished, ferocious prairie-wolves ran howling after the sledge.  Passepartout, revolver in hand, held himself ready to fire on those which came too near. Had an accident then happened to the sledge, the travelers, attacked by these beasts, would have been in the most terrible danger (Page 166-167).

            In reality, there has never been a reported case of a healthy wolf attacking a human being in North America.  (I know this is a work of fiction, but after all these years of constantly bringing this fact up, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out it again here.)

Hot Air Balloons (or the lack thereof….)

            Another surprising thing—absolutely no hot air balloon journeys occur in this book.  For some reason I totally thought hot air balloons would be in this book.

            Actually Wikipedia even cites this as one of the most common misconceptions about this book.   

Although a journey by hot air balloon has become one of the images most strongly associated with the story, this iconic symbol was never deployed in the book by Verne himself – the idea is briefly brought up in chapter 32, but dismissed, it "would have been highly risky and, in any case, impossible." However the popular 1956 movie adaptation Around the World in Eighty Days floated the balloon idea, and it has now become a part of the mythology of the story, even appearing on book covers

            In fact the edition I read, Bantam Classic, re-issued in 2006, even has a hot air balloon on the cover.  Indicating perhaps that Bantam Classics is not even bothering to read the classic books they are re-printing.

            The whole point of the book is that the 80 day time estimate around the world is made using conventional scheduled public transportation—boats and trains.  So hot air balloons wouldn’t really fit the theme anyway. 

            Although, when this book was first in 1872, it was only one year after Paris made great use of hot air balloons to defy the Prussian siege during the Franco-Prussian War, (a story Alistair Horne tells very well in his book The Fall of Paris.)  So after having been in the public consciousness so much at the time, it is almost a bit surprising hot air balloons wouldn’t have been in Jules Verne’s mind.  But whatever, I’ll stop talking about hot air balloons now…..

Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky at the Alexander Cockburn Memorial

Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne: Book Review (Scripted)