我父亲原来指望我学法律，但是我却一心想去航海。有一天，我去赫尔，我的一位同伴正要坐他父亲的船到伦敦去，再没有什么比这更让我动心了，我必须跟他而去——这是1651年的8月，当时我十九岁。
船刚驶出海口，便碰到了可怕的风浪，使我感到全身说不出的难过，心里十分恐怖。我在痛苦的心情中发了誓，假如上帝在这次航行中留下我的命，我在登上陆地后，就一直回到我慈爱的父母身边，从此一定听从他们的忠告办事。
可是第二天风停了，浪也歇了。太阳西沉，继之而来的是一个美丽可爱的黄昏，这时又喝了我的同伴酿的一碗甜酒，我就把这次航行后便回家的决心丢到九霄云外去了。我的这种习性给我的一生招来了巨大的不幸——任性的行动常给我带来灾难，可我总不肯在灾难来临的时刻乘机悔改。待到危险一过去，就忘掉了所有的誓言，又不顾一切地投入了我的毫无名堂的生活。
在第一次狂风暴雨似的航行后，我又有过几次不同的冒险。在去非洲的几内亚做生意时，我被一艘土耳其的海盗船俘虏，被卖为奴隶，经过许多危险，我逃到了巴西，在那里独自经营一个甘蔗种植园，生活过得很顺遂。可这时我却又成了诱惑的牺牲品。巴西因为人工不足，有几个种植园主知道我曾为做生意而到过非洲的一些奴隶市场口岸，他们竭力哄诱我作一次航行，到那一带去为他们的种植园买些黑奴回来。
听从坏主意，人就会倒霉。我们的船在南美洲北岸一个无名岛上触了礁，所有的水手及乘客全都淹死了，上帝保佑，只有我一个人被高高的海浪卷到了岸上，保住了一条命。当时我所有的只是一把刀、一只烟斗和一个盒子里装的一点儿烟草。待到我的体力恢复，可以走路了时，我就沿着海岸走去。使我大为高兴的是，我发现了淡水。喝了水后，又拿一小撮烟草放在嘴里解饿。我就在一棵树上栖身，舒舒服服地睡了一觉振作了精神，海上风平浪静。但最叫我高兴的是我看见了那艘船，待到潮水退下，看到它竟离海岸很近，我发现可以很方便地游到船上去。船上只剩下一只狗和两只猫，再没有别的生物。不过船上有大量的生活必需品，这样，我就干了起来。为了把那些东西运到这个岛的一个水湾里，我专门制造了一只木筏，还把岛上有淡水而且比较平坦的一块高地作了我的住所。面包、大米、大麦和小麦、干酪和羊肉干、糖、面粉、木板、圆木、绳子——所有这些，再加上几支滑膛枪、两支手枪、几支鸟枪、一把锤子，还有——那是最没有用的——三十六镑英币。所有这些东西我都一天又一天——在两次退潮之间一一从船上运到了岸上。到了第三十天夜里，我的搬运工作做完了，我躺下来时，虽然像平常一样害怕，但我心里也满怀感恩之情，因为我知道，我已为以后对付这个荒岛作好了准备而心里感到踏实了。
《鲁滨逊漂流记》《鲁滨逊漂流记》
岛上有不少野果树，但这是我过了好久才发现的,我把它晒成葡萄干。岛上还有到处乱跑的山羊，但要不是我从船上取来了枪支弹药，它们对我又有何好处呢？因此，我有理由感谢仁慈的上帝，让船搁在海岸边，直至使我搬来了对我有用的一切东西。
要想确保我能在这个岛上生存下来，还有许多事情要做。我尽可能地相继办了几件我非办不可的事。但是我的努力并非总是交上好运道。我在第一次播下大麦和稻子的种子时，这些宝贵的存货就浪费了一半，原因是播种得不是时候。我辛辛苦苦花了几个月工夫，挖了几个地窖以备贮存淡水。花了四十二天时间，才把一棵大树砍劈成我的第一块长木板。我起劲地干了好几个星期，想制造一个捣小麦的石臼，最后却只好挖空了一大块木头。我足足花了五个月工夫，砍倒一棵大铁树，又劈又削，让它成了一只很像样的独木舟，以备用来逃离这个小岛，可结果却因为怎么也没法子使它下到海里去而不得不把它丢弃了。不过，每一桩失败的事，都教给了我以前不知道的一些知识。
至于自然环境，岛上有狂风暴雨，还有地震。我那时也对一切都适应了。我种植和收获了我的大麦和小麦；我采来野葡萄，把它们晒成了很有营养的葡萄干；我饲养温驯的山羊，然后杀了吃，又熏又腌的。由于食物这样多种多样，供应还算不差。如此过了十二个年头，其间，岛上除了我本人之外，我从来没见到过一个人迹。这样一直到了那重大的一天，我在沙滩上偶然发现了一个人的光脚印。
我当时好像挨了一个晴天霹雷。我侧耳倾听，回头四顾，可是什么也没听见，什么也没看见。我跑到海岸上，还下海去查看，可是总共就只有那么一个脚印！我惊吓到了极点，像一个被人跟踪追捕的人似地逃回到我的住处。一连三天三夜，我都不敢外出。
这是人怕人的最好说明！经过十二年的痛苦和苦干，十二年跟自然环境相抗争，竟然会因一个人的一只脚印而恐怖不安！但事情就是这样。经过观察，我了解到这是那块大陆上的那些吃人生番的一种习惯。他们把打仗时抓来的俘虏带到这个岛上我很少去的那个地方，杀死后大吃一顿。有一天早晨，我从望远镜里看见三十个野蛮人正在围着篝火跳舞。他们已煮食了一个俘虏，还有两个正准备放到火上去烤，这时我提着两支上了子弹的滑膛枪和那柄大刀往下朝他们跑了去，及时救下了他们来不及吃掉的一个俘虏。我把我救下的这个人起名为"星期五"，以纪念他是这一天获救的，他讲话的声音成了我在这个岛上二十五年来第一次听到的人声。他年轻，聪明，是一个较高级的部族的野蛮人，后来在我留在岛上的那段时间，他始终是我的个可靠的伙伴。在我教了他几句英语后，星期五跟我讲了那大陆上的事。我决定离开我的岛了。我们制造了一只船，这次不是在离海岸很远的地方造。正当我们差不多已准备驾船启航时，又有二十一个野蛮人乘着三只独木船，带了三个俘虏到这个岛上来开宴会了。其中一个俘虏是个白人，这可把我气坏了。我把两支鸟枪、四支滑膛枪、两支手枪都装上双倍弹药，给了星期五一把小斧头，还给他喝了好多甘蔗酒，我自己带上了大刀，我们冲下山去，把他们全杀死了，只逃走了四个野蛮人。
《鲁滨逊漂流记》鲁滨逊
俘虏中有一个是星期五的父亲。那个白人是西班牙人，是我前几年看见的那艘在我的岛上触礁的船上的一个幸存者，当时我还从那艘船上取来了一千二百多枚金币，但对这些钱我毫不看重，因为它们并不比沙滩上的许多沙子更有价值。
我给了那个西班牙人和星期五的父亲枪支和食物，叫他们乘着我新造的船去把那艘西班牙船上遇难的水手们带到我的岛上来。正在等待他们回来时，有一艘英国船因水手闹事而在我的岛附近抛了锚。我帮那位船长夺回了他的船，跟他一起回到了英国。我们走时带走了两个也想回英国去的老实的水手，而让闹事闹得最凶的一些水手留在了岛上。后来，那些西班牙人回来了，都在岛上居留了下来。开始时他们双方争吵不和，但定居后，终于建立起了一个兴旺的殖民地，过了几年，我有幸又到那个岛上去过一次。
我离开那个岛时，已在岛上呆了二十八年两个月二十九天。我总以为我一到英国就会高兴不尽，没想到我在那里却成了一个异乡人。我的父母都已去世，真太令人遗憾了，要不我现在可以孝敬地奉养他们，因为我除了从那艘西班牙船上取来的一千二百个金币之外，还有两万英镑等待着我到一个诚实的朋友那儿去领取，这位朋友是一位葡萄牙船长，在我去干那项倒霉的差事之前，我委托他经营我在巴西的庄园。正是为了去干那差事，使我在岛上住了二十八年。我见他如此诚实，十分高兴，我决定每年付给他一百葡萄牙金币，并在他死后每年付给他儿子五十葡萄牙金币，作为他们终生的津贴。
我结了婚，生了三个孩子，我除了因为要到那个上面讲的我住过的岛上去看看，又作了一次航行之外，再没作漫游了。我住在这儿，为我不配得到的享受而心怀感激，决心现在就准备去作一切旅行中最长的旅行。如果说我学到了什么的话，那就是要认识退休生活的价值和祈祷在平静中过完我们的余日。
《鲁滨逊漂流记》-写作背景
亚力山大•赛尔柯克的经历给了迪福的灵感这部小说是笛福受当时一个真实故事的启发而创作的。1704年苏格兰水手赛尔科克在海上与船长发生争吵，被船长遗弃在荒岛上，四年后被救回英国。赛尔科克在荒岛上并没有作出什么值得颂扬的英雄事迹。但笛福塑造的鲁滨孙却完全是个新人，成了当时中小资产阶级心目中的英雄人物，是西方文学中第一个理想化的新兴资产者形象。他表现了强烈的资产阶级进取精神和启蒙意识。
《鲁滨逊漂流记》-人物形象
鲁宾孙性格：鲁滨孙是一个充满劳动热情的人，伟大的人，坚毅的人。孤身一人在这荒无人烟的孤岛上生活了28年。面对人生困境，鲁滨孙的所作所为，显示了一个硬汉子的坚毅性格与英雄本色，体现了资产阶级上升时期的创造精神和开拓精神，他敢于同恶劣的环境作斗争。鲁滨孙又是个资产者和殖民者，因此具有剥削掠夺的本性。
星期五性格：星期五是一个朴素的人，忠诚的朋友，智慧的勇者，孝顺的儿子。他知恩图报，忠诚有责任心，适应能力强，他和鲁滨逊合作着施展不同的技能在岛上度过了多年。
《鲁滨逊漂流记》-社会影响
笛福的《鲁滨孙漂流记》，是一部流传很广的代表作。1704年苏格兰水手赛尔科克在海上叛变，被抛到智利海外荒岛，度过5年，最后得救，笛福受到这一事件的启发，写成此书。鲁滨孙不听父亲劝戒，出海经商贩卖黑奴，在海上遇难，流落荒岛28 年，在岛上与自然斗争，收留了野人星期五，救了一艘叛变船只的船长，回到英国，又去巴西经营种植园致富。此外还有续集。第二部写他旧地重游，以岛的主人自居，开化岛上居民，又视察巴西种植园，接着到世界各地冒险，包括中国和西伯利亚。第三部则是一部道德说教的作品。《鲁滨逊漂流记》是英国小说家丹尼尔•笛福1719年发表的第一部小说，同年又出版了续篇。
《鲁滨逊漂流记》-作品评价
和作者笛福一样，小说的主人公鲁滨逊•克罗索是一个永不疲倦、永不安生的行动者，是当时不断扩张、不断攫取的资本主义原始积累时期的社会的典型产物。他不屑守成，倾心开拓，三番五次地离开小康之家，出海闯天下；他遭遇海难流落到荒岛上以后，不坐叹命运不济，而是充分利用自己的头脑和双手，修建住所、种植粮食、驯养家畜、制造器具、缝纫衣服，把荒岛改造成了井然有序、欣欣向荣的家园。他流浪多年，历经千辛万苦，终于获取了一笔可观的财富，完成了他那个时代的典型英雄人物的创业历程。
本书成型在一个万象更新的转型社会，奔突往复于物质追求和精神追求的双重迷宫，鲁滨逊•克罗索这个带有鲜明时代的人物及其叙述以其勃勃的生气、天真的信心、坚韧奋斗的精神和对自身的严肃省察唤起了一代又一代读者的共鸣和深思。
丹尼尔•笛福的小说自19世纪末被初次译介之后就对当时中国社会产生了很大影响.在中国的短暂辉煌主要受译入语社会的宗教、政治和意识形态的影响。
The story was likely influenced by the real-life Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish castaway who lived four years on the Pacific island called "Más a Tierra" (in 1966 its name was changed to Robinson Crusoe Island), Chile. However, the details of Crusoe's island were probably based on the Caribbean island of Tobago, since that island lies a short distance north of the Venezuelan coast near the mouth of the Orinoco river, and in sight of the island of Trinidad. It is also likely that Defoe was inspired by the Latin or English translations of Ibn Tufail's Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, an earlier novel also set on a desert island. Another source for Defoe's novel may have been Robert Knox's account of his abduction by the King of Ceylon in 1659 in "An Historical Account of the Island Ceylon," Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons (Publishers to the University), 1911.
Plot summary
Crusoe (the family name transcribed from the German name "Kreutznaer" or "Kreutznär") sets sail from the Queen's Dock in Hull on a sea voyage in September 1651, against the wishes of his parents, who want him to stay home and assume a career in law. After a tumultuous journey that sees his ship wrecked by a vicious storm, his lust for the sea remains so strong that he sets out to sea again. This journey too ends in disaster as the ship is taken over by Salé pirates, and Crusoe becomes the slave of a Moor. After two years of slavery, he manages to escape with a boat and a boy named Xury; later, Crusoe is befriended by the Captain of a Portuguese ship off the western coast of Africa. The ship is en route to Brazil. There, with the help of the captain, Crusoe becomes owner of a plantation.
Years later, he joins an expedition to bring slaves from Africa, but he is shipwrecked in a storm about forty miles out to sea on an island (which he calls the Island of Despair) near the mouth of the Orinoco river on September 30, 1659. His companions all die. Having overcome his despair, he fetches arms, tools, and other supplies from the ship before it breaks apart and sinks. He proceeds to build a fenced-in habitation near a cave which he excavates himself. He keeps a calendar by making marks in a wooden cross built by himself, hunts, grows corn and rice, dries grapes to make raisins for the winter months, learns to make pottery, raises goats, etc., using tools created from stone and wood which he harvests on the island, and adopts a small parrot. He reads the Bible and suddenly becomes religious, thanking God for his fate in which nothing is missing but society.
Years later, he discovers native cannibals who occasionally visit the island to kill and eat prisoners. At first he plans to kill them for committing an abomination, but later realizes that he has no right to do so as the cannibals do not knowingly commit a crime. He dreams of obtaining one or two servants by freeing some prisoners; and indeed, when a prisoner manages to escape, Crusoe helps him, naming his new companion "Friday" after the day of the week he appeared. Crusoe then teaches him English and converts him to Christianity.
After another party of natives arrives to partake in a cannibal feast, Crusoe and Friday manage to kill most of the natives and save two of the prisoners. One is Friday's father and the other is a Spaniard, who informs Crusoe that there are other Spaniards shipwrecked on the mainland. A plan is devised wherein the Spaniard would return with Friday's father to the mainland and bring back the others, build a ship, and sail to a Spanish port.
Before the Spaniards return, an English ship appears; mutineers have taken control of the ship and intend to maroon their former captain on the island. Crusoe and the ship's captain strike a deal, in which he helps the captain and the loyalist sailors retake the ship from the mutineers, whereupon they intend to leave the worst of the mutineers on the island. Before they leave for England, Crusoe shows the former mutineers how he lived on the island, and states that there will be more men coming. Crusoe leaves the island December 19, 1686, and arrives back in England June 11, 1687. He learns that his family believed him dead and there was nothing in his father's will for him. Crusoe then departs for Lisbon to reclaim the profits of his estate in Brazil, which has granted him a large amount of wealth. In conclusion, he takes his wealth over land to England to avoid traveling at sea. Friday comes with him and along the way they endure one last adventure together as they fight off hundreds of famished wolves while crossing the Pyrenees.
船刚驶出海口，便碰到了可怕的风浪，使我感到全身说不出的难过，心里十分恐怖。我在痛苦的心情中发了誓，假如上帝在这次航行中留下我的命，我在登上陆地后，就一直回到我慈爱的父母身边，从此一定听从他们的忠告办事。
可是第二天风停了，浪也歇了。太阳西沉，继之而来的是一个美丽可爱的黄昏，这时又喝了我的同伴酿的一碗甜酒，我就把这次航行后便回家的决心丢到九霄云外去了。我的这种习性给我的一生招来了巨大的不幸——任性的行动常给我带来灾难，可我总不肯在灾难来临的时刻乘机悔改。待到危险一过去，就忘掉了所有的誓言，又不顾一切地投入了我的毫无名堂的生活。
在第一次狂风暴雨似的航行后，我又有过几次不同的冒险。在去非洲的几内亚做生意时，我被一艘土耳其的海盗船俘虏，被卖为奴隶，经过许多危险，我逃到了巴西，在那里独自经营一个甘蔗种植园，生活过得很顺遂。可这时我却又成了诱惑的牺牲品。巴西因为人工不足，有几个种植园主知道我曾为做生意而到过非洲的一些奴隶市场口岸，他们竭力哄诱我作一次航行，到那一带去为他们的种植园买些黑奴回来。
听从坏主意，人就会倒霉。我们的船在南美洲北岸一个无名岛上触了礁，所有的水手及乘客全都淹死了，上帝保佑，只有我一个人被高高的海浪卷到了岸上，保住了一条命。当时我所有的只是一把刀、一只烟斗和一个盒子里装的一点儿烟草。待到我的体力恢复，可以走路了时，我就沿着海岸走去。使我大为高兴的是，我发现了淡水。喝了水后，又拿一小撮烟草放在嘴里解饿。我就在一棵树上栖身，舒舒服服地睡了一觉振作了精神，海上风平浪静。但最叫我高兴的是我看见了那艘船，待到潮水退下，看到它竟离海岸很近，我发现可以很方便地游到船上去。船上只剩下一只狗和两只猫，再没有别的生物。不过船上有大量的生活必需品，这样，我就干了起来。为了把那些东西运到这个岛的一个水湾里，我专门制造了一只木筏，还把岛上有淡水而且比较平坦的一块高地作了我的住所。面包、大米、大麦和小麦、干酪和羊肉干、糖、面粉、木板、圆木、绳子——所有这些，再加上几支滑膛枪、两支手枪、几支鸟枪、一把锤子，还有——那是最没有用的——三十六镑英币。所有这些东西我都一天又一天——在两次退潮之间一一从船上运到了岸上。到了第三十天夜里，我的搬运工作做完了，我躺下来时，虽然像平常一样害怕，但我心里也满怀感恩之情，因为我知道，我已为以后对付这个荒岛作好了准备而心里感到踏实了。
《鲁滨逊漂流记》《鲁滨逊漂流记》
岛上有不少野果树，但这是我过了好久才发现的,我把它晒成葡萄干。岛上还有到处乱跑的山羊，但要不是我从船上取来了枪支弹药，它们对我又有何好处呢？因此，我有理由感谢仁慈的上帝，让船搁在海岸边，直至使我搬来了对我有用的一切东西。
要想确保我能在这个岛上生存下来，还有许多事情要做。我尽可能地相继办了几件我非办不可的事。但是我的努力并非总是交上好运道。我在第一次播下大麦和稻子的种子时，这些宝贵的存货就浪费了一半，原因是播种得不是时候。我辛辛苦苦花了几个月工夫，挖了几个地窖以备贮存淡水。花了四十二天时间，才把一棵大树砍劈成我的第一块长木板。我起劲地干了好几个星期，想制造一个捣小麦的石臼，最后却只好挖空了一大块木头。我足足花了五个月工夫，砍倒一棵大铁树，又劈又削，让它成了一只很像样的独木舟，以备用来逃离这个小岛，可结果却因为怎么也没法子使它下到海里去而不得不把它丢弃了。不过，每一桩失败的事，都教给了我以前不知道的一些知识。
至于自然环境，岛上有狂风暴雨，还有地震。我那时也对一切都适应了。我种植和收获了我的大麦和小麦；我采来野葡萄，把它们晒成了很有营养的葡萄干；我饲养温驯的山羊，然后杀了吃，又熏又腌的。由于食物这样多种多样，供应还算不差。如此过了十二个年头，其间，岛上除了我本人之外，我从来没见到过一个人迹。这样一直到了那重大的一天，我在沙滩上偶然发现了一个人的光脚印。
我当时好像挨了一个晴天霹雷。我侧耳倾听，回头四顾，可是什么也没听见，什么也没看见。我跑到海岸上，还下海去查看，可是总共就只有那么一个脚印！我惊吓到了极点，像一个被人跟踪追捕的人似地逃回到我的住处。一连三天三夜，我都不敢外出。
这是人怕人的最好说明！经过十二年的痛苦和苦干，十二年跟自然环境相抗争，竟然会因一个人的一只脚印而恐怖不安！但事情就是这样。经过观察，我了解到这是那块大陆上的那些吃人生番的一种习惯。他们把打仗时抓来的俘虏带到这个岛上我很少去的那个地方，杀死后大吃一顿。有一天早晨，我从望远镜里看见三十个野蛮人正在围着篝火跳舞。他们已煮食了一个俘虏，还有两个正准备放到火上去烤，这时我提着两支上了子弹的滑膛枪和那柄大刀往下朝他们跑了去，及时救下了他们来不及吃掉的一个俘虏。我把我救下的这个人起名为"星期五"，以纪念他是这一天获救的，他讲话的声音成了我在这个岛上二十五年来第一次听到的人声。他年轻，聪明，是一个较高级的部族的野蛮人，后来在我留在岛上的那段时间，他始终是我的个可靠的伙伴。在我教了他几句英语后，星期五跟我讲了那大陆上的事。我决定离开我的岛了。我们制造了一只船，这次不是在离海岸很远的地方造。正当我们差不多已准备驾船启航时，又有二十一个野蛮人乘着三只独木船，带了三个俘虏到这个岛上来开宴会了。其中一个俘虏是个白人，这可把我气坏了。我把两支鸟枪、四支滑膛枪、两支手枪都装上双倍弹药，给了星期五一把小斧头，还给他喝了好多甘蔗酒，我自己带上了大刀，我们冲下山去，把他们全杀死了，只逃走了四个野蛮人。
《鲁滨逊漂流记》鲁滨逊
俘虏中有一个是星期五的父亲。那个白人是西班牙人，是我前几年看见的那艘在我的岛上触礁的船上的一个幸存者，当时我还从那艘船上取来了一千二百多枚金币，但对这些钱我毫不看重，因为它们并不比沙滩上的许多沙子更有价值。
我给了那个西班牙人和星期五的父亲枪支和食物，叫他们乘着我新造的船去把那艘西班牙船上遇难的水手们带到我的岛上来。正在等待他们回来时，有一艘英国船因水手闹事而在我的岛附近抛了锚。我帮那位船长夺回了他的船，跟他一起回到了英国。我们走时带走了两个也想回英国去的老实的水手，而让闹事闹得最凶的一些水手留在了岛上。后来，那些西班牙人回来了，都在岛上居留了下来。开始时他们双方争吵不和，但定居后，终于建立起了一个兴旺的殖民地，过了几年，我有幸又到那个岛上去过一次。
我离开那个岛时，已在岛上呆了二十八年两个月二十九天。我总以为我一到英国就会高兴不尽，没想到我在那里却成了一个异乡人。我的父母都已去世，真太令人遗憾了，要不我现在可以孝敬地奉养他们，因为我除了从那艘西班牙船上取来的一千二百个金币之外，还有两万英镑等待着我到一个诚实的朋友那儿去领取，这位朋友是一位葡萄牙船长，在我去干那项倒霉的差事之前，我委托他经营我在巴西的庄园。正是为了去干那差事，使我在岛上住了二十八年。我见他如此诚实，十分高兴，我决定每年付给他一百葡萄牙金币，并在他死后每年付给他儿子五十葡萄牙金币，作为他们终生的津贴。
我结了婚，生了三个孩子，我除了因为要到那个上面讲的我住过的岛上去看看，又作了一次航行之外，再没作漫游了。我住在这儿，为我不配得到的享受而心怀感激，决心现在就准备去作一切旅行中最长的旅行。如果说我学到了什么的话，那就是要认识退休生活的价值和祈祷在平静中过完我们的余日。
《鲁滨逊漂流记》-写作背景
亚力山大•赛尔柯克的经历给了迪福的灵感这部小说是笛福受当时一个真实故事的启发而创作的。1704年苏格兰水手赛尔科克在海上与船长发生争吵，被船长遗弃在荒岛上，四年后被救回英国。赛尔科克在荒岛上并没有作出什么值得颂扬的英雄事迹。但笛福塑造的鲁滨孙却完全是个新人，成了当时中小资产阶级心目中的英雄人物，是西方文学中第一个理想化的新兴资产者形象。他表现了强烈的资产阶级进取精神和启蒙意识。
《鲁滨逊漂流记》-人物形象
鲁宾孙性格：鲁滨孙是一个充满劳动热情的人，伟大的人，坚毅的人。孤身一人在这荒无人烟的孤岛上生活了28年。面对人生困境，鲁滨孙的所作所为，显示了一个硬汉子的坚毅性格与英雄本色，体现了资产阶级上升时期的创造精神和开拓精神，他敢于同恶劣的环境作斗争。鲁滨孙又是个资产者和殖民者，因此具有剥削掠夺的本性。
星期五性格：星期五是一个朴素的人，忠诚的朋友，智慧的勇者，孝顺的儿子。他知恩图报，忠诚有责任心，适应能力强，他和鲁滨逊合作着施展不同的技能在岛上度过了多年。
《鲁滨逊漂流记》-社会影响
笛福的《鲁滨孙漂流记》，是一部流传很广的代表作。1704年苏格兰水手赛尔科克在海上叛变，被抛到智利海外荒岛，度过5年，最后得救，笛福受到这一事件的启发，写成此书。鲁滨孙不听父亲劝戒，出海经商贩卖黑奴，在海上遇难，流落荒岛28 年，在岛上与自然斗争，收留了野人星期五，救了一艘叛变船只的船长，回到英国，又去巴西经营种植园致富。此外还有续集。第二部写他旧地重游，以岛的主人自居，开化岛上居民，又视察巴西种植园，接着到世界各地冒险，包括中国和西伯利亚。第三部则是一部道德说教的作品。《鲁滨逊漂流记》是英国小说家丹尼尔•笛福1719年发表的第一部小说，同年又出版了续篇。
《鲁滨逊漂流记》-作品评价
和作者笛福一样，小说的主人公鲁滨逊•克罗索是一个永不疲倦、永不安生的行动者，是当时不断扩张、不断攫取的资本主义原始积累时期的社会的典型产物。他不屑守成，倾心开拓，三番五次地离开小康之家，出海闯天下；他遭遇海难流落到荒岛上以后，不坐叹命运不济，而是充分利用自己的头脑和双手，修建住所、种植粮食、驯养家畜、制造器具、缝纫衣服，把荒岛改造成了井然有序、欣欣向荣的家园。他流浪多年，历经千辛万苦，终于获取了一笔可观的财富，完成了他那个时代的典型英雄人物的创业历程。
本书成型在一个万象更新的转型社会，奔突往复于物质追求和精神追求的双重迷宫，鲁滨逊•克罗索这个带有鲜明时代的人物及其叙述以其勃勃的生气、天真的信心、坚韧奋斗的精神和对自身的严肃省察唤起了一代又一代读者的共鸣和深思。
丹尼尔•笛福的小说自19世纪末被初次译介之后就对当时中国社会产生了很大影响.在中国的短暂辉煌主要受译入语社会的宗教、政治和意识形态的影响。
The story was likely influenced by the real-life Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish castaway who lived four years on the Pacific island called "Más a Tierra" (in 1966 its name was changed to Robinson Crusoe Island), Chile. However, the details of Crusoe's island were probably based on the Caribbean island of Tobago, since that island lies a short distance north of the Venezuelan coast near the mouth of the Orinoco river, and in sight of the island of Trinidad. It is also likely that Defoe was inspired by the Latin or English translations of Ibn Tufail's Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, an earlier novel also set on a desert island. Another source for Defoe's novel may have been Robert Knox's account of his abduction by the King of Ceylon in 1659 in "An Historical Account of the Island Ceylon," Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons (Publishers to the University), 1911.
Plot summary
Crusoe (the family name transcribed from the German name "Kreutznaer" or "Kreutznär") sets sail from the Queen's Dock in Hull on a sea voyage in September 1651, against the wishes of his parents, who want him to stay home and assume a career in law. After a tumultuous journey that sees his ship wrecked by a vicious storm, his lust for the sea remains so strong that he sets out to sea again. This journey too ends in disaster as the ship is taken over by Salé pirates, and Crusoe becomes the slave of a Moor. After two years of slavery, he manages to escape with a boat and a boy named Xury; later, Crusoe is befriended by the Captain of a Portuguese ship off the western coast of Africa. The ship is en route to Brazil. There, with the help of the captain, Crusoe becomes owner of a plantation.
Years later, he joins an expedition to bring slaves from Africa, but he is shipwrecked in a storm about forty miles out to sea on an island (which he calls the Island of Despair) near the mouth of the Orinoco river on September 30, 1659. His companions all die. Having overcome his despair, he fetches arms, tools, and other supplies from the ship before it breaks apart and sinks. He proceeds to build a fenced-in habitation near a cave which he excavates himself. He keeps a calendar by making marks in a wooden cross built by himself, hunts, grows corn and rice, dries grapes to make raisins for the winter months, learns to make pottery, raises goats, etc., using tools created from stone and wood which he harvests on the island, and adopts a small parrot. He reads the Bible and suddenly becomes religious, thanking God for his fate in which nothing is missing but society.
Years later, he discovers native cannibals who occasionally visit the island to kill and eat prisoners. At first he plans to kill them for committing an abomination, but later realizes that he has no right to do so as the cannibals do not knowingly commit a crime. He dreams of obtaining one or two servants by freeing some prisoners; and indeed, when a prisoner manages to escape, Crusoe helps him, naming his new companion "Friday" after the day of the week he appeared. Crusoe then teaches him English and converts him to Christianity.
After another party of natives arrives to partake in a cannibal feast, Crusoe and Friday manage to kill most of the natives and save two of the prisoners. One is Friday's father and the other is a Spaniard, who informs Crusoe that there are other Spaniards shipwrecked on the mainland. A plan is devised wherein the Spaniard would return with Friday's father to the mainland and bring back the others, build a ship, and sail to a Spanish port.
Before the Spaniards return, an English ship appears; mutineers have taken control of the ship and intend to maroon their former captain on the island. Crusoe and the ship's captain strike a deal, in which he helps the captain and the loyalist sailors retake the ship from the mutineers, whereupon they intend to leave the worst of the mutineers on the island. Before they leave for England, Crusoe shows the former mutineers how he lived on the island, and states that there will be more men coming. Crusoe leaves the island December 19, 1686, and arrives back in England June 11, 1687. He learns that his family believed him dead and there was nothing in his father's will for him. Crusoe then departs for Lisbon to reclaim the profits of his estate in Brazil, which has granted him a large amount of wealth. In conclusion, he takes his wealth over land to England to avoid traveling at sea. Friday comes with him and along the way they endure one last adventure together as they fight off hundreds of famished wolves while crossing the Pyrenees.
活力充沛的年轻水手爱德蒙·唐太斯（詹姆斯·卡维泽）是个正直诚实的小伙子，他原本有着平静的生活和一个美丽的 未婚妻美塞苔丝（达格玛拉·多米尼兹克），可这一切却被他人的妒忌给粉碎了——就在他们将要举行婚礼的时候，爱德蒙的好朋友费南德（盖·皮尔斯）为了夺得美塞苔斯而设计陷害了他。清白的自己锒铛入狱，未婚妻则投入了仇人的怀抱，这一切彻底颠覆了爱德蒙的价值观和是非观念，改变了他对这个世界的看法。 所幸的是，十三年梦魇般的监狱生活没有折磨垮爱德蒙的身心，相反，却坚定了他报仇的决心。在一位同样被诬陷入狱的监友（理查德·哈里斯）的点化下，爱德蒙精心策划了越狱行动并一举成功，永远离开了那座臭名昭彰的基督山城堡。此后，爱德蒙摇身一变成了神秘而富有的基督山伯爵，他凭着自己的魅力、狡诈和冷酷无情，逐渐混进了法国贵族的圈子，一步步对那个曾经背叛他的家伙实施着残酷的报复计划……
《基督山伯爵》-评价
《基督山伯爵》的作者是法国作家大仲马，故事情节跌宕起伏，迂回曲折，从中又演化出若干次要情节，小插曲紧凑精彩，却不喧宾夺主；情节离奇却不违反生活真实。小说开卷就引出几个主要人物，前面1/4写主人公被陷害的经过，后面3/4写如何复仇，脉络清楚，复仇的3条线索交叉而不凌乱，保持一定的独立性之后才汇合在一起。因此，《基度山伯爵》被公认为通俗小说中的典范。这部小说出版后，很快就赢得了广大读者的青睐，被翻译成几十种文字出版，在法国和美国多次被拍成电影。
自小说问世以来 作者的人生哲学一直为世人所津津乐道。
其中最著名的句子出现在小说的最后一章：
世上没有幸福和不幸，有的只是境况的比较，唯有经历苦难的人才能感受到无上的幸福。必须经历过死亡才能感受到生的欢乐。活下去并且生活美满，我心灵珍视的孩子们。永远不要忘记，直至上帝向人揭示出未来之日，人类全部智慧就包含在两个词中：等待和希望。
The story takes place in France, Italy, islands in the Mediterranean and the Levant during the historical events of 1815–1838 (from just before the Hundred Days through to the reign of Louis-Philippe of France). The historical setting is a fundamental element of the book. It is primarily concerned with themes of hope, justice, vengeance, mercy, forgiveness and death, and is told in the style of an adventure story.
Background to the plot
Dumas has himself indicated that he had the idea for the revenge in The Count of Monte Cristo from a story which he had found in a book compiled by Jacques Peuchet, a French police archivist and published in 1838, after the death of the author. Dumas included this essay in one of the editions from 1846. Peuchet related the tale of a shoemaker named Pierre Picaud, who was living in Nîmes in 1807. Picaud had been engaged to marry a rich woman, but three jealous friends falsely accused him of being a spy for England. He was imprisoned for seven years. During his imprisonment a dying fellow prisoner bequeathed him a treasure hidden in Milan. Picaud was released in 1814. He took possession of the treasure and returned under another name to Paris. Picaud spent ten years plotting his successful revenge against his former friends. In another of the "True Stories" Peuchet relates the tale of a terrible affair of poisoning in a family. This story, also quoted in the Pleiade edition, has obviously served as model for the chapter of the murders inside the Villefort family. The introduction to the Pleiade edition mentions other sources from real life: the abbé Faria really existed and died in 1819 after a life with much resemblance to that of the Faria in the novel. As for Dantès, his fate is quite different from his model in Peuchet's manuscript, since the latter is murdered by the "Caderousse" of the plot. But Dantès has "alter egos" in two other works of Dumas: First in "Pauline" from 1838, then, more significantly, in "Georges" from 1843 where a young man with black ancestry is preparing a revenge against white people who had humiliated him.
Historical background
The success of Monte Cristo coincides with that of France's Second Empire and besides the description of the return of Napoleon I in 1815 Dumas hints at least once to the events: the governor at the Château d'If is promoted to a position at the castle of Ham. The attitude of Dumas towards "bonapartisme" was extremely complicated and involved. This conflict dates back to his father, who was a coloured man, borne of a slave and who became a famous general during the French Revolution. When new racist laws were applied in 1802 the general was dismissed from the army and he was profoundly bitter towards Napoleon when he died in 1806. An event in 1840 renewed the patriotic support for the Bonaparte family in the population: the ashes of Napoleon I were brought to France and became object of veneration in the church of Les Invalides.
In "Causeries" from 1860, Dumas prints a short paper on the genesis of Monte-Cristo. This essay, called "État civil du "Comte de Monte-Cristo"" is included in the Pléiade edition (Paris, 1981) as an "annexe". It appears that Dumas had close and intimate contacts with members of the Bonaparte family while living in Florence in 1841. In a small boat he sailed around the island of Monte-Cristo accompanied by one of the young princes – a cousin to he who was to be emperor of France ten years later. During this trip he promised the prince that he would write a novel with the island's name as title. At this moment the future emperor was imprisoned at the citadel of Ham – a name that is mentioned in the novel. Dumas did visit him there, but he does not mention it in "Etat civil..." Louis Napoleon was imprisoned for life, but he fled in disguise. This happened in 1846 while Dumas's novel was already a gigantic success. Just as Dantès, Louis Napoleon reappeared in Paris as a powerful and enigmatic man of the world. In 1848, however, Dumas did not vote for Louis Napoleon, but the novel may have contributed – against the will of the writer – to the victory of the future Napoleon III.
A chronology of The Count of Monte Cristo and Bonapartism
Dumas grandfather:
1793: Thomas-Alexandre Dumas is promoted to the rank of general in the army of the First French Republic.
1794: He disapproves of the revolutionary terror in Western France.
1795-97: He becomes famous. Fights under Napoleon.
1802: Black officers are dismissed from the army. The Empire reestablishes slavery.
1802: Birth of his son, Alexandre Dumas père.
1806: Th. A. Dumas dies, still bitter towards the injustice of the Empire.
Dumas father:
1832: The only son of Napoleon I dies.
1836: A. Dumas is already a famous writer.
1836: First putsch by Louis Napoleon, aged 28. Fails completely.
1840: June. A law is passed to bring the ashes of Napoleon I to France.
1840: August. Second putsch of Louis Napoleon. He is imprisoned for life and becomes known as the candidate for the imperial succession.
1841: Dumas lives in Florence and becomes acquainted with King Jérôme and his son, Napoléon.
1841-44: The novel is conceived and written.
1846: The novel is a European bestseller.
1846: Louis Napoleon escapes from his prison.
1848: French Second Republic. Louis Napoleon is elected its first president but Dumas does not vote for him.
1857: Dumas publishes État civil du Comte de Monte-Cristo
Plot summary
Edmond Dantès
Edmond Dantès, a young and successful merchant sailor recently granted his own command by his dying captain Leclère, returns to Marseille to marry his fiancée Mercédès. Leclère, a supporter of the exiled Napoléon I, charges Dantès on his deathbed to deliver two objects: a package to Maréchal Bertrand (who had been exiled with Napoleon Bonaparte to the isle of Elba), and a letter from Elba to an unknown man in Paris. Subsequently, an anonymous letter accuses Dantès of being a Bonapartist traitor. The letter is later revealed to have been written by Mercédès' cousin Fernand Mondego and Danglars, Dantès' ship's supercargo. Villefort, the deputy crown prosecutor in Marseille, assumes the duty of investigating the matter. Villefort is normally considered a just man, but on discovering that the recipient of the letter from Elba is his Bonapartist father, he ultimately chooses to save his political career and condemns Dantès without trial to life imprisonment and protects his father by destroying the incriminating letter.
During his fourteen years imprisonment in the Château d'If, Edmond is visited in his cell by the Abbé Faria, a priest and fellow prisoner trying to tunnel his way to freedom. Faria had been imprisoned for proposing a united Italy. In the Chateau d'If, he was known as "The Mad Priest", claiming to be in possession of a massive treasure, and offering to reward the guards handsomely, should they release him. Faria provides Dantès with education in subjects including languages, history, economics, philosophy, mathematics, chemistry and the manners of political society. The priest, ill from a form of catalepsy and knowing that he will soon die, confides in Dantès the location of a treasure hoard on the Italian islet of Monte Cristo. After Faria's death the following year, Dantès escapes and is rescued by a smuggling ship. After several months of working with the smugglers, he gets the opportunity to go to Monte Cristo for a goods exchange. Dantès fakes an injury and convinces the smugglers to temporarily leave him on Monte Cristo. He then makes his way to the hiding place of the treasure. He returns to Marseilles, where he learns that his father has died in poverty. He buys himself a yacht and hides the rest of the treasure on board. With his new found wealth and education, Dantès buys the island of Monte Cristo and the title of Count from the Tuscan Government.
Returning to Marseille, Dantès puts into action his plans for revenge. Traveling in disguise as the Abbé Busoni, Edmond first meets Caderousse, whose intervention might have saved Dantès from imprisonment. Now living in poverty, Caderousse believes his current state is punishment by God for his jealousy and cowardice. Dantès learns from Caderousse how his other enemies have all become wealthy and prosperous since Dantès' betrayal. Edmond gives Caderousse a diamond that can be either a chance to redeem himself, or a trap that will lead to his ruin. Caderousse murders the jeweler to whom he sold the diamond and is sentenced to life in the prison galleys. Dantès (using another disguise, this time as the English Lord Wilmore) frees Caderousse and gives him another chance at redemption. Caderousse does not take it, and becomes a career criminal.
Learning that his old employer Morrel is on the verge of bankruptcy and disgrace after his ships have been lost at sea, Dantès (in the guise of a senior clerk of the banking firm of Thomson and French of Rome) buys all of Morrel's outstanding debts and gives Morrel an extension of three months to fulfill his obligations. At the end of the three months and with no way to repay his debts, Morrel is about to commit suicide when he learns that all of his debts have been mysteriously paid and that one of his ships has returned with a full cargo (the ship had been secretly rebuilt and laden by Dantès).
The Count of Monte Cristo
The story then moves forward nine years. Dantès debuts in public as the Count of Monte Cristo, a mysterious and fabulously rich aristocrat. He surfaces first in Rome, where he becomes acquainted with the Baron Franz d'Épinay, a young aristocrat, and Viscount Albert de Morcerf, Mercédès's and Fernand's son. He later rescues Albert from Italian bandits. Dantès subsequently moves to Paris, and with Albert de Morcerf's introduction, becomes the sensation of the city. Due to his knowledge and rhetorical power, even his enemies - who do not recognize him as Edmond Dantès - find him charming, and because of his status they all desire his friendship.
Monte Cristo meets Danglars, who has become a wealthy banker. Monte Cristo dazzles the crass Danglars with his seemingly endless wealth, eventually persuading him to extend him a 6,000,000 francs credit, and withdraws nine hundred thousand. Under the terms of the arrangement, Monte Cristo can demand access to the remainder at any time. The Count manipulates the bond market, through a false telegraph signal, and quickly destroys a large portion of Danglars' fortune, and the rest of it begins to rapidly disappear through mysterious bankruptcies, suspensions of payment, and more bad luck on the Stock Exchange.
Monte Cristo threatens Villefort with knowledge of his past affair with Madame Danglars, which produced a son. Believing the child to be stillborn, Villefort had buried the child. The boy was rescued and raised in Corsica by his enemy, Bertuccio (now Monte Cristo's servant), who gave the child the name "Benedetto". As an adult, Benedetto becomes a career criminal who is sentenced to the galleys with Caderousse, but after being freed by "Lord Wilmore", takes the identity of "Viscount Andrea Cavalcanti" (sponsored by the Count) and cons Danglars into betrothing his daughter Eugénie to him. Caderousse blackmails Andrea, threatening to reveal his past.
Cornered by "Abbé Busoni" while attempting to rob Monte Cristo's house, Caderousse begs to be given another chance, but Dantès grimly notes that the last two times he did so, Caderousse did not change. He forces Caderousse to write a letter to Danglars exposing Viscount Cavalcanti as an impostor and allows Caderousse to leave the house, but the moment Caderousse leaves the estate, he is stabbed in the back by Andrea. Caderousse manages to dictate and sign a deathbed statement identifying his killer, and Monte Cristo reveals his true identity to Caderousse moments before Caderousse dies.
Ali Pasha, the ruler of Yannina (in French, Janina), was betrayed to the Turks by Fernand. After his death, his wife Vasiliki and his daughter Haydée were sold into slavery by Fernand; subsequently, Haydée was located and rescued by Dantès and becomes the Count's ward. The Count manipulates Danglars into researching the event, which is published in a newspaper. As a result, Fernand is brought to trial for his crimes. Haydée testifies against him, and Fernand is disgraced.
Mercédès, still as attractive as before, alone recognizes Monte Cristo as Dantès. When Albert blames Monte Cristo for his father's downfall and publicly challenges him to a duel, Mercédès goes secretly to Monte Cristo and begs him to spare her son. During this interview, she learns the entire truth of his arrest and imprisonment. She later reveals the truth to Albert, which causes Albert to make a public apology to Monte Cristo. Albert and Mercédès disown Fernand, who is also confronted with Dantès' true identity and subsequently commits suicide. The mother and son depart to build a new life free of disgrace. Albert enlists and goes to Africa as a soldier in order to rebuild his life and honor under a new name, and Mercédès begins a solitary life in Marseille.
Villefort's daughter by his first wife, Valentine, stands to inherit the entire fortune of her grandfather (Noirtier) and of her mother's parents (the Saint-Mérans), while his second wife, Héloïse, seeks the fortune for her small son Édouard. Monte Cristo is aware of Héloïse's intentions, and "innocently" introduces her to the technique of poison. Héloïse fatally poisons the Saint-Mérans, so that Valentine inherits their fortune. However, Valentine is disinherited by Noirtier in an attempt to prevent Valentine's impending marriage with Franz d'Épinay. The marriage is cancelled when d'Épinay learns that his father (believed assassinated by Bonapartists) was killed by Noirtier in a duel. Afterwards, Valentine is reinstated in Noirtier's will. After a failed attempt on Noirtier's life which instead claims the life of Noirtier's servant Barrois, Héloïse then targets Valentine so that Édouard will finally get the fortune. However, Valentine is the prime suspect in her father's eyes in the deaths of the Saint-Merans and Barrois.
After Monte Cristo learns that Morrel's son Maximilien is in love with Valentine de Villefort, he saves her by making it appear as though Héloïse's plan to poison Valentine has succeeded and that Valentine is dead. Villefort learns from Noirtier that Héloïse is the real murderer and confronts her, giving her the choice of a public execution or committing suicide by her own poison.
Fleeing after Caderousse's letter exposes him, Andrea gets as far as Compiègne before he is arrested and brought back to Paris, where he is prosecuted by Villefort. Andrea reveals that he is Villefort's son and was rescued after Villefort buried him alive. Villefort admits his guilt and flees the court. He rushes home to stop his wife's suicide but he is too late; she has poisoned her son as well. Dantès confronts Villefort, revealing his true identity, but this, combined with the shock of the trial's revelations and the death of both his wife and son, drives Villefort insane. Dantès tries to resuscitate Édouard but fails, and despairs that his revenge has gone too far. It is only after he revisits his cell in the Château d'If that Dantès is reassured that his cause is just and his conscience is clear, that he can fulfill his plan while being able to forgive both his enemies and himself.
After the Count's manipulation of the bond market, all that Danglars is left with is a tarnished reputation and five million francs he has been holding in deposit for the hospitals. The Count demands this sum to fulfill their credit agreement, and Danglars embezzles the hospital fund. Abandoning his wife, Danglars flees to Italy with the Count's receipt, hoping to live in Vienna in anonymous prosperity. However, while leaving Rome he is kidnapped by the Count's agent Luigi Vampa. Danglars is imprisoned the same way that Dantès was. Forced to pay exorbitant prices for food, Danglars eventually signs away all but 50,000 francs of the stolen five million (which Dantès anonymously returns to the hospitals). Nearly driven mad by his ordeal, Danglars finally repents his crimes. Dantès forgives Danglars and allows him to leave with his freedom and the money he has left.
Maximilien Morrel, believing Valentine to be dead, contemplates suicide after her funeral. Dantès reveals his true identity and explains that he rescued Morrel's father from bankruptcy, disgrace and suicide years earlier. He persuades Maximilien to delay his suicide for a month. On the island of Monte Cristo a month later, Dantès presents Valentine to Maximilien and reveals the true sequence of events.
Having found peace, Dantès leaves for an unknown destination to find comfort and possibly love with Haydée, who has declared her love for him.
Characters
There are a large number of characters in the book, and the importance of many of them is not immediately obvious. Furthermore, their fates are often so interwoven that their stories overlap significantly. The chart below shows the relationships between the many characters of the novel.
Character relationships in The Count of Monte Cristo
Edmond Dantès and his aliases
* Edmond Dantès (born 1796) — Dantès is initially a generally well-liked sailor who is inexperienced - but not in his profession - and seems to have everything going for him, including a beautiful fiancée (Mercédès) and an impending promotion to ship's captain. After his transformation into the Count of Monte Cristo, his original name is revealed to his main enemies only as each revenge is completed, often driving his already weakened victims into despair.
* Number 34 — Early in Dantès' stay in prison, the governor of the Château d'If is replaced. This governor does not feel it is worth his time to learn the names of all the prisoners, and instead chooses to refer to them by the numbers of their cells. Thus, Dantès is called Number 34 during his imprisonment.
* Chief Clerk of Thomson and French — Shortly after Edmond escapes and learns of Morrel's sorry state of affairs, he disguises himself as an English senior agent of the banking firm of Thomson and French, with whom Morrel deals, and in this form sees Morrel for the first time in fifteen years. Precise and formal, this persona is a phlegmatic, serious banking officer.
* Count of Monte Cristo — The persona that Edmond assumes when he escapes from his incarceration and while he carries out his dreadful vengeance. This persona is marked by a pale countenance and a smile which can be diabolical or angelic. Educated and mysterious, this alias is trusted in Paris and fascinates the people.
* Lord Wilmore — The English persona in which Dantès performs seemingly random acts of generosity. The Englishman is eccentric and refuses to speak French. This eccentric man, in his kindness, is almost the opposite of the Count of Monte Cristo and Dantès exploits this to persuade Villefort that Lord Wilmore is an enemy of Monte Cristo.
* Sinbad the Sailor — The persona that Edmond assumes when he saves the Morrel family. Edmond signs a letter to Mlle Julie using this persona, which was accompanied by a large diamond and a red satin purse. (Sinbad the sailor is the common English translation of the original French Simbad le marin.)
* Abbé Busoni — The persona that Edmond puts forth when he needs deep trust from others because the name itself demands respect via religious authority.
* Monsieur Zaccone — Dantès, in the guise of both Abbé Busoni and Lord Wilmore, told an investigator sent by Villefort that this was the Count of Monte Cristo's true name.
Dantès' allies
* Abbé Faria — Italian priest and sage; befriends Edmond while both are prisoners in the Château d'If, acts as a father for Edmond Dantès (as Dantès said once "I can have my revenge, thanks to you, my second father") and reveals the secret of the island of Monte Cristo to Edmond. Becomes the surrogate father of Edmond, while imprisoned, digging a tunnel to freedom he educates Edmond in languages, economics, and all the current sciences (including chemistry which comes to Dantès' aid greatly during his revenge plan) and is the figurative father of the Count of Monte Cristo. He dies from the third attack of catalepsy.
* Giovanni Bertuccio — The Count of Monte Cristo's steward and very loyal servant; in the Count's own words, Bertuccio "knows no impossibility" and is sure of never being dismissed from the Count's service because, as the Count states, he (the Count) will "never find anyone better." He had declared a vendetta against Monsieur de Villefort for Villefort's refusal to prosecute the murderer of Bertuccio's brother. Tracking Villefort to Auteuil, he stabs Villefort, leaving him to die, but by coincidence becomes involved in Villefort's personal life by rescuing his illegitimate newborn, later named Benedetto (Italian for blessed) by Bertuccio. Years later, he is jailed on suspicion of the murder of a jeweler, but is released when Caderousse is arrested and proved to have committed the crime, and "Abbé Busoni" gives him a recommendation for employment to Monte Cristo.
* Luigi Vampa — celebrated Italian bandit and fugitive; owes much to the Count of Monte Cristo, and is instrumental in many of the Count's plans. He enjoys reading classic historical works dealing with great military leaders.
* Peppino — Formerly a shepherd helping Luigi Vampa, he later becomes a bandit and full member of Vampa's gang. He is condemned to be executed by Roman authorities, but Monte Cristo secures his pardon from the Pope. His alias is Rocca Priori.
* Haydée (also transliterated as Haidée) — The daughter of Ali Pasha of Yannina, eventually bought by the Count of Monte Cristo from the Sultan Mahmoud. Even though she was purchased as a slave, Monte Cristo treats her with the utmost respect. She lives in seclusion by her own choice, but is usually very aware of everything that is happening outside. She usually goes to local operas accompanied by the Count. At the trial of the Count de Morcerf, she provides the key evidence required to convict Fernand of treason and felony. She is deeply in love with the Count of Monte Cristo, and although he feels he is too old for her, he eventually reciprocates.
* Ali — Monte Cristo's Nubian slave, a mute (his tongue had been cut out as part of his punishment for intruding into the harem of the Bey of Tunis; his hands and head had also been scheduled to be cut off, but the Count bargained with the Bey for Ali's life). He is completely loyal and utterly devoted to the Count. Ali is also a master of his horses.
* Baptistin — Monte Cristo's valet-de-chambre. Although only in Monte Cristo's service for little more than a year, he has become the number three man in the Count's household and seems to have proven himself completely trustworthy and loyal, except for some financial irregularities that some employers, and certainly his own, were considering practically normal for a servant (i.e., when buying cosmetics or other supplies for his employer, he was inflating the price and pocketing the difference). After his probationary year in Monte Cristo's service expires, the Count informs Baptistin that he "suits" him, but warns him that the financial irregularities are to cease immediately.
Morcerf family
* Mercédès Mondego — (née: Herrera) Edmond's fiancée at the beginning until their planned marriage is interrupted by Edmond's imprisonment. Eighteen months later, she marries cousin Fernand Mondego (while still pledging eternal love to Dantès) because she believes Edmond is dead and feels alone in the world. Thus, she lives as Mme. the Countess de Morcerf in Paris and bears a son. Dantès's release and reappearance as the Count complicates matters as her love for him is evident. But, at the end of the story, Dantès comes to realize that it is Haydée he loves. He has a respect for Mercédès, but leaves her to live her life in Marseille in the house in which he lived as a young man (which he had bought).
* Fernand Mondego — Later known as the Count de Morcerf. A Catalan and Edmond's rival and suitor for Mercédès; will do anything to get her, including bearing false witness against Edmond. He is overall a representation of evil, as he lies and betrays throughout his military career for his own personal gain. When confronted by his nefarious acts, disgraced in public and abandoned by his wife and son, he commits suicide.
* Albert de Morcerf — Son of Mercédès and the Count de Morcerf. Is befriended by Monte Cristo in Rome; viewed by Monte Cristo as the son that should have been his with Mercédès, but does not have as strong a filial bond with him as does Maximilien Morrel. At the end, he realizes his father's crimes and, along with his mother Mercédès, abandons him and his name.
Danglars family
* Baron Danglars — Initially the supercargo (the owner's agent) on the same ship on which Dantès served as first mate; he longs to be wealthy and powerful and becomes jealous of Dantès for his favor with Pierre Morrel. He also developed a grudge against Dantès, with whom he has had some arguments regarding the accuracy of his accounting. The source of his wealth is not clear but is possibly due to unscrupulous financial dealings while in the French army and has reportedly been multiplied by speculation and marriage. His intelligence is only evident where money is concerned; otherwise he is a member of the nouveau riche with only superficial good taste (he cannot even tell the difference between original paintings and copies) and no true family feelings. Although arguably guiltier than Morcerf, Caderousse and Villefort, having written the denunciation letter, he is the only one whom Dantès forgives besides Caderousse,who died immediately afterward, and is partially spared, ending up a fugitive with barely enough money to support himself, but alive and with his sanity.
* Madame Danglars — Full name is Hermine Danglars (formerly Baroness Hermine de Nargonne during a previous marriage), née de Servieux. Was independently wealthy before marrying Danglars. With help and private information from her close friend and lover Ministerial Secretary Lucien Debray, Madame Danglars secretly invests money and is able to amass over a million francs for her own disposal. During her marriage to the Baron de Nargonne, she had an affair with Gérard de Villefort, with whom she had an illegitimate son (See Benedetto).
* Eugénie Danglars — The daughter of Danglars, engaged at first to Albert de Morcerf and later to "Andrea Cavalcanti" but who would rather stay unwed, living "an independent and unfettered life" as an artist. She dresses as a man and runs away with another girl, Louise d'Armilly after the collapse of her intended marriage to Andrea Cavalcanti; these connotations were considered scandalous. During their flight from Paris, she and Louise, traveling as brother and sister (Eugénie had disguised herself in men's clothing), stopping at an inn at Compiègne requested a room with two beds, yet Benedetto found them in bed together.
Villefort family
* Gérard de Villefort — A royal prosecutor who has even denounced his own father (Noirtier) in order to protect his own career. He is responsible for imprisoning Edmond Dantès to protect his political aspirations. After his attempted infanticide is publicly revealed and his second wife kills herself and their son, he loses his sanity.
* Renée de Villefort, née de Saint-Méran — Gérard de Villefort's first wife, mother of Valentine de Villefort.
* Monsieur le Marquis de Saint-Méran and Madame la Marquise de Saint-Méran — Renée's parents and Valentine's maternal grandparents. Both poisoned by Valentine's stepmother in order for Valentine to inherit their wealth which, through a planned series of further deaths in the family (Valentine's and her grandfather's), will be inherited by Valentine's half brother.
* Valentine de Villefort — The daughter of Gérard de Villefort and his first wife, Renée (née de Saint-Méran). She falls in love with Maximilien Morrel, is engaged to Baron Franz d'Épinay, is almost poisoned by her stepmother, saved once by her grandfather Noirtier, and is finally saved by Dantès. Valentine is the quintessential (French, nineteenth century) female: beautiful, docile, and loving. The only person she feels that she can confide in is her invalid grandfather.
* Monsieur Noirtier de Villefort — The father of Gérard de Villefort and grandfather of Valentine and Édouard (and, without knowing it, of Benedetto as well). After suffering an apoplectic stroke, Noirtier becomes mute and a paralytic, but can communicate with Valentine, Gérard and his servant Barrois through use of his eyelids and eyes. Although utterly dependent on others, he helps to save Valentine from the poison attempts of her stepmother and sabotages her marriage arrangement to Baron Franz d'Épinay. An ardent Jacobin Revolutionary turned Bonapartist, he is revealed to be the President of a club of Bonapartists conspiring to overthrow the restored monarchy and re-establish Napoleon as Emperor. Gérard de Villefort had realized that Edmond intended to fulfill his dying captain's last wish by conveying a letter from the imprisoned Napoleon on Elba to Noirtier in Paris, and therefore imprisoned Edmond (who knew nothing about the family connection) in order to hide the fact that his father was a conspirator, which might have hindered Gérard's advancement.
* Héloïse de Villefort — The murderous second wife of Villefort, who is motivated to protect and nurture her only son and ensure his inheritance. She becomes a murdereress with the assistance of Monte Cristo who discreetly and with purposeful indirectness suggests which poison to use, puts the poison into her possession (for "medicinal purposes”), and gives her the technical know-how and the philosophical outlook to commit murder (her motivation is clearly presented as that of a mother whose love for her son has taken precedence over her morals and reason). Villefort threatens to have her arrested and executed unless she kills herself and she does so before her husband, having changed his mind, gets a chance to stop her.
* Édouard de Villefort — the only legitimate son of Villefort. A very intelligent but extremely spoiled and selfish little boy who is unfortunately swept up in his mother's greed (his mother kills him before committing suicide). (His name is sometimes translated as Edward de Villefort.) The fact that he was an innocent victim makes Dantès feel that he went too far in his revenge and explains why he treats Danglars more leniently.
* Benedetto — The illegitimate son of de Villefort and Hermine de Nargonne (now Baroness Hermine Danglars); born in Auteuil, raised by Bertuccio (later Monte Cristo's steward) and his sister-in-law, Assunta in the little village of Rogliano, at the extremity of Cape Corso. Murderer and thief. Is helped to escape from a prison galley and travels to Paris to become "Andrea Cavalcanti".
Morrel family
* Pierre Morrel — Edmond Dantès's patron and owner of the major Marseille shipping firm of Morrel & Son. He is a very honest and shrewd businessman and is also very fond of Edmond and eager to advance his interests. After Edmond is arrested, he tries his hardest to help Edmond and is hopeful of his release when Napoleon is restored to power, but because of his sympathies for the Bonapartist cause, he is forced to back down and abandon all hope after the Hundred Days and second Restoration of the monarchy. Between 1825 and 1830, his firm undergoes critical financial reverses due to the loss of all of his ships at sea, and he is at the point of bankruptcy and suicide when Monte Cristo (in the guise of an English clerk from the financial firm of Thompson and French) sets events in motion which not only save Pierre Morrel's reputation and honor but also his life. It is revealed that on his deathbed he realized his savior was Dantès.
* Maximilien Morrel (Maximilian in some English translations) — He is the son of Edmond's employer, Pierre Morrel, a captain in the Spahi regiment of the Army stationed in Algiers and an Officer of the Legion of Honor. After Edmond's escape and the Count of Monte Cristo's debut in Paris, Maximilien becomes a very good friend to the Count of Monte Cristo, yet still manages to unknowingly force the Count to change many of his plans, partly by falling in love with Valentine de Villefort.
* Julie Herbault — Daughter of Edmond's patron, Pierre Morrel, she marries Emmanuel Herbault.
* Emmanuel Herbault — Julie Herbault's husband; he had previously worked in Pierre Morrel's shipping firm and is the brother-in-law of Maximilien Morrel and son-in-law of Pierre Morrel.
Other important characters
* Gaspard Caderousse — A tailor and originally a neighbour and friend of Dantès, he witnesses while drunk the writing by Danglars of the denunciation of Dantès. After Dantès is arrested, he is too cowardly to come forward with the truth. Caderousse is somewhat different from the other members of the conspiracy in that it is what he does not do, rather than what he actually plans, that leads to Dantès' arrest. He moves out of town, becomes an innkeeper, falls on hard times, and supplements his income by fencing stolen goods from Bertuccio. After his escape from prison, Dantès (and the reader) first learn the fates of many of the characters from Caderousse. Unlike the other members of the conspiracy, Monte Cristo offers Caderousse more than one chance to redeem himself, but the latter's greed proves his undoing, and he becomes in turn a murderer, a thief and a blackmailer. He is eventually murdered by Benedetto.
* Louis Dantès — Edmond's father. After his son's imprisonment and believing Edmond dead, he eventually starves himself to death.
* Baron Franz d'Épinay — A friend of Albert de Morcerf, he is the first fiancé of Valentine de Villefort. Monsieur Noirtier de Villefort killed Franz's father General d'Épinay in a lawful duel after unsuccessfully trying to convince him to support plans to return Napoleon to power, but it was assumed by the public that the general was assassinated; Franz only learns the truth when Noirtier reveals it to stop Franz from marrying Valentine.
* Lucien Debray — Secretary to the Minister of the Interior. A friend of Albert de Morcerf, and a lover of Madame Danglars, to whom he funnels insider information regarding investments.
* Beauchamp — A leading journalist and friend of Albert de Morcerf (son of Fernand Mondego, the self-styled "Count de Morcerf"), he travels to Yannina to confirm the story about Fernand's background that leads to public embarrassment and Fernand's suicide.
* Raoul, Baron de Château-Renaud — A member of a very ancient and noble family and another friend of Albert de Morcerf. Maximilien Morrel saved Renaud's life in Algeria.
* Louise d'Armilly — Eugénie Danglars' music instructor, actually her closest friend, but not allowed to be seen in public with Eugénie because of the possibility of Louise some day becoming a professional artist in a theater setting. Eugénie and Louise run off together.
* Monsieur de Boville — originally an inspector of prisons (he actually meets Dantès in the Château d'If), he is later promoted to a senior rank of the Paris police detective force, where he does some investigating of the Count of Monte Cristo at Villefort's orders. By the close of the book, he has become a receiver-general of funds for the hospitals.
* Barrois — Old, trusted servant of Monsieur de Noirtier, dies accidentally after drinking poisoned lemonade from a decanter brought to Noirtier, and from which Noirtier had drunk a little. The poison was probably brucine. Having used brucine as medication for paralysis, Noirtier was not affected.
* Monsieur d'Avrigny — Family doctor treating the Villefort family, he alerts Villefort when he suspects poisoning. He suspects Valentine until she becomes a victim herself. Very discreet, he is willing to keep the secret as long as Villefort solves the problem, even secretly and informally, or even illegally (for instance, by locking up or poisoning the suspect). However, he threatens to reveal the secret if Villefort fails to take action.
* Major (also Marquis) Bartolomeo Cavalcanti — Old man paid by Monte Cristo to play the role of Prince Andrea Cavalcanti's father. He is not "a worthy patrician of Lucca" but a man who plays regularly at the gaming table of the baths of Lucca.
Publication
The Count of Monte Cristo was originally published in the Journal des Débats in eighteen parts. Publication ran from August 28, 1844 through to January 15, 1846. It was first published in Paris by Pétion in 18 volumes (1844-5). Complete versions of the novel in the original French were published throughout the nineteenth century.
The most common English translation was originally published in 1846 by Chapman and Hall. Most unabridged English editions of the novel, including the Modern Library and Oxford World's Classics editions, use this translation, although Penguin Classics published a new translation by Robin Buss in 1996. Buss' translation updated the language, is more accessible to modern readers, and restored content that was modified in the 1846 translation due to Victorian English social restrictions (for example, references to Eugénie's lesbian traits and behavior) to Dumas' actual publication. Other English translations of the unabridged work exist, but are rarely seen in print and most borrow from the 1846 anonymous translation.
《基督山伯爵》-评价
《基督山伯爵》的作者是法国作家大仲马，故事情节跌宕起伏，迂回曲折，从中又演化出若干次要情节，小插曲紧凑精彩，却不喧宾夺主；情节离奇却不违反生活真实。小说开卷就引出几个主要人物，前面1/4写主人公被陷害的经过，后面3/4写如何复仇，脉络清楚，复仇的3条线索交叉而不凌乱，保持一定的独立性之后才汇合在一起。因此，《基度山伯爵》被公认为通俗小说中的典范。这部小说出版后，很快就赢得了广大读者的青睐，被翻译成几十种文字出版，在法国和美国多次被拍成电影。
自小说问世以来 作者的人生哲学一直为世人所津津乐道。
其中最著名的句子出现在小说的最后一章：
世上没有幸福和不幸，有的只是境况的比较，唯有经历苦难的人才能感受到无上的幸福。必须经历过死亡才能感受到生的欢乐。活下去并且生活美满，我心灵珍视的孩子们。永远不要忘记，直至上帝向人揭示出未来之日，人类全部智慧就包含在两个词中：等待和希望。
The story takes place in France, Italy, islands in the Mediterranean and the Levant during the historical events of 1815–1838 (from just before the Hundred Days through to the reign of Louis-Philippe of France). The historical setting is a fundamental element of the book. It is primarily concerned with themes of hope, justice, vengeance, mercy, forgiveness and death, and is told in the style of an adventure story.
Background to the plot
Dumas has himself indicated that he had the idea for the revenge in The Count of Monte Cristo from a story which he had found in a book compiled by Jacques Peuchet, a French police archivist and published in 1838, after the death of the author. Dumas included this essay in one of the editions from 1846. Peuchet related the tale of a shoemaker named Pierre Picaud, who was living in Nîmes in 1807. Picaud had been engaged to marry a rich woman, but three jealous friends falsely accused him of being a spy for England. He was imprisoned for seven years. During his imprisonment a dying fellow prisoner bequeathed him a treasure hidden in Milan. Picaud was released in 1814. He took possession of the treasure and returned under another name to Paris. Picaud spent ten years plotting his successful revenge against his former friends. In another of the "True Stories" Peuchet relates the tale of a terrible affair of poisoning in a family. This story, also quoted in the Pleiade edition, has obviously served as model for the chapter of the murders inside the Villefort family. The introduction to the Pleiade edition mentions other sources from real life: the abbé Faria really existed and died in 1819 after a life with much resemblance to that of the Faria in the novel. As for Dantès, his fate is quite different from his model in Peuchet's manuscript, since the latter is murdered by the "Caderousse" of the plot. But Dantès has "alter egos" in two other works of Dumas: First in "Pauline" from 1838, then, more significantly, in "Georges" from 1843 where a young man with black ancestry is preparing a revenge against white people who had humiliated him.
Historical background
The success of Monte Cristo coincides with that of France's Second Empire and besides the description of the return of Napoleon I in 1815 Dumas hints at least once to the events: the governor at the Château d'If is promoted to a position at the castle of Ham. The attitude of Dumas towards "bonapartisme" was extremely complicated and involved. This conflict dates back to his father, who was a coloured man, borne of a slave and who became a famous general during the French Revolution. When new racist laws were applied in 1802 the general was dismissed from the army and he was profoundly bitter towards Napoleon when he died in 1806. An event in 1840 renewed the patriotic support for the Bonaparte family in the population: the ashes of Napoleon I were brought to France and became object of veneration in the church of Les Invalides.
In "Causeries" from 1860, Dumas prints a short paper on the genesis of Monte-Cristo. This essay, called "État civil du "Comte de Monte-Cristo"" is included in the Pléiade edition (Paris, 1981) as an "annexe". It appears that Dumas had close and intimate contacts with members of the Bonaparte family while living in Florence in 1841. In a small boat he sailed around the island of Monte-Cristo accompanied by one of the young princes – a cousin to he who was to be emperor of France ten years later. During this trip he promised the prince that he would write a novel with the island's name as title. At this moment the future emperor was imprisoned at the citadel of Ham – a name that is mentioned in the novel. Dumas did visit him there, but he does not mention it in "Etat civil..." Louis Napoleon was imprisoned for life, but he fled in disguise. This happened in 1846 while Dumas's novel was already a gigantic success. Just as Dantès, Louis Napoleon reappeared in Paris as a powerful and enigmatic man of the world. In 1848, however, Dumas did not vote for Louis Napoleon, but the novel may have contributed – against the will of the writer – to the victory of the future Napoleon III.
A chronology of The Count of Monte Cristo and Bonapartism
Dumas grandfather:
1793: Thomas-Alexandre Dumas is promoted to the rank of general in the army of the First French Republic.
1794: He disapproves of the revolutionary terror in Western France.
1795-97: He becomes famous. Fights under Napoleon.
1802: Black officers are dismissed from the army. The Empire reestablishes slavery.
1802: Birth of his son, Alexandre Dumas père.
1806: Th. A. Dumas dies, still bitter towards the injustice of the Empire.
Dumas father:
1832: The only son of Napoleon I dies.
1836: A. Dumas is already a famous writer.
1836: First putsch by Louis Napoleon, aged 28. Fails completely.
1840: June. A law is passed to bring the ashes of Napoleon I to France.
1840: August. Second putsch of Louis Napoleon. He is imprisoned for life and becomes known as the candidate for the imperial succession.
1841: Dumas lives in Florence and becomes acquainted with King Jérôme and his son, Napoléon.
1841-44: The novel is conceived and written.
1846: The novel is a European bestseller.
1846: Louis Napoleon escapes from his prison.
1848: French Second Republic. Louis Napoleon is elected its first president but Dumas does not vote for him.
1857: Dumas publishes État civil du Comte de Monte-Cristo
Plot summary
Edmond Dantès
Edmond Dantès, a young and successful merchant sailor recently granted his own command by his dying captain Leclère, returns to Marseille to marry his fiancée Mercédès. Leclère, a supporter of the exiled Napoléon I, charges Dantès on his deathbed to deliver two objects: a package to Maréchal Bertrand (who had been exiled with Napoleon Bonaparte to the isle of Elba), and a letter from Elba to an unknown man in Paris. Subsequently, an anonymous letter accuses Dantès of being a Bonapartist traitor. The letter is later revealed to have been written by Mercédès' cousin Fernand Mondego and Danglars, Dantès' ship's supercargo. Villefort, the deputy crown prosecutor in Marseille, assumes the duty of investigating the matter. Villefort is normally considered a just man, but on discovering that the recipient of the letter from Elba is his Bonapartist father, he ultimately chooses to save his political career and condemns Dantès without trial to life imprisonment and protects his father by destroying the incriminating letter.
During his fourteen years imprisonment in the Château d'If, Edmond is visited in his cell by the Abbé Faria, a priest and fellow prisoner trying to tunnel his way to freedom. Faria had been imprisoned for proposing a united Italy. In the Chateau d'If, he was known as "The Mad Priest", claiming to be in possession of a massive treasure, and offering to reward the guards handsomely, should they release him. Faria provides Dantès with education in subjects including languages, history, economics, philosophy, mathematics, chemistry and the manners of political society. The priest, ill from a form of catalepsy and knowing that he will soon die, confides in Dantès the location of a treasure hoard on the Italian islet of Monte Cristo. After Faria's death the following year, Dantès escapes and is rescued by a smuggling ship. After several months of working with the smugglers, he gets the opportunity to go to Monte Cristo for a goods exchange. Dantès fakes an injury and convinces the smugglers to temporarily leave him on Monte Cristo. He then makes his way to the hiding place of the treasure. He returns to Marseilles, where he learns that his father has died in poverty. He buys himself a yacht and hides the rest of the treasure on board. With his new found wealth and education, Dantès buys the island of Monte Cristo and the title of Count from the Tuscan Government.
Returning to Marseille, Dantès puts into action his plans for revenge. Traveling in disguise as the Abbé Busoni, Edmond first meets Caderousse, whose intervention might have saved Dantès from imprisonment. Now living in poverty, Caderousse believes his current state is punishment by God for his jealousy and cowardice. Dantès learns from Caderousse how his other enemies have all become wealthy and prosperous since Dantès' betrayal. Edmond gives Caderousse a diamond that can be either a chance to redeem himself, or a trap that will lead to his ruin. Caderousse murders the jeweler to whom he sold the diamond and is sentenced to life in the prison galleys. Dantès (using another disguise, this time as the English Lord Wilmore) frees Caderousse and gives him another chance at redemption. Caderousse does not take it, and becomes a career criminal.
Learning that his old employer Morrel is on the verge of bankruptcy and disgrace after his ships have been lost at sea, Dantès (in the guise of a senior clerk of the banking firm of Thomson and French of Rome) buys all of Morrel's outstanding debts and gives Morrel an extension of three months to fulfill his obligations. At the end of the three months and with no way to repay his debts, Morrel is about to commit suicide when he learns that all of his debts have been mysteriously paid and that one of his ships has returned with a full cargo (the ship had been secretly rebuilt and laden by Dantès).
The Count of Monte Cristo
The story then moves forward nine years. Dantès debuts in public as the Count of Monte Cristo, a mysterious and fabulously rich aristocrat. He surfaces first in Rome, where he becomes acquainted with the Baron Franz d'Épinay, a young aristocrat, and Viscount Albert de Morcerf, Mercédès's and Fernand's son. He later rescues Albert from Italian bandits. Dantès subsequently moves to Paris, and with Albert de Morcerf's introduction, becomes the sensation of the city. Due to his knowledge and rhetorical power, even his enemies - who do not recognize him as Edmond Dantès - find him charming, and because of his status they all desire his friendship.
Monte Cristo meets Danglars, who has become a wealthy banker. Monte Cristo dazzles the crass Danglars with his seemingly endless wealth, eventually persuading him to extend him a 6,000,000 francs credit, and withdraws nine hundred thousand. Under the terms of the arrangement, Monte Cristo can demand access to the remainder at any time. The Count manipulates the bond market, through a false telegraph signal, and quickly destroys a large portion of Danglars' fortune, and the rest of it begins to rapidly disappear through mysterious bankruptcies, suspensions of payment, and more bad luck on the Stock Exchange.
Monte Cristo threatens Villefort with knowledge of his past affair with Madame Danglars, which produced a son. Believing the child to be stillborn, Villefort had buried the child. The boy was rescued and raised in Corsica by his enemy, Bertuccio (now Monte Cristo's servant), who gave the child the name "Benedetto". As an adult, Benedetto becomes a career criminal who is sentenced to the galleys with Caderousse, but after being freed by "Lord Wilmore", takes the identity of "Viscount Andrea Cavalcanti" (sponsored by the Count) and cons Danglars into betrothing his daughter Eugénie to him. Caderousse blackmails Andrea, threatening to reveal his past.
Cornered by "Abbé Busoni" while attempting to rob Monte Cristo's house, Caderousse begs to be given another chance, but Dantès grimly notes that the last two times he did so, Caderousse did not change. He forces Caderousse to write a letter to Danglars exposing Viscount Cavalcanti as an impostor and allows Caderousse to leave the house, but the moment Caderousse leaves the estate, he is stabbed in the back by Andrea. Caderousse manages to dictate and sign a deathbed statement identifying his killer, and Monte Cristo reveals his true identity to Caderousse moments before Caderousse dies.
Ali Pasha, the ruler of Yannina (in French, Janina), was betrayed to the Turks by Fernand. After his death, his wife Vasiliki and his daughter Haydée were sold into slavery by Fernand; subsequently, Haydée was located and rescued by Dantès and becomes the Count's ward. The Count manipulates Danglars into researching the event, which is published in a newspaper. As a result, Fernand is brought to trial for his crimes. Haydée testifies against him, and Fernand is disgraced.
Mercédès, still as attractive as before, alone recognizes Monte Cristo as Dantès. When Albert blames Monte Cristo for his father's downfall and publicly challenges him to a duel, Mercédès goes secretly to Monte Cristo and begs him to spare her son. During this interview, she learns the entire truth of his arrest and imprisonment. She later reveals the truth to Albert, which causes Albert to make a public apology to Monte Cristo. Albert and Mercédès disown Fernand, who is also confronted with Dantès' true identity and subsequently commits suicide. The mother and son depart to build a new life free of disgrace. Albert enlists and goes to Africa as a soldier in order to rebuild his life and honor under a new name, and Mercédès begins a solitary life in Marseille.
Villefort's daughter by his first wife, Valentine, stands to inherit the entire fortune of her grandfather (Noirtier) and of her mother's parents (the Saint-Mérans), while his second wife, Héloïse, seeks the fortune for her small son Édouard. Monte Cristo is aware of Héloïse's intentions, and "innocently" introduces her to the technique of poison. Héloïse fatally poisons the Saint-Mérans, so that Valentine inherits their fortune. However, Valentine is disinherited by Noirtier in an attempt to prevent Valentine's impending marriage with Franz d'Épinay. The marriage is cancelled when d'Épinay learns that his father (believed assassinated by Bonapartists) was killed by Noirtier in a duel. Afterwards, Valentine is reinstated in Noirtier's will. After a failed attempt on Noirtier's life which instead claims the life of Noirtier's servant Barrois, Héloïse then targets Valentine so that Édouard will finally get the fortune. However, Valentine is the prime suspect in her father's eyes in the deaths of the Saint-Merans and Barrois.
After Monte Cristo learns that Morrel's son Maximilien is in love with Valentine de Villefort, he saves her by making it appear as though Héloïse's plan to poison Valentine has succeeded and that Valentine is dead. Villefort learns from Noirtier that Héloïse is the real murderer and confronts her, giving her the choice of a public execution or committing suicide by her own poison.
Fleeing after Caderousse's letter exposes him, Andrea gets as far as Compiègne before he is arrested and brought back to Paris, where he is prosecuted by Villefort. Andrea reveals that he is Villefort's son and was rescued after Villefort buried him alive. Villefort admits his guilt and flees the court. He rushes home to stop his wife's suicide but he is too late; she has poisoned her son as well. Dantès confronts Villefort, revealing his true identity, but this, combined with the shock of the trial's revelations and the death of both his wife and son, drives Villefort insane. Dantès tries to resuscitate Édouard but fails, and despairs that his revenge has gone too far. It is only after he revisits his cell in the Château d'If that Dantès is reassured that his cause is just and his conscience is clear, that he can fulfill his plan while being able to forgive both his enemies and himself.
After the Count's manipulation of the bond market, all that Danglars is left with is a tarnished reputation and five million francs he has been holding in deposit for the hospitals. The Count demands this sum to fulfill their credit agreement, and Danglars embezzles the hospital fund. Abandoning his wife, Danglars flees to Italy with the Count's receipt, hoping to live in Vienna in anonymous prosperity. However, while leaving Rome he is kidnapped by the Count's agent Luigi Vampa. Danglars is imprisoned the same way that Dantès was. Forced to pay exorbitant prices for food, Danglars eventually signs away all but 50,000 francs of the stolen five million (which Dantès anonymously returns to the hospitals). Nearly driven mad by his ordeal, Danglars finally repents his crimes. Dantès forgives Danglars and allows him to leave with his freedom and the money he has left.
Maximilien Morrel, believing Valentine to be dead, contemplates suicide after her funeral. Dantès reveals his true identity and explains that he rescued Morrel's father from bankruptcy, disgrace and suicide years earlier. He persuades Maximilien to delay his suicide for a month. On the island of Monte Cristo a month later, Dantès presents Valentine to Maximilien and reveals the true sequence of events.
Having found peace, Dantès leaves for an unknown destination to find comfort and possibly love with Haydée, who has declared her love for him.
Characters
There are a large number of characters in the book, and the importance of many of them is not immediately obvious. Furthermore, their fates are often so interwoven that their stories overlap significantly. The chart below shows the relationships between the many characters of the novel.
Character relationships in The Count of Monte Cristo
Edmond Dantès and his aliases
* Edmond Dantès (born 1796) — Dantès is initially a generally well-liked sailor who is inexperienced - but not in his profession - and seems to have everything going for him, including a beautiful fiancée (Mercédès) and an impending promotion to ship's captain. After his transformation into the Count of Monte Cristo, his original name is revealed to his main enemies only as each revenge is completed, often driving his already weakened victims into despair.
* Number 34 — Early in Dantès' stay in prison, the governor of the Château d'If is replaced. This governor does not feel it is worth his time to learn the names of all the prisoners, and instead chooses to refer to them by the numbers of their cells. Thus, Dantès is called Number 34 during his imprisonment.
* Chief Clerk of Thomson and French — Shortly after Edmond escapes and learns of Morrel's sorry state of affairs, he disguises himself as an English senior agent of the banking firm of Thomson and French, with whom Morrel deals, and in this form sees Morrel for the first time in fifteen years. Precise and formal, this persona is a phlegmatic, serious banking officer.
* Count of Monte Cristo — The persona that Edmond assumes when he escapes from his incarceration and while he carries out his dreadful vengeance. This persona is marked by a pale countenance and a smile which can be diabolical or angelic. Educated and mysterious, this alias is trusted in Paris and fascinates the people.
* Lord Wilmore — The English persona in which Dantès performs seemingly random acts of generosity. The Englishman is eccentric and refuses to speak French. This eccentric man, in his kindness, is almost the opposite of the Count of Monte Cristo and Dantès exploits this to persuade Villefort that Lord Wilmore is an enemy of Monte Cristo.
* Sinbad the Sailor — The persona that Edmond assumes when he saves the Morrel family. Edmond signs a letter to Mlle Julie using this persona, which was accompanied by a large diamond and a red satin purse. (Sinbad the sailor is the common English translation of the original French Simbad le marin.)
* Abbé Busoni — The persona that Edmond puts forth when he needs deep trust from others because the name itself demands respect via religious authority.
* Monsieur Zaccone — Dantès, in the guise of both Abbé Busoni and Lord Wilmore, told an investigator sent by Villefort that this was the Count of Monte Cristo's true name.
Dantès' allies
* Abbé Faria — Italian priest and sage; befriends Edmond while both are prisoners in the Château d'If, acts as a father for Edmond Dantès (as Dantès said once "I can have my revenge, thanks to you, my second father") and reveals the secret of the island of Monte Cristo to Edmond. Becomes the surrogate father of Edmond, while imprisoned, digging a tunnel to freedom he educates Edmond in languages, economics, and all the current sciences (including chemistry which comes to Dantès' aid greatly during his revenge plan) and is the figurative father of the Count of Monte Cristo. He dies from the third attack of catalepsy.
* Giovanni Bertuccio — The Count of Monte Cristo's steward and very loyal servant; in the Count's own words, Bertuccio "knows no impossibility" and is sure of never being dismissed from the Count's service because, as the Count states, he (the Count) will "never find anyone better." He had declared a vendetta against Monsieur de Villefort for Villefort's refusal to prosecute the murderer of Bertuccio's brother. Tracking Villefort to Auteuil, he stabs Villefort, leaving him to die, but by coincidence becomes involved in Villefort's personal life by rescuing his illegitimate newborn, later named Benedetto (Italian for blessed) by Bertuccio. Years later, he is jailed on suspicion of the murder of a jeweler, but is released when Caderousse is arrested and proved to have committed the crime, and "Abbé Busoni" gives him a recommendation for employment to Monte Cristo.
* Luigi Vampa — celebrated Italian bandit and fugitive; owes much to the Count of Monte Cristo, and is instrumental in many of the Count's plans. He enjoys reading classic historical works dealing with great military leaders.
* Peppino — Formerly a shepherd helping Luigi Vampa, he later becomes a bandit and full member of Vampa's gang. He is condemned to be executed by Roman authorities, but Monte Cristo secures his pardon from the Pope. His alias is Rocca Priori.
* Haydée (also transliterated as Haidée) — The daughter of Ali Pasha of Yannina, eventually bought by the Count of Monte Cristo from the Sultan Mahmoud. Even though she was purchased as a slave, Monte Cristo treats her with the utmost respect. She lives in seclusion by her own choice, but is usually very aware of everything that is happening outside. She usually goes to local operas accompanied by the Count. At the trial of the Count de Morcerf, she provides the key evidence required to convict Fernand of treason and felony. She is deeply in love with the Count of Monte Cristo, and although he feels he is too old for her, he eventually reciprocates.
* Ali — Monte Cristo's Nubian slave, a mute (his tongue had been cut out as part of his punishment for intruding into the harem of the Bey of Tunis; his hands and head had also been scheduled to be cut off, but the Count bargained with the Bey for Ali's life). He is completely loyal and utterly devoted to the Count. Ali is also a master of his horses.
* Baptistin — Monte Cristo's valet-de-chambre. Although only in Monte Cristo's service for little more than a year, he has become the number three man in the Count's household and seems to have proven himself completely trustworthy and loyal, except for some financial irregularities that some employers, and certainly his own, were considering practically normal for a servant (i.e., when buying cosmetics or other supplies for his employer, he was inflating the price and pocketing the difference). After his probationary year in Monte Cristo's service expires, the Count informs Baptistin that he "suits" him, but warns him that the financial irregularities are to cease immediately.
Morcerf family
* Mercédès Mondego — (née: Herrera) Edmond's fiancée at the beginning until their planned marriage is interrupted by Edmond's imprisonment. Eighteen months later, she marries cousin Fernand Mondego (while still pledging eternal love to Dantès) because she believes Edmond is dead and feels alone in the world. Thus, she lives as Mme. the Countess de Morcerf in Paris and bears a son. Dantès's release and reappearance as the Count complicates matters as her love for him is evident. But, at the end of the story, Dantès comes to realize that it is Haydée he loves. He has a respect for Mercédès, but leaves her to live her life in Marseille in the house in which he lived as a young man (which he had bought).
* Fernand Mondego — Later known as the Count de Morcerf. A Catalan and Edmond's rival and suitor for Mercédès; will do anything to get her, including bearing false witness against Edmond. He is overall a representation of evil, as he lies and betrays throughout his military career for his own personal gain. When confronted by his nefarious acts, disgraced in public and abandoned by his wife and son, he commits suicide.
* Albert de Morcerf — Son of Mercédès and the Count de Morcerf. Is befriended by Monte Cristo in Rome; viewed by Monte Cristo as the son that should have been his with Mercédès, but does not have as strong a filial bond with him as does Maximilien Morrel. At the end, he realizes his father's crimes and, along with his mother Mercédès, abandons him and his name.
Danglars family
* Baron Danglars — Initially the supercargo (the owner's agent) on the same ship on which Dantès served as first mate; he longs to be wealthy and powerful and becomes jealous of Dantès for his favor with Pierre Morrel. He also developed a grudge against Dantès, with whom he has had some arguments regarding the accuracy of his accounting. The source of his wealth is not clear but is possibly due to unscrupulous financial dealings while in the French army and has reportedly been multiplied by speculation and marriage. His intelligence is only evident where money is concerned; otherwise he is a member of the nouveau riche with only superficial good taste (he cannot even tell the difference between original paintings and copies) and no true family feelings. Although arguably guiltier than Morcerf, Caderousse and Villefort, having written the denunciation letter, he is the only one whom Dantès forgives besides Caderousse,who died immediately afterward, and is partially spared, ending up a fugitive with barely enough money to support himself, but alive and with his sanity.
* Madame Danglars — Full name is Hermine Danglars (formerly Baroness Hermine de Nargonne during a previous marriage), née de Servieux. Was independently wealthy before marrying Danglars. With help and private information from her close friend and lover Ministerial Secretary Lucien Debray, Madame Danglars secretly invests money and is able to amass over a million francs for her own disposal. During her marriage to the Baron de Nargonne, she had an affair with Gérard de Villefort, with whom she had an illegitimate son (See Benedetto).
* Eugénie Danglars — The daughter of Danglars, engaged at first to Albert de Morcerf and later to "Andrea Cavalcanti" but who would rather stay unwed, living "an independent and unfettered life" as an artist. She dresses as a man and runs away with another girl, Louise d'Armilly after the collapse of her intended marriage to Andrea Cavalcanti; these connotations were considered scandalous. During their flight from Paris, she and Louise, traveling as brother and sister (Eugénie had disguised herself in men's clothing), stopping at an inn at Compiègne requested a room with two beds, yet Benedetto found them in bed together.
Villefort family
* Gérard de Villefort — A royal prosecutor who has even denounced his own father (Noirtier) in order to protect his own career. He is responsible for imprisoning Edmond Dantès to protect his political aspirations. After his attempted infanticide is publicly revealed and his second wife kills herself and their son, he loses his sanity.
* Renée de Villefort, née de Saint-Méran — Gérard de Villefort's first wife, mother of Valentine de Villefort.
* Monsieur le Marquis de Saint-Méran and Madame la Marquise de Saint-Méran — Renée's parents and Valentine's maternal grandparents. Both poisoned by Valentine's stepmother in order for Valentine to inherit their wealth which, through a planned series of further deaths in the family (Valentine's and her grandfather's), will be inherited by Valentine's half brother.
* Valentine de Villefort — The daughter of Gérard de Villefort and his first wife, Renée (née de Saint-Méran). She falls in love with Maximilien Morrel, is engaged to Baron Franz d'Épinay, is almost poisoned by her stepmother, saved once by her grandfather Noirtier, and is finally saved by Dantès. Valentine is the quintessential (French, nineteenth century) female: beautiful, docile, and loving. The only person she feels that she can confide in is her invalid grandfather.
* Monsieur Noirtier de Villefort — The father of Gérard de Villefort and grandfather of Valentine and Édouard (and, without knowing it, of Benedetto as well). After suffering an apoplectic stroke, Noirtier becomes mute and a paralytic, but can communicate with Valentine, Gérard and his servant Barrois through use of his eyelids and eyes. Although utterly dependent on others, he helps to save Valentine from the poison attempts of her stepmother and sabotages her marriage arrangement to Baron Franz d'Épinay. An ardent Jacobin Revolutionary turned Bonapartist, he is revealed to be the President of a club of Bonapartists conspiring to overthrow the restored monarchy and re-establish Napoleon as Emperor. Gérard de Villefort had realized that Edmond intended to fulfill his dying captain's last wish by conveying a letter from the imprisoned Napoleon on Elba to Noirtier in Paris, and therefore imprisoned Edmond (who knew nothing about the family connection) in order to hide the fact that his father was a conspirator, which might have hindered Gérard's advancement.
* Héloïse de Villefort — The murderous second wife of Villefort, who is motivated to protect and nurture her only son and ensure his inheritance. She becomes a murdereress with the assistance of Monte Cristo who discreetly and with purposeful indirectness suggests which poison to use, puts the poison into her possession (for "medicinal purposes”), and gives her the technical know-how and the philosophical outlook to commit murder (her motivation is clearly presented as that of a mother whose love for her son has taken precedence over her morals and reason). Villefort threatens to have her arrested and executed unless she kills herself and she does so before her husband, having changed his mind, gets a chance to stop her.
* Édouard de Villefort — the only legitimate son of Villefort. A very intelligent but extremely spoiled and selfish little boy who is unfortunately swept up in his mother's greed (his mother kills him before committing suicide). (His name is sometimes translated as Edward de Villefort.) The fact that he was an innocent victim makes Dantès feel that he went too far in his revenge and explains why he treats Danglars more leniently.
* Benedetto — The illegitimate son of de Villefort and Hermine de Nargonne (now Baroness Hermine Danglars); born in Auteuil, raised by Bertuccio (later Monte Cristo's steward) and his sister-in-law, Assunta in the little village of Rogliano, at the extremity of Cape Corso. Murderer and thief. Is helped to escape from a prison galley and travels to Paris to become "Andrea Cavalcanti".
Morrel family
* Pierre Morrel — Edmond Dantès's patron and owner of the major Marseille shipping firm of Morrel & Son. He is a very honest and shrewd businessman and is also very fond of Edmond and eager to advance his interests. After Edmond is arrested, he tries his hardest to help Edmond and is hopeful of his release when Napoleon is restored to power, but because of his sympathies for the Bonapartist cause, he is forced to back down and abandon all hope after the Hundred Days and second Restoration of the monarchy. Between 1825 and 1830, his firm undergoes critical financial reverses due to the loss of all of his ships at sea, and he is at the point of bankruptcy and suicide when Monte Cristo (in the guise of an English clerk from the financial firm of Thompson and French) sets events in motion which not only save Pierre Morrel's reputation and honor but also his life. It is revealed that on his deathbed he realized his savior was Dantès.
* Maximilien Morrel (Maximilian in some English translations) — He is the son of Edmond's employer, Pierre Morrel, a captain in the Spahi regiment of the Army stationed in Algiers and an Officer of the Legion of Honor. After Edmond's escape and the Count of Monte Cristo's debut in Paris, Maximilien becomes a very good friend to the Count of Monte Cristo, yet still manages to unknowingly force the Count to change many of his plans, partly by falling in love with Valentine de Villefort.
* Julie Herbault — Daughter of Edmond's patron, Pierre Morrel, she marries Emmanuel Herbault.
* Emmanuel Herbault — Julie Herbault's husband; he had previously worked in Pierre Morrel's shipping firm and is the brother-in-law of Maximilien Morrel and son-in-law of Pierre Morrel.
Other important characters
* Gaspard Caderousse — A tailor and originally a neighbour and friend of Dantès, he witnesses while drunk the writing by Danglars of the denunciation of Dantès. After Dantès is arrested, he is too cowardly to come forward with the truth. Caderousse is somewhat different from the other members of the conspiracy in that it is what he does not do, rather than what he actually plans, that leads to Dantès' arrest. He moves out of town, becomes an innkeeper, falls on hard times, and supplements his income by fencing stolen goods from Bertuccio. After his escape from prison, Dantès (and the reader) first learn the fates of many of the characters from Caderousse. Unlike the other members of the conspiracy, Monte Cristo offers Caderousse more than one chance to redeem himself, but the latter's greed proves his undoing, and he becomes in turn a murderer, a thief and a blackmailer. He is eventually murdered by Benedetto.
* Louis Dantès — Edmond's father. After his son's imprisonment and believing Edmond dead, he eventually starves himself to death.
* Baron Franz d'Épinay — A friend of Albert de Morcerf, he is the first fiancé of Valentine de Villefort. Monsieur Noirtier de Villefort killed Franz's father General d'Épinay in a lawful duel after unsuccessfully trying to convince him to support plans to return Napoleon to power, but it was assumed by the public that the general was assassinated; Franz only learns the truth when Noirtier reveals it to stop Franz from marrying Valentine.
* Lucien Debray — Secretary to the Minister of the Interior. A friend of Albert de Morcerf, and a lover of Madame Danglars, to whom he funnels insider information regarding investments.
* Beauchamp — A leading journalist and friend of Albert de Morcerf (son of Fernand Mondego, the self-styled "Count de Morcerf"), he travels to Yannina to confirm the story about Fernand's background that leads to public embarrassment and Fernand's suicide.
* Raoul, Baron de Château-Renaud — A member of a very ancient and noble family and another friend of Albert de Morcerf. Maximilien Morrel saved Renaud's life in Algeria.
* Louise d'Armilly — Eugénie Danglars' music instructor, actually her closest friend, but not allowed to be seen in public with Eugénie because of the possibility of Louise some day becoming a professional artist in a theater setting. Eugénie and Louise run off together.
* Monsieur de Boville — originally an inspector of prisons (he actually meets Dantès in the Château d'If), he is later promoted to a senior rank of the Paris police detective force, where he does some investigating of the Count of Monte Cristo at Villefort's orders. By the close of the book, he has become a receiver-general of funds for the hospitals.
* Barrois — Old, trusted servant of Monsieur de Noirtier, dies accidentally after drinking poisoned lemonade from a decanter brought to Noirtier, and from which Noirtier had drunk a little. The poison was probably brucine. Having used brucine as medication for paralysis, Noirtier was not affected.
* Monsieur d'Avrigny — Family doctor treating the Villefort family, he alerts Villefort when he suspects poisoning. He suspects Valentine until she becomes a victim herself. Very discreet, he is willing to keep the secret as long as Villefort solves the problem, even secretly and informally, or even illegally (for instance, by locking up or poisoning the suspect). However, he threatens to reveal the secret if Villefort fails to take action.
* Major (also Marquis) Bartolomeo Cavalcanti — Old man paid by Monte Cristo to play the role of Prince Andrea Cavalcanti's father. He is not "a worthy patrician of Lucca" but a man who plays regularly at the gaming table of the baths of Lucca.
Publication
The Count of Monte Cristo was originally published in the Journal des Débats in eighteen parts. Publication ran from August 28, 1844 through to January 15, 1846. It was first published in Paris by Pétion in 18 volumes (1844-5). Complete versions of the novel in the original French were published throughout the nineteenth century.
The most common English translation was originally published in 1846 by Chapman and Hall. Most unabridged English editions of the novel, including the Modern Library and Oxford World's Classics editions, use this translation, although Penguin Classics published a new translation by Robin Buss in 1996. Buss' translation updated the language, is more accessible to modern readers, and restored content that was modified in the 1846 translation due to Victorian English social restrictions (for example, references to Eugénie's lesbian traits and behavior) to Dumas' actual publication. Other English translations of the unabridged work exist, but are rarely seen in print and most borrow from the 1846 anonymous translation.
本片是根据美国名著梅尔维尔的同名小说改编，被多次搬上屏幕，其中最出名的是1956年格里高利.派克主演的版本了。这个版本是1998年翻拍的电视电影版本，年迈的格里高利.派克出演其中一个角色。
白鲸记MobyDic)是世上伟大的小说之一。全书的焦点集中于南太平洋一条名叫莫比·迪克的白鲸，以及捕鲸船皮廓德(Pequod)号的船长阿哈(Ahab)如何对它有不共戴天的仇恨。阿哈在一次航行中被莫比·迪克咬掉一条腿，立志报仇，指挥皮廓德号环航全球追踪，终于发现了它。经过三天放下小艇紧追。虽然刺中了这条白鲸，但它十分顽强狡猾，咬碎了小艇，也撞沉了大船。它拖着捕鲸船游开时，绳子套住阿哈，把他绞死了。全船人尽皆灭顶。只有一个水手借着由棺材改制的救生浮子而逃得性命。整个故事以这个水手伊希梅尔(Ishmael)自述的方式展开。
《白鲸记》中的讯息
白鲸记 白鲸记密码许多人发现，MichaelDrosnin用的方法和等距字母序列那篇论文的方法相比，相当不严密。不少人用相同的方法，很容易发现到处都藏有密码，就如英王钦定版的《圣经》里，可以找到UFO一样，这下子整个怀疑都出来了。MichaelDrosnin面对这些批评，在《新闻周刊》的一次访问里，他说：“假如我的批评者，能够在《白鲸记》里，找到某位总理被刺杀的密码讯息，那么我就会相信他们。”这对批评者来说，是个挑战！而这场战争到这个时候，已经是相当白热化了。
澳洲国立大学的一位计算机教授BrendanMcKay，就接受这个挑战，找到了底下印度总理甘地被刺的“讯息”，并且把它放在自己的网站上。
直行的IGANDHI，第一个I是他的名字Indira的缩写，按著是甘地(Gandhi)。按著横行是thebloodydeed。死亡的契约，预示著甘地是会被杀的。事实上，马凯不但找到一位总理，他还在《白鲸记》找到林肯、拉宾、肯尼迪…等名人被刺杀的讯息，用的是跟MichaelDrosnin一样的方法。这下子麻烦了，似乎到处都藏有密码，是不是生活周遭都布满天机，等着我们用电脑去解读呢？这位 BrendanMcKay是个很有趣的人，他说，基督教徒也一直在寻找密码，不过他们想找的是有关耶稣基督降临的讯息；而这回他用的是《但以理书》，因为 MichaelDrosnin在《圣经密码》中提到这是一本“封印之书”，预告著“弥赛亚来临的日子”，而耶稣向来都被视为是弥赛亚的。 BrendanMcKay依照魏茨滕等人的方法，考虑了一些关键字词，像sonofgod，去进行分析，结果发现耶稣跟sonofman较靠近。这下子耶稣由“神之子”变成“人之子”，整个论战也跟着变得混沌、局势不明了。
In Moby-Dick, Melville employs stylized language, symbolism, and metaphor to explore numerous complex themes. Through the main character's journey, the concepts of class and social status, good and evil, and the existence of gods are all examined as Ishmael speculates upon his personal beliefs and his place in the universe. The narrator's reflections, along with his descriptions of a sailor's life aboard a whaling ship, are woven into the narrative along with Shakespearean literary devices such as stage directions, extended soliloquies and asides.
Often classified as American Romanticism, Moby-Dick was first published by Richard Bentley in London on October 18, 1851 in an expurgated three-volume edition titled The Whale, and weeks later as a single volume, by New York City publisher Harper and Brothers as Moby-Dick; or, The Whale on November 14, 1851. Although the book initially received mixed reviews, Moby-Dick is now considered one of the greatest novels in the English language.
The story is based on the actual events around the whaleship Essex, which was attacked by a sperm whale while at sea and sank.
Background
Melville published Moby-Dick in 1851 during a productive time in American literature, which also produced novels such as Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Two actual events inspired Melville's tale. One was the sinking of the Nantucket ship Essex, in 1820 after it was rammed by a large sperm whale 2,000 miles (3,200 km) from the western coast of South America. First mate Owen Chase, one of eight survivors, recorded the events in his 1821 Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex. Already out-of-print, the book was rare even in 1851. Knowing that Melville was looking for it, his father-in-law, Lemuel Shaw, managed to find a copy and buy it for him. When Melville received it, he fell to it almost immediately, heavily annotating it.
The other event was the alleged killing in the late 1830s of the albino sperm whale Mocha Dick, in the waters off the Chilean island of Mocha. Mocha Dick had dozens of harpoons from attacks by other whalers, and appeared to attack ships with premeditated ferocity. One of his battles with a whaler served as subject for an article by explorer Jeremiah N. Reynolds in the May 1839 issue of The Knickerbocker, New York Monthly Magazine. Melville was familiar with the article, which described "an old bull whale, of prodigious size and strength... [that] was white as wool". Significantly, Reynolds writes a first-person narration that serves as a frame for the story of a whaling captain he meets. The captain resembles Ahab and suggests a possible symbolism for whales in that, when his crew first encounters Mocha Dick and cowers from him, the captain rallies them thus: "'Mocha Dick or the d----l [devil],' said I, 'this boat never sheers off from any thing that wears the shape of a whale.'"
Mocha Dick had over 100 encounters with whalers between the 1810's and the 1830's. He was described as being giant covered in barnacles. Although he was the most famous, Mocha Dick was not the only white whale in the sea , nor the only whale to attack hunters, and the "Kathleen" in 1902.
Also inspirational for the novel were Melville's experiences as a sailor, in particular during 1841-1842 on the whaleship Acushnet. He had already drawn on his different sailing experiences in previous novels such as Mardi but he had never focused specifically on whaling. Melville had read Chase's account before sailing on the Acushnet in 1841; he was excited about sighting Captain Chase himself, who had returned to sea. During a mid-ocean "gam" (rendezvous) he met Chase's son William, who loaned him his father's book.
Moby-Dick contains large sections— most of them narrated by Ishmael— that seemingly have nothing to do with the plot but describe aspects of the whaling business. Melville believed that no book up to that time had portrayed the whaling industry in as fascinating or immediate a way as he had experienced it. Early Romantics also proposed that fiction was the exemplary way to describe and record history, so Melville wanted to craft something educational and definitive. Despite his own interest in the subject, Melville struggled with composition, writing to Richard Henry Dana, Jr. on May 1, 1850:
I am half way in the work ... It will be a strange sort of book, tho', I fear; blubber is blubber you know; tho' you might get oil out of it, the poetry runs as hard as sap from a frozen maple tree; — and to cook the thing up, one must needs throw in a little fancy, which from the nature of the thing, must be ungainly as the gambols of the whales themselves. Yet I mean to give the truth of the thing, spite of this.
There are scholarly theories that purport a literary legend of two Moby-Dick tales, one being a whaling tale as was Melville's experience and affinity, and another deeper tale, inspired by his literary friendship with and respect for Nathaniel Hawthorne. These merged into the latter, the morality tale. Hawthorne and his family had moved to a small red farmhouse near Lenox, Massachusetts at the end of March 1850. He became friends with Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. and Herman Melville beginning on August 5, 1850, when the authors met at a picnic hosted by a mutual friend. Melville had just read Hawthorne's short story collection Mosses from an Old Manse, and his unsigned review of the collection, titled "Hawthorne and His Mosses", was printed in the Literary World on August 17 and August 24. Melville, who was composing Moby-Dick at the time, wrote that these stories revealed a dark side to Hawthorne, "shrouded in blackness, ten times black". Melville dedicated Moby-Dick (1851) to Hawthorne: "In token of my admiration for his genius, this book is inscribed to Nathaniel Hawthorne."
Themes
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Moby-Dick is a symbolic work, but also includes chapters on natural history. Major themes include obsession, religion, idealism versus pragmatism, revenge, racism, sanity, hierarchical relationships, and politics. All of the members of the crew↓ have biblical-sounding, improbable, or descriptive names, and the narrator deliberately avoids specifying the exact time of the events (such as the giant whale disappearing into the dark abyss of the ocean) and some other similar details. These together suggest that the narrator — and not just Melville — is deliberately casting his tale in an epic and allegorical mode.[citation needed]
The white whale has also been seen as a symbol for many things, including nature and those elements of life that are out of human control.Ch 42 The character Gabriel, "in his gibbering insanity, pronounc[ed] the White Whale to be no less a being than the Shaker God incarnated; the Shakers receiving the Bible." Melville mentions the Matsya Avatar of Vishnu, the first among ten incarnations when Vishnu appears as a giant fish on Earth and saves creation from the flood of destruction. Melville mentions this while discussing the spiritual and mystical aspects of the sailing profession and he calls Lord Vishnu as the first among whales and the God of whalers.
The Pequod's quest to hunt down Moby Dick itself is also widely viewed as allegorical. To Ahab, killing the whale becomes the ultimate goal in his life, and this observation can also be expanded allegorically so that the whale represents everyone's goals. Furthermore, his vengeance against the whale is analogous to man's struggle against fate. The only escape from Ahab's vision is seen through the Pequod's occasional encounters, called gams, with other ships. Readers could consider what exactly Ahab will do if he, in fact, succeeds in his quest: having accomplished his ultimate goal, what else is there left for him to do? Similarly, Melville may be implying that people in general need something to reach for in life, or that such a goal can destroy one if allowed to overtake all other concerns. Some such things are hinted at early on in the book, when the main character, Ishmael, is sharing a cold bed with his newfound friend, Queequeg:
... truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more.
— Moby-Dick, Ch. 11
Ahab's pipe is widely looked upon as the riddance of happiness in Ahab's life. By throwing the pipe overboard, Ahab signifies that he no longer can enjoy simple pleasures in life; instead, he dedicates his entire life to the pursuit of his obsession, the killing of the white whale, Moby Dick. A number of biblical themes can also be found in the novel. The book contains multiple implicit and explicit allusions to the story of Jonah, in addition to the use of certain biblical names (see below).
Ishmael's musings also allude to themes common among the American Transcendentalists and parallel certain themes in European Romanticism and the philosophy of Hegel. In the poetry of Whitman and the prose writings of Emerson and Thoreau, a ship at sea is sometimes a metaphor for the soul.
Plot
"Call me Ishmael," Moby-Dick begins, in one of the most recognizable opening lines in English-language literature. The narrator, an observant young man setting out from Manhattan, has experience in the merchant marine but has recently decided his next voyage will be on a whaling ship. On a cold, gloomy night in December, he arrives at the Spouter-Inn in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and agrees to share a bed with a then-absent stranger. When his bunk mate, a heavily tattooed Polynesian harpooner named Queequeg, returns very late and discovers Ishmael beneath his covers, both men are alarmed, but the two quickly become close friends and decide to sail together from Nantucket, Massachusetts on a whaling voyage.
In Nantucket, the pair signs on with the Pequod, a whaling ship that is soon to leave port. The ship’s captain, Ahab, is nowhere to be seen; nevertheless, they are told of him – a "grand, ungodly, godlike man," according to one of the owners, who has "been in colleges as well as 'mong the cannibals." The two friends encounter a mysterious man named Elijah on the dock after they sign their papers and he hints at troubles to come with Ahab. The mystery grows on Christmas morning when Ishmael spots dark figures in the mist, apparently boarding the Pequod shortly before it sets sail that day.
The ship’s officers direct the early voyage while Ahab stays in his cabin. The chief mate is Starbuck, a serious, sincere Quaker and fine leader; second mate is Stubb, happy-go-lucky and cheerful and always smoking his pipe; the third mate is Flask, short and stout but thoroughly reliable. Each mate is responsible for a whaling boat, and each whaling boat of the Pequod has its own pagan harpooneer assigned to it. Some time after sailing, Ahab finally appears on the quarter-deck one morning, an imposing, frightening figure whose haunted visage sends shivers over the narrator. (A white scar, reportedly from a thunderbolt, runs down his face and it is hinted that it continues the length of his body.) One of his legs is missing from the knee down and has been replaced by a prosthesis fashioned from a sperm whale's jawbone.
Soon gathering the crewmen together, with a rousing speech Ahab secures their support for his single, secret purpose for this voyage: hunting down and killing Moby Dick, an old, very large sperm whale, with a snow-white hump and mottled skin, that crippled Ahab on his last whaling voyage. Only Starbuck shows any sign of resistance to the charismatic but monomaniacal captain. The first mate argues repeatedly that the ship’s purpose should be to hunt whales for their oil, with luck returning home profitably, safely, and quickly, but not to seek out and kill Moby Dick in particular – and especially not for revenge. Eventually even Starbuck acquiesces to Ahab's will, though harboring misgivings.
The mystery of the dark figures seen before the Pequod set sail is explained during the voyage's first lowering for whales. Ahab has secretly brought along his own boat crew, including a mysterious harpooneer named Fedallah, an inscrutable figure with a sinister influence over Ahab. Later, while watching one night over a captured whale carcass, Fedallah darkly prophecies to Ahab hints regarding their twin deaths.
The novel describes numerous "gams," social meetings of two ships on the open sea. Crews normally visit each other during a gam, captains on one vessel and chief mates on the other. Mail may be exchanged and the men talk of whale sightings or other news. For Ahab, however, there is but one relevant question to ask of another ship: “Hast seen the White Whale?” After meeting several other whaling ships, which have their own peculiar stories, the Pequod enters the Pacific Ocean. Queequeg becomes deathly ill and requests that a coffin be built for him by the ship’s carpenter. Just as everyone has given up hope, Queequeg changes his mind, deciding to live after all, and recovers quickly. His coffin becomes his sea chest, and is later caulked and pitched to replace the Pequod's life buoy.
Soon word is heard from other whalers of Moby Dick. The jolly Captain Boomer of the Samuel Enderby has lost an arm to the whale, and is stunned at Ahab's burning need for revenge. Next they meet the Rachel, which has seen Moby Dick very recently. As a result of the encounter, one of its boats is missing; the captain’s youngest son had been aboard. The Rachel's captain begs Ahab to aid in the search for the missing boat, but Ahab is resolute. The Pequod’s captain is very near the White Whale now and will not stop to help. Finally the Delight is met, even as its captain buries a sailor who had been killed by Moby Dick. Starbuck begs Ahab one final time to reconsider his thirst for vengeance, but to no avail.
The next day, the Pequod meets Moby Dick. For two days, the Pequod's crew pursues the whale, which wreaks widespread destruction, including the disappearance of the 'Parsee'. On the third day, Moby Dick rises up to reveal the Parsee tied to him by harpoon ropes, clearly dead. Even after the initial battle on the third day, as Moby Dick swims away from the Pequod, Starbuck exhorts Ahab one last time to desist, observing that "Moby-Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that madly seekest him!"
Ahab ignores this voice of reason and continues with his ill-fated chase. As the three boats sail out to hunt him, Moby Dick damages two of them, forcing them to go back to the ship and leaving only Ahab's vessel intact. Ahab harpoons the whale, but the harpoon-line breaks. Moby Dick then rams the Pequod itself, which begins to sink. As Ahab harpoons the whale again, the unfolding harpoon-line catches him around his neck and he is dragged into the depths of the sea by the diving Moby Dick. The boat is caught up in the whirlpool of the sinking ship, which takes almost all the crew to their deaths. Only Ishmael survives, clinging to Queequeg’s coffin-turned-life buoy for an entire day and night before the Rachel rescues him.
Characters
The crew-members of the Pequod are carefully drawn stylizations of human types and habits; critics have often described the crew as a "self-enclosed universe".
Ishmael
The name has come to symbolize orphans, exiles, and social outcasts — in the opening paragraph of Moby-Dick, Ishmael tells the reader that he has turned to the sea out of a feeling of alienation from human society. In the last line of the book, Ishmael also refers to himself symbolically as an orphan. Maintaining the Biblical connection and emphasising the representation of outcasts, Ishmael is also the name of the son Abraham has with the slave girl Hagar before Isaac is born. In Genesis 21:10 Abraham's wife, Sarah, has Hagar and Ishmael exiled into the desert. Ishmael has a rich literary background (he has previously been a schoolteacher), which he brings to bear on his shipmates and events that occur while at sea.
Elijah
The character Elijah (named for the Biblical prophet, Elijah, who is also referred to in the King James Bible as Elias), on learning that Ishmael and Queequeg have signed onto Ahab's ship, asks, "Anything down there about your souls?" When Ishmael reacts with surprise, Elijah continues:
"Oh, perhaps you hav'n't got any," he said quickly. "No matter though, I know many chaps that hav'n't got any — good luck to 'em; and they are all the better off for it. A soul's a sort of a fifth wheel to a wagon."
Later in the conversation, Elijah adds:
"Well, well, what's signed, is signed; and what's to be, will be; and then again, perhaps it wont be, after all. Any how, it's all fixed and arranged a'ready; and some sailors or other must go with him, I suppose; as well these as any other men, God pity 'em! Morning to ye, shipmates, morning; the ineffable heavens bless ye; I'm sorry I stopped ye."
Ahab
Ahab is the tyrannical captain of the Pequod who is driven by a monomaniacal desire to kill Moby Dick, the whale that maimed him on the previous whaling voyage. Despite the fact that he's a Quaker, he seeks revenge in defiance of his religion's well-known pacifism. Ahab's name comes directly from the Bible (see 1 Kings 16:28).
Little information is provided about Ahab's life prior to meeting Moby Dick, although it is known that he was orphaned at a young age. When discussing the purpose of his quest with Starbuck, it is revealed that he first began whaling at eighteen and has continued in the trade for forty years, having spent less than three on land. He also mentions his "girl-wife," whom he married late in life, and their young son, but does not give their names.
In Ishmael's first encounter with Ahab's name, he responds "When that wicked king was slain, the dogs, did they not lick his blood?" (Moby-Dick, Chapter 16).
Ahab ultimately dooms the crew of the Pequod (save for Ishmael) to death by his obsession with Moby Dick. During the final chase, Ahab hurls his final harpoon while yelling his now-famous revenge line:
... to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.
The harpoon becomes lodged in Moby Dick's flesh and Ahab, caught around the neck by a loop in his own harpoon's rope and unable to free himself, is dragged into the cold oblivion of the sea with the injured whale. The mechanics of Ahab's death are richly symbolic. He is literally killed by his own harpoon, and symbolically killed by his own obsession with revenge. The whale eventually destroys the whaleboats and crew, and sinks the Pequod.
Ahab has the qualities of a tragic hero — a great heart and a fatal flaw — and his deeply philosophical ruminations are expressed in language that is not only deliberately lofty and Shakespearian, but also so heavily iambic as often to read like Shakespeare's own pentameters.
Ahab's motivation for hunting Moby Dick is perhaps best summed up in the following passage:
The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung. That intangible malignity which has been from the beginning; to whose dominion even the modern Christians ascribe one-half of the worlds; which the ancient Ophites of the east reverenced in their statue devil; -- Ahab did not fall down and worship it like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it. All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby-Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.
Moby Dick
He is a giant, albino Sperm whale and the main antagonist of the novel. He had bitten off Ahab's leg, and Ahab swore revenge. The cetacean also attacked the Rachel and killed the captain's son. He appears at the end of the novel and kills the entire crew with the exception of Ishmael. Unlike the other characters, the reader does not have access to Moby Dick's thoughts and motivations, but the whale is still an integral part of the novel. Moby Dick is sometimes considered to be a symbol of a number of things, among them God, nature, fate, the ocean, and the very universe itself.
Mates
The three mates of the Pequod are all from New England.
Starbuck
Starbuck, the young first mate of the Pequod, is a thoughtful and intellectual Quaker from Nantucket.
Uncommonly conscientious for a seaman, and endued with a deep natural reverence, the wild watery loneliness of his life did therefore strongly incline him to superstition; but to that sort of superstition, which in some organization seems rather to spring, somehow, from intelligence than from ignorance... [H]is far-away domestic memories of his young Cape wife and child, tend[ed] to bend him ... from the original ruggedness of his nature, and open him still further to those latent influences which, in some honest-hearted men, restrain the gush of dare-devil daring, so often evinced by others in the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery. "I will have no man in my boat," said Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale." By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.
— Moby-Dick, Ch. 26
Little is said about Starbuck's early life, except that he is married with a son. Unlike Ahab's wife, who remains nameless, Starbuck gives his wife's name as Mary. Such is his desire to return to them, that when nearly reaching the last leg of their quest for Moby Dick, he considers arresting or even killing Ahab with a loaded musket, one of several which is kept by Ahab (in a previous chapter Ahab threatens Starbuck with one when Starbuck disobeys him, despite Starbuck's being in the right) and turning the ship back, straight for home.
Starbuck is alone among the crew in objecting to Ahab's quest, declaring it madness to want revenge on an animal, which lacks reason. Starbuck advocates continuing the more mundane pursuit of whales for their oil. But he lacks the support of the crew in his opposition to Ahab, and is unable to persuade them to turn back. Despite his misgivings, he feels himself bound by his obligations to obey the captain.
Starbuck was an important Quaker family name on Nantucket Island, and there were several actual whalemen of this period named "Starbuck," as evidenced by the name of Starbuck Island in the South Pacific whaling grounds. The multinational coffee chain Starbucks was named after Starbuck, not for any affinity for coffee but after the name Pequod was rejected by one of the co-founders.
Stubb
Stubb, the second mate of the Pequod, is from Cape Cod, and always seems to have a pipe in his mouth and a smile on his face. "Good-humored, easy, and careless, he presided over his whaleboat as if the most deadly encounter were but a dinner, and his crew all invited guests." (Moby-Dick, Ch. 27) Although he is not an educated man, Stubb is remarkably articulate, and during whale hunts keeps up an imaginative patter reminiscent of that of some characters in Shakespeare. Scholarly portrayals range from that of an optimistic simpleton to a paragon of lived philosophic wisdom.
Flask
Flask is the third mate of the Pequod. He is from Martha's Vineyard.
King Post is his nickname because he is a short, stout, ruddy young fellow, very pugnacious concerning whales, who somehow seemed to think that the great Leviathans had personally and hereditarily affronted him; and therefore it was a sort of point of honor with him, to destroy them whenever encountered.
— Moby-Dick, Ch. 27
Harpooneers
The harpooneers of the Pequod are all non-Christians from various parts of the world. Each serves on a mate's boat.
Queequeg
Main article: Queequeg
Queequeg hails from the fictional island of Kokovoko in the South Seas, inhabited by a cannibal tribe, and is the son of the chief of his tribe. Since leaving the island, he has become extremely skilled with the harpoon. He befriends Ishmael very early in the novel, when they meet in New Bedford, Massachusetts before leaving for Nantucket. He is described as existing in a state between civilized and savage. For example, Ishmael recounts with amusement how Queequeg feels it necessary to hide himself when pulling on his boots, noting that if he were a savage he wouldn't consider boots necessary, but if he were completely civilized he would realize there was no need to be modest when pulling on his boots.
Queequeg is the harpooneer on Starbuck's boat, where Ishmael is also an oarsman. Queequeg is best friends with Ishmael in the story. He is prominent early in the novel, but later fades in significance, as does Ishmael.
Tashtego
Tashtego is described as a Native American harpooneer. The personification of the hunter, he turns from hunting land animals to hunting whales. Tashtego is the harpooneer on Stubb's boat.
Next was Tashtego, an unmixed Indian from Gay Head, the most westerly promontory of Martha’s Vineyard, where there still exists the last remnant of a village of red men, which has long supplied the neighboring island of Nantucket with many of her most daring harpooneers. In the fishery, they usually go by the generic name of Gay-Headers.
— Moby-Dick, Ch.27
Daggoo
Daggoo is a gigantic (6'5") African harpooneer from a coastal village with a noble bearing and grace. He is the harpooneer on Flask's boat.
Fedallah
Fedallah is the harpooneer on Ahab's boat. He is of Persian Zoroastrian ("Parsi") descent. Because of descriptions of him having lived in China, he might have been among the great wave of Parsi traders who made their way to Hong Kong and the Far East from India during the mid-19th century. At the time when the Pequod sets sail, Fedallah is hidden on board, and he emerges with Ahab's boat's crew later on, to the surprise of the crew. Fedallah is referred to in the text as Ahab's "Dark Shadow." Ishmael calls him a "fire worshipper" and the crew speculates that he is a devil in man's disguise. He is the source of a variety of prophecies regarding Ahab and his hunt for Moby Dick. Ishmael describes him thus, standing by Ahab's boat:
The figure that now stood by its bows was tall and swart, with one white tooth evilly protruding from its steel-like lips. A rumpled Chinese jacket of black cotton funereally invested him, with wide black trowsers of the same dark stuff. But strangely crowning this ebonness was a glistening white plaited turban, the living hair braided and coiled round and round upon his head.
— Moby-Dick, Ch.48
Other notable characters
Pip (nicknamed "Pippin," but "Pip" for short) is a black boy from Tolland County, Connecticut who is "the most insignificant of the Pequod's crew". Because he is physically slight, he is made a ship-keeper, (a sailor who stays in the Pequod while its whaleboats go out). Ishmael contrasts him with the "dull and torpid in his intellects" — and paler and much older — steward Dough-Boy, describing Pip as "over tender-hearted" but "at bottom very bright, with that pleasant, genial, jolly brightness peculiar to his tribe". Ishmael goes so far as to chastise the reader: "Nor smile so, while I write that this little black was brilliant, for even blackness has its brilliancy; behold yon lustrous ebony, panelled in king's cabinets."
The after-oarsman on Stubb's boat is injured, however, so Pip is temporarily reassigned to Stubb's whaleboat crew. The first time out, Pip jumps from the boat, causing Stubb and Tashtego to lose their already-harpooned whale. Tashtego and the rest of the crew are furious; Stubb chides him "officially" and "unofficially", even raising the specter of slavery: "a whale would sell for thirty times what you would, Pip, in Alabama". The next time a whale is sighted, Pip again jumps overboard and is left stranded in the "awful lonesomeness" of the sea while Stubb's and the others' boats are dragged along by their harpooned whales. By the time he is rescued, he has become (at least to the other sailors) "an idiot", "mad". Ishmael, however, thought Pip had a mystical experience: "So man's insanity is heaven's sense." Pip and his experience are crucial because they serve as foreshadowing, in Ishmael's words "providing the sometimes madly merry and predestinated craft with a living and ever accompanying prophecy of whatever shattered sequel might prove her own." Pip's madness is full of poetry and eloquence; he is reminiscent of Tom in King Lear. Ahab later sympathizes with Pip and takes the young boy under his wing.
Dough-boy is the pale, nervous steward of the ship. The Cook (Fleece), Blacksmith (Perth) and Carpenter of the ship are each highlighted in at least one chapter near the end of the book. Fleece, a very old African-American with bad knees, is presented in the chapter "Stubb Kills a Whale" at some length in a dialogue where Stubb good-humoredly takes him to task over how to prepare a variety of dishes from the whale's carcass. Ahab calls on the Carpenter to fashion a new whalebone leg after the one he wears is damaged; later he has Perth forge a special harpoon that he carries into the final confrontation with Moby-Dick.
The crew as a whole is exceedingly international, having constituents from both the United States and the world. Chapter 40, "Midnight, Forecastle," highlights, in its stage-play manner (in Shakespearean style), the striking variety in the sailors' origins. A partial list of the speakers includes sailors from the Isle of Man, France, Iceland, the Netherlands, the Azores, Sicily and Malta, China, Denmark, Portugal, India, England, Spain and Ireland.
Critical reception
Melville's expectations
In a letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne written within days of Moby-Dick's American publication, Melville made a number of revealing comments:
... for not one man in five cycles, who is wise, will expect appreciative recognition from his fellows, or any one of them. Appreciation! Recognition! Is Jove appreciated? Why, ever since Adam, who has got to the meaning of his great allegory—the world? Then we pigmies must be content to have our paper allegories but ill comprehended. I say your appreciation is my glorious gratuity.
A sense of unspeakable security is in me this moment, on account of your understanding the book. I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. Ineffable sociabilities are in me. I would sit down and dine with you and all the gods in old Rome's Pantheon. It is a strange feeling—no hopefulness is in it, no despair. Content—that is it; and irresponsibility; but without licentious inclination. I speak now of my profoundest sense of being, not of an incidental feeling.
You did not care a penny for the book. But, now and then as you read, you understood the pervading thought that impelled the book—and that you praised. Was it not so? You were archangel enough to despise the imperfect body, and embrace the soul.
Contemporary
Moby-Dick received decidedly mixed reviews from critics at the time it was published. Since the book first appeared in England, the American literary establishment took note of what the English critics said, especially when these critics were attached to the more prestigious journals. Although many critics praised it for its unique style, interesting characters and poetic language, others agreed with a critic for the highly regarded London Athenaeum, who described it as: "[A]n ill-compounded mixture of romance and matter-of-fact. The idea of a connected and collected story has obviously visited and abandoned its writer again and again in the course of composition. The style of his tale is in places disfigured by mad (rather than bad) English; and its catastrophe is hastily, weakly, and obscurely managed."
One problem was that publisher Peter Bentley botched the English edition, most significantly in omitting the (somewhat perfunctory[citation needed]) epilogue. For this reason, many of the critics faulted the book on what little they could grasp of it, namely on purely formal grounds, e.g., how the tale could have been told if no one survived to tell it. The generally bad reviews from across the ocean made American readers skittish about picking up the tome. Still, a handful of American critics saw much more in it than most of their U.S. and English colleagues. Hawthorne said of the book: "What a book Melville has written! It gives me an idea of much greater power than his preceding ones". Perhaps the most perceptive review came from the pen of Evert Augustus Duyckinck, a friend of Melville who was able to introduce Melville to Hawthorne.
Underground
Within a year after Melville's death, Moby-Dick, along with Typee, Omoo and Mardi, was reprinted by Harper & Brothers, giving it a chance to be rediscovered. However, only New York's literary underground seemed to take much interest, just enough to keep Melville's name circulating for the next 25 years in the capital of American publishing. During this time, a few critics were willing to devote time, space, and a modicum of praise to Melville and his works, or at least those that could still be fairly easily obtained or remembered. Other works, especially the poetry, went largely forgotten.
Then came World War I and its consequences, particularly the shaking or destruction of faith in so many aspects of Western civilization, all of which caused people concerned with culture and its potential redemptive value to experiment with new aesthetic techniques. The stage was set for Melville to find his place.
The Melville Revival
With the burgeoning of Modernist aesthetics (see Modernism and American modernism) and the war that tore everything apart still so fresh in memory, Moby-Dick began to seem increasingly relevant. Many of Melville's techniques echo those of Modernism: kaleidoscopic, hybrid in genre and tone, monumentally ambitious in trying to unite so many disparate elements and loose ends. His new readers also found in him an almost too-profound exploration of violence, hunger for power, and quixotic goals. Although many critics of this time still considered Moby-Dick extremely difficult to come to grips with, they largely saw this lack of easy understanding as an asset rather than a liability.[citation needed]
In 1917, American author Carl Van Doren became the first of this period to proselytize about Melville's value.[citation needed]
In the 1920s, British literary critics began to take notice. In his idiosyncratic but landmark Studies in Classic American Literature, novelist, poet, and short story writer D. H. Lawrence directed Americans' attention to the great originality and value of many American authors, among them Melville. Perhaps most surprising is that Lawrence saw Moby-Dick as a work of the first order despite his using the original English edition.
In his 1921 study, The American Novel, Carl Van Doren returns to Melville with much more depth. Here he calls Moby-Dick a pinnacle of American Romanticism.
Post-revival
The next great wave of Moby-Dick appraisal came with the publication of F. O. Matthiessen's American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman. Published in 1941, the book proposed that Emerson, Whitman, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Melville were the most prominent figures of a flowering of conflicted (and mostly pre-Civil War) literature important for its promulgation of democracy and the exploration of its possibilities, successes, and failures. Since Matthiessen's book came out shortly before the entry of the U.S. into World War II, the end of which found the U.S. in possession of the atomic bomb and thus a superpower, critic Nick Selby argues that
… Moby-Dick was now read as a text that reflected the power struggles of a world concerned to uphold democracy, and of a country seeking an identity for itself within that world.
On October 9, 2008, the Massachusetts House of Representatives passed a bill naming Moby-Dick Massachusetts' official “epic novel.”
白鲸记MobyDic)是世上伟大的小说之一。全书的焦点集中于南太平洋一条名叫莫比·迪克的白鲸，以及捕鲸船皮廓德(Pequod)号的船长阿哈(Ahab)如何对它有不共戴天的仇恨。阿哈在一次航行中被莫比·迪克咬掉一条腿，立志报仇，指挥皮廓德号环航全球追踪，终于发现了它。经过三天放下小艇紧追。虽然刺中了这条白鲸，但它十分顽强狡猾，咬碎了小艇，也撞沉了大船。它拖着捕鲸船游开时，绳子套住阿哈，把他绞死了。全船人尽皆灭顶。只有一个水手借着由棺材改制的救生浮子而逃得性命。整个故事以这个水手伊希梅尔(Ishmael)自述的方式展开。
《白鲸记》中的讯息
白鲸记 白鲸记密码许多人发现，MichaelDrosnin用的方法和等距字母序列那篇论文的方法相比，相当不严密。不少人用相同的方法，很容易发现到处都藏有密码，就如英王钦定版的《圣经》里，可以找到UFO一样，这下子整个怀疑都出来了。MichaelDrosnin面对这些批评，在《新闻周刊》的一次访问里，他说：“假如我的批评者，能够在《白鲸记》里，找到某位总理被刺杀的密码讯息，那么我就会相信他们。”这对批评者来说，是个挑战！而这场战争到这个时候，已经是相当白热化了。
澳洲国立大学的一位计算机教授BrendanMcKay，就接受这个挑战，找到了底下印度总理甘地被刺的“讯息”，并且把它放在自己的网站上。
直行的IGANDHI，第一个I是他的名字Indira的缩写，按著是甘地(Gandhi)。按著横行是thebloodydeed。死亡的契约，预示著甘地是会被杀的。事实上，马凯不但找到一位总理，他还在《白鲸记》找到林肯、拉宾、肯尼迪…等名人被刺杀的讯息，用的是跟MichaelDrosnin一样的方法。这下子麻烦了，似乎到处都藏有密码，是不是生活周遭都布满天机，等着我们用电脑去解读呢？这位 BrendanMcKay是个很有趣的人，他说，基督教徒也一直在寻找密码，不过他们想找的是有关耶稣基督降临的讯息；而这回他用的是《但以理书》，因为 MichaelDrosnin在《圣经密码》中提到这是一本“封印之书”，预告著“弥赛亚来临的日子”，而耶稣向来都被视为是弥赛亚的。 BrendanMcKay依照魏茨滕等人的方法，考虑了一些关键字词，像sonofgod，去进行分析，结果发现耶稣跟sonofman较靠近。这下子耶稣由“神之子”变成“人之子”，整个论战也跟着变得混沌、局势不明了。
In Moby-Dick, Melville employs stylized language, symbolism, and metaphor to explore numerous complex themes. Through the main character's journey, the concepts of class and social status, good and evil, and the existence of gods are all examined as Ishmael speculates upon his personal beliefs and his place in the universe. The narrator's reflections, along with his descriptions of a sailor's life aboard a whaling ship, are woven into the narrative along with Shakespearean literary devices such as stage directions, extended soliloquies and asides.
Often classified as American Romanticism, Moby-Dick was first published by Richard Bentley in London on October 18, 1851 in an expurgated three-volume edition titled The Whale, and weeks later as a single volume, by New York City publisher Harper and Brothers as Moby-Dick; or, The Whale on November 14, 1851. Although the book initially received mixed reviews, Moby-Dick is now considered one of the greatest novels in the English language.
The story is based on the actual events around the whaleship Essex, which was attacked by a sperm whale while at sea and sank.
Background
Melville published Moby-Dick in 1851 during a productive time in American literature, which also produced novels such as Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Two actual events inspired Melville's tale. One was the sinking of the Nantucket ship Essex, in 1820 after it was rammed by a large sperm whale 2,000 miles (3,200 km) from the western coast of South America. First mate Owen Chase, one of eight survivors, recorded the events in his 1821 Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex. Already out-of-print, the book was rare even in 1851. Knowing that Melville was looking for it, his father-in-law, Lemuel Shaw, managed to find a copy and buy it for him. When Melville received it, he fell to it almost immediately, heavily annotating it.
The other event was the alleged killing in the late 1830s of the albino sperm whale Mocha Dick, in the waters off the Chilean island of Mocha. Mocha Dick had dozens of harpoons from attacks by other whalers, and appeared to attack ships with premeditated ferocity. One of his battles with a whaler served as subject for an article by explorer Jeremiah N. Reynolds in the May 1839 issue of The Knickerbocker, New York Monthly Magazine. Melville was familiar with the article, which described "an old bull whale, of prodigious size and strength... [that] was white as wool". Significantly, Reynolds writes a first-person narration that serves as a frame for the story of a whaling captain he meets. The captain resembles Ahab and suggests a possible symbolism for whales in that, when his crew first encounters Mocha Dick and cowers from him, the captain rallies them thus: "'Mocha Dick or the d----l [devil],' said I, 'this boat never sheers off from any thing that wears the shape of a whale.'"
Mocha Dick had over 100 encounters with whalers between the 1810's and the 1830's. He was described as being giant covered in barnacles. Although he was the most famous, Mocha Dick was not the only white whale in the sea , nor the only whale to attack hunters, and the "Kathleen" in 1902.
Also inspirational for the novel were Melville's experiences as a sailor, in particular during 1841-1842 on the whaleship Acushnet. He had already drawn on his different sailing experiences in previous novels such as Mardi but he had never focused specifically on whaling. Melville had read Chase's account before sailing on the Acushnet in 1841; he was excited about sighting Captain Chase himself, who had returned to sea. During a mid-ocean "gam" (rendezvous) he met Chase's son William, who loaned him his father's book.
Moby-Dick contains large sections— most of them narrated by Ishmael— that seemingly have nothing to do with the plot but describe aspects of the whaling business. Melville believed that no book up to that time had portrayed the whaling industry in as fascinating or immediate a way as he had experienced it. Early Romantics also proposed that fiction was the exemplary way to describe and record history, so Melville wanted to craft something educational and definitive. Despite his own interest in the subject, Melville struggled with composition, writing to Richard Henry Dana, Jr. on May 1, 1850:
I am half way in the work ... It will be a strange sort of book, tho', I fear; blubber is blubber you know; tho' you might get oil out of it, the poetry runs as hard as sap from a frozen maple tree; — and to cook the thing up, one must needs throw in a little fancy, which from the nature of the thing, must be ungainly as the gambols of the whales themselves. Yet I mean to give the truth of the thing, spite of this.
There are scholarly theories that purport a literary legend of two Moby-Dick tales, one being a whaling tale as was Melville's experience and affinity, and another deeper tale, inspired by his literary friendship with and respect for Nathaniel Hawthorne. These merged into the latter, the morality tale. Hawthorne and his family had moved to a small red farmhouse near Lenox, Massachusetts at the end of March 1850. He became friends with Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. and Herman Melville beginning on August 5, 1850, when the authors met at a picnic hosted by a mutual friend. Melville had just read Hawthorne's short story collection Mosses from an Old Manse, and his unsigned review of the collection, titled "Hawthorne and His Mosses", was printed in the Literary World on August 17 and August 24. Melville, who was composing Moby-Dick at the time, wrote that these stories revealed a dark side to Hawthorne, "shrouded in blackness, ten times black". Melville dedicated Moby-Dick (1851) to Hawthorne: "In token of my admiration for his genius, this book is inscribed to Nathaniel Hawthorne."
Themes
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Moby-Dick is a symbolic work, but also includes chapters on natural history. Major themes include obsession, religion, idealism versus pragmatism, revenge, racism, sanity, hierarchical relationships, and politics. All of the members of the crew↓ have biblical-sounding, improbable, or descriptive names, and the narrator deliberately avoids specifying the exact time of the events (such as the giant whale disappearing into the dark abyss of the ocean) and some other similar details. These together suggest that the narrator — and not just Melville — is deliberately casting his tale in an epic and allegorical mode.[citation needed]
The white whale has also been seen as a symbol for many things, including nature and those elements of life that are out of human control.Ch 42 The character Gabriel, "in his gibbering insanity, pronounc[ed] the White Whale to be no less a being than the Shaker God incarnated; the Shakers receiving the Bible." Melville mentions the Matsya Avatar of Vishnu, the first among ten incarnations when Vishnu appears as a giant fish on Earth and saves creation from the flood of destruction. Melville mentions this while discussing the spiritual and mystical aspects of the sailing profession and he calls Lord Vishnu as the first among whales and the God of whalers.
The Pequod's quest to hunt down Moby Dick itself is also widely viewed as allegorical. To Ahab, killing the whale becomes the ultimate goal in his life, and this observation can also be expanded allegorically so that the whale represents everyone's goals. Furthermore, his vengeance against the whale is analogous to man's struggle against fate. The only escape from Ahab's vision is seen through the Pequod's occasional encounters, called gams, with other ships. Readers could consider what exactly Ahab will do if he, in fact, succeeds in his quest: having accomplished his ultimate goal, what else is there left for him to do? Similarly, Melville may be implying that people in general need something to reach for in life, or that such a goal can destroy one if allowed to overtake all other concerns. Some such things are hinted at early on in the book, when the main character, Ishmael, is sharing a cold bed with his newfound friend, Queequeg:
... truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more.
— Moby-Dick, Ch. 11
Ahab's pipe is widely looked upon as the riddance of happiness in Ahab's life. By throwing the pipe overboard, Ahab signifies that he no longer can enjoy simple pleasures in life; instead, he dedicates his entire life to the pursuit of his obsession, the killing of the white whale, Moby Dick. A number of biblical themes can also be found in the novel. The book contains multiple implicit and explicit allusions to the story of Jonah, in addition to the use of certain biblical names (see below).
Ishmael's musings also allude to themes common among the American Transcendentalists and parallel certain themes in European Romanticism and the philosophy of Hegel. In the poetry of Whitman and the prose writings of Emerson and Thoreau, a ship at sea is sometimes a metaphor for the soul.
Plot
"Call me Ishmael," Moby-Dick begins, in one of the most recognizable opening lines in English-language literature. The narrator, an observant young man setting out from Manhattan, has experience in the merchant marine but has recently decided his next voyage will be on a whaling ship. On a cold, gloomy night in December, he arrives at the Spouter-Inn in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and agrees to share a bed with a then-absent stranger. When his bunk mate, a heavily tattooed Polynesian harpooner named Queequeg, returns very late and discovers Ishmael beneath his covers, both men are alarmed, but the two quickly become close friends and decide to sail together from Nantucket, Massachusetts on a whaling voyage.
In Nantucket, the pair signs on with the Pequod, a whaling ship that is soon to leave port. The ship’s captain, Ahab, is nowhere to be seen; nevertheless, they are told of him – a "grand, ungodly, godlike man," according to one of the owners, who has "been in colleges as well as 'mong the cannibals." The two friends encounter a mysterious man named Elijah on the dock after they sign their papers and he hints at troubles to come with Ahab. The mystery grows on Christmas morning when Ishmael spots dark figures in the mist, apparently boarding the Pequod shortly before it sets sail that day.
The ship’s officers direct the early voyage while Ahab stays in his cabin. The chief mate is Starbuck, a serious, sincere Quaker and fine leader; second mate is Stubb, happy-go-lucky and cheerful and always smoking his pipe; the third mate is Flask, short and stout but thoroughly reliable. Each mate is responsible for a whaling boat, and each whaling boat of the Pequod has its own pagan harpooneer assigned to it. Some time after sailing, Ahab finally appears on the quarter-deck one morning, an imposing, frightening figure whose haunted visage sends shivers over the narrator. (A white scar, reportedly from a thunderbolt, runs down his face and it is hinted that it continues the length of his body.) One of his legs is missing from the knee down and has been replaced by a prosthesis fashioned from a sperm whale's jawbone.
Soon gathering the crewmen together, with a rousing speech Ahab secures their support for his single, secret purpose for this voyage: hunting down and killing Moby Dick, an old, very large sperm whale, with a snow-white hump and mottled skin, that crippled Ahab on his last whaling voyage. Only Starbuck shows any sign of resistance to the charismatic but monomaniacal captain. The first mate argues repeatedly that the ship’s purpose should be to hunt whales for their oil, with luck returning home profitably, safely, and quickly, but not to seek out and kill Moby Dick in particular – and especially not for revenge. Eventually even Starbuck acquiesces to Ahab's will, though harboring misgivings.
The mystery of the dark figures seen before the Pequod set sail is explained during the voyage's first lowering for whales. Ahab has secretly brought along his own boat crew, including a mysterious harpooneer named Fedallah, an inscrutable figure with a sinister influence over Ahab. Later, while watching one night over a captured whale carcass, Fedallah darkly prophecies to Ahab hints regarding their twin deaths.
The novel describes numerous "gams," social meetings of two ships on the open sea. Crews normally visit each other during a gam, captains on one vessel and chief mates on the other. Mail may be exchanged and the men talk of whale sightings or other news. For Ahab, however, there is but one relevant question to ask of another ship: “Hast seen the White Whale?” After meeting several other whaling ships, which have their own peculiar stories, the Pequod enters the Pacific Ocean. Queequeg becomes deathly ill and requests that a coffin be built for him by the ship’s carpenter. Just as everyone has given up hope, Queequeg changes his mind, deciding to live after all, and recovers quickly. His coffin becomes his sea chest, and is later caulked and pitched to replace the Pequod's life buoy.
Soon word is heard from other whalers of Moby Dick. The jolly Captain Boomer of the Samuel Enderby has lost an arm to the whale, and is stunned at Ahab's burning need for revenge. Next they meet the Rachel, which has seen Moby Dick very recently. As a result of the encounter, one of its boats is missing; the captain’s youngest son had been aboard. The Rachel's captain begs Ahab to aid in the search for the missing boat, but Ahab is resolute. The Pequod’s captain is very near the White Whale now and will not stop to help. Finally the Delight is met, even as its captain buries a sailor who had been killed by Moby Dick. Starbuck begs Ahab one final time to reconsider his thirst for vengeance, but to no avail.
The next day, the Pequod meets Moby Dick. For two days, the Pequod's crew pursues the whale, which wreaks widespread destruction, including the disappearance of the 'Parsee'. On the third day, Moby Dick rises up to reveal the Parsee tied to him by harpoon ropes, clearly dead. Even after the initial battle on the third day, as Moby Dick swims away from the Pequod, Starbuck exhorts Ahab one last time to desist, observing that "Moby-Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that madly seekest him!"
Ahab ignores this voice of reason and continues with his ill-fated chase. As the three boats sail out to hunt him, Moby Dick damages two of them, forcing them to go back to the ship and leaving only Ahab's vessel intact. Ahab harpoons the whale, but the harpoon-line breaks. Moby Dick then rams the Pequod itself, which begins to sink. As Ahab harpoons the whale again, the unfolding harpoon-line catches him around his neck and he is dragged into the depths of the sea by the diving Moby Dick. The boat is caught up in the whirlpool of the sinking ship, which takes almost all the crew to their deaths. Only Ishmael survives, clinging to Queequeg’s coffin-turned-life buoy for an entire day and night before the Rachel rescues him.
Characters
The crew-members of the Pequod are carefully drawn stylizations of human types and habits; critics have often described the crew as a "self-enclosed universe".
Ishmael
The name has come to symbolize orphans, exiles, and social outcasts — in the opening paragraph of Moby-Dick, Ishmael tells the reader that he has turned to the sea out of a feeling of alienation from human society. In the last line of the book, Ishmael also refers to himself symbolically as an orphan. Maintaining the Biblical connection and emphasising the representation of outcasts, Ishmael is also the name of the son Abraham has with the slave girl Hagar before Isaac is born. In Genesis 21:10 Abraham's wife, Sarah, has Hagar and Ishmael exiled into the desert. Ishmael has a rich literary background (he has previously been a schoolteacher), which he brings to bear on his shipmates and events that occur while at sea.
Elijah
The character Elijah (named for the Biblical prophet, Elijah, who is also referred to in the King James Bible as Elias), on learning that Ishmael and Queequeg have signed onto Ahab's ship, asks, "Anything down there about your souls?" When Ishmael reacts with surprise, Elijah continues:
"Oh, perhaps you hav'n't got any," he said quickly. "No matter though, I know many chaps that hav'n't got any — good luck to 'em; and they are all the better off for it. A soul's a sort of a fifth wheel to a wagon."
Later in the conversation, Elijah adds:
"Well, well, what's signed, is signed; and what's to be, will be; and then again, perhaps it wont be, after all. Any how, it's all fixed and arranged a'ready; and some sailors or other must go with him, I suppose; as well these as any other men, God pity 'em! Morning to ye, shipmates, morning; the ineffable heavens bless ye; I'm sorry I stopped ye."
Ahab
Ahab is the tyrannical captain of the Pequod who is driven by a monomaniacal desire to kill Moby Dick, the whale that maimed him on the previous whaling voyage. Despite the fact that he's a Quaker, he seeks revenge in defiance of his religion's well-known pacifism. Ahab's name comes directly from the Bible (see 1 Kings 16:28).
Little information is provided about Ahab's life prior to meeting Moby Dick, although it is known that he was orphaned at a young age. When discussing the purpose of his quest with Starbuck, it is revealed that he first began whaling at eighteen and has continued in the trade for forty years, having spent less than three on land. He also mentions his "girl-wife," whom he married late in life, and their young son, but does not give their names.
In Ishmael's first encounter with Ahab's name, he responds "When that wicked king was slain, the dogs, did they not lick his blood?" (Moby-Dick, Chapter 16).
Ahab ultimately dooms the crew of the Pequod (save for Ishmael) to death by his obsession with Moby Dick. During the final chase, Ahab hurls his final harpoon while yelling his now-famous revenge line:
... to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.
The harpoon becomes lodged in Moby Dick's flesh and Ahab, caught around the neck by a loop in his own harpoon's rope and unable to free himself, is dragged into the cold oblivion of the sea with the injured whale. The mechanics of Ahab's death are richly symbolic. He is literally killed by his own harpoon, and symbolically killed by his own obsession with revenge. The whale eventually destroys the whaleboats and crew, and sinks the Pequod.
Ahab has the qualities of a tragic hero — a great heart and a fatal flaw — and his deeply philosophical ruminations are expressed in language that is not only deliberately lofty and Shakespearian, but also so heavily iambic as often to read like Shakespeare's own pentameters.
Ahab's motivation for hunting Moby Dick is perhaps best summed up in the following passage:
The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung. That intangible malignity which has been from the beginning; to whose dominion even the modern Christians ascribe one-half of the worlds; which the ancient Ophites of the east reverenced in their statue devil; -- Ahab did not fall down and worship it like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it. All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby-Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.
Moby Dick
He is a giant, albino Sperm whale and the main antagonist of the novel. He had bitten off Ahab's leg, and Ahab swore revenge. The cetacean also attacked the Rachel and killed the captain's son. He appears at the end of the novel and kills the entire crew with the exception of Ishmael. Unlike the other characters, the reader does not have access to Moby Dick's thoughts and motivations, but the whale is still an integral part of the novel. Moby Dick is sometimes considered to be a symbol of a number of things, among them God, nature, fate, the ocean, and the very universe itself.
Mates
The three mates of the Pequod are all from New England.
Starbuck
Starbuck, the young first mate of the Pequod, is a thoughtful and intellectual Quaker from Nantucket.
Uncommonly conscientious for a seaman, and endued with a deep natural reverence, the wild watery loneliness of his life did therefore strongly incline him to superstition; but to that sort of superstition, which in some organization seems rather to spring, somehow, from intelligence than from ignorance... [H]is far-away domestic memories of his young Cape wife and child, tend[ed] to bend him ... from the original ruggedness of his nature, and open him still further to those latent influences which, in some honest-hearted men, restrain the gush of dare-devil daring, so often evinced by others in the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery. "I will have no man in my boat," said Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale." By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.
— Moby-Dick, Ch. 26
Little is said about Starbuck's early life, except that he is married with a son. Unlike Ahab's wife, who remains nameless, Starbuck gives his wife's name as Mary. Such is his desire to return to them, that when nearly reaching the last leg of their quest for Moby Dick, he considers arresting or even killing Ahab with a loaded musket, one of several which is kept by Ahab (in a previous chapter Ahab threatens Starbuck with one when Starbuck disobeys him, despite Starbuck's being in the right) and turning the ship back, straight for home.
Starbuck is alone among the crew in objecting to Ahab's quest, declaring it madness to want revenge on an animal, which lacks reason. Starbuck advocates continuing the more mundane pursuit of whales for their oil. But he lacks the support of the crew in his opposition to Ahab, and is unable to persuade them to turn back. Despite his misgivings, he feels himself bound by his obligations to obey the captain.
Starbuck was an important Quaker family name on Nantucket Island, and there were several actual whalemen of this period named "Starbuck," as evidenced by the name of Starbuck Island in the South Pacific whaling grounds. The multinational coffee chain Starbucks was named after Starbuck, not for any affinity for coffee but after the name Pequod was rejected by one of the co-founders.
Stubb
Stubb, the second mate of the Pequod, is from Cape Cod, and always seems to have a pipe in his mouth and a smile on his face. "Good-humored, easy, and careless, he presided over his whaleboat as if the most deadly encounter were but a dinner, and his crew all invited guests." (Moby-Dick, Ch. 27) Although he is not an educated man, Stubb is remarkably articulate, and during whale hunts keeps up an imaginative patter reminiscent of that of some characters in Shakespeare. Scholarly portrayals range from that of an optimistic simpleton to a paragon of lived philosophic wisdom.
Flask
Flask is the third mate of the Pequod. He is from Martha's Vineyard.
King Post is his nickname because he is a short, stout, ruddy young fellow, very pugnacious concerning whales, who somehow seemed to think that the great Leviathans had personally and hereditarily affronted him; and therefore it was a sort of point of honor with him, to destroy them whenever encountered.
— Moby-Dick, Ch. 27
Harpooneers
The harpooneers of the Pequod are all non-Christians from various parts of the world. Each serves on a mate's boat.
Queequeg
Main article: Queequeg
Queequeg hails from the fictional island of Kokovoko in the South Seas, inhabited by a cannibal tribe, and is the son of the chief of his tribe. Since leaving the island, he has become extremely skilled with the harpoon. He befriends Ishmael very early in the novel, when they meet in New Bedford, Massachusetts before leaving for Nantucket. He is described as existing in a state between civilized and savage. For example, Ishmael recounts with amusement how Queequeg feels it necessary to hide himself when pulling on his boots, noting that if he were a savage he wouldn't consider boots necessary, but if he were completely civilized he would realize there was no need to be modest when pulling on his boots.
Queequeg is the harpooneer on Starbuck's boat, where Ishmael is also an oarsman. Queequeg is best friends with Ishmael in the story. He is prominent early in the novel, but later fades in significance, as does Ishmael.
Tashtego
Tashtego is described as a Native American harpooneer. The personification of the hunter, he turns from hunting land animals to hunting whales. Tashtego is the harpooneer on Stubb's boat.
Next was Tashtego, an unmixed Indian from Gay Head, the most westerly promontory of Martha’s Vineyard, where there still exists the last remnant of a village of red men, which has long supplied the neighboring island of Nantucket with many of her most daring harpooneers. In the fishery, they usually go by the generic name of Gay-Headers.
— Moby-Dick, Ch.27
Daggoo
Daggoo is a gigantic (6'5") African harpooneer from a coastal village with a noble bearing and grace. He is the harpooneer on Flask's boat.
Fedallah
Fedallah is the harpooneer on Ahab's boat. He is of Persian Zoroastrian ("Parsi") descent. Because of descriptions of him having lived in China, he might have been among the great wave of Parsi traders who made their way to Hong Kong and the Far East from India during the mid-19th century. At the time when the Pequod sets sail, Fedallah is hidden on board, and he emerges with Ahab's boat's crew later on, to the surprise of the crew. Fedallah is referred to in the text as Ahab's "Dark Shadow." Ishmael calls him a "fire worshipper" and the crew speculates that he is a devil in man's disguise. He is the source of a variety of prophecies regarding Ahab and his hunt for Moby Dick. Ishmael describes him thus, standing by Ahab's boat:
The figure that now stood by its bows was tall and swart, with one white tooth evilly protruding from its steel-like lips. A rumpled Chinese jacket of black cotton funereally invested him, with wide black trowsers of the same dark stuff. But strangely crowning this ebonness was a glistening white plaited turban, the living hair braided and coiled round and round upon his head.
— Moby-Dick, Ch.48
Other notable characters
Pip (nicknamed "Pippin," but "Pip" for short) is a black boy from Tolland County, Connecticut who is "the most insignificant of the Pequod's crew". Because he is physically slight, he is made a ship-keeper, (a sailor who stays in the Pequod while its whaleboats go out). Ishmael contrasts him with the "dull and torpid in his intellects" — and paler and much older — steward Dough-Boy, describing Pip as "over tender-hearted" but "at bottom very bright, with that pleasant, genial, jolly brightness peculiar to his tribe". Ishmael goes so far as to chastise the reader: "Nor smile so, while I write that this little black was brilliant, for even blackness has its brilliancy; behold yon lustrous ebony, panelled in king's cabinets."
The after-oarsman on Stubb's boat is injured, however, so Pip is temporarily reassigned to Stubb's whaleboat crew. The first time out, Pip jumps from the boat, causing Stubb and Tashtego to lose their already-harpooned whale. Tashtego and the rest of the crew are furious; Stubb chides him "officially" and "unofficially", even raising the specter of slavery: "a whale would sell for thirty times what you would, Pip, in Alabama". The next time a whale is sighted, Pip again jumps overboard and is left stranded in the "awful lonesomeness" of the sea while Stubb's and the others' boats are dragged along by their harpooned whales. By the time he is rescued, he has become (at least to the other sailors) "an idiot", "mad". Ishmael, however, thought Pip had a mystical experience: "So man's insanity is heaven's sense." Pip and his experience are crucial because they serve as foreshadowing, in Ishmael's words "providing the sometimes madly merry and predestinated craft with a living and ever accompanying prophecy of whatever shattered sequel might prove her own." Pip's madness is full of poetry and eloquence; he is reminiscent of Tom in King Lear. Ahab later sympathizes with Pip and takes the young boy under his wing.
Dough-boy is the pale, nervous steward of the ship. The Cook (Fleece), Blacksmith (Perth) and Carpenter of the ship are each highlighted in at least one chapter near the end of the book. Fleece, a very old African-American with bad knees, is presented in the chapter "Stubb Kills a Whale" at some length in a dialogue where Stubb good-humoredly takes him to task over how to prepare a variety of dishes from the whale's carcass. Ahab calls on the Carpenter to fashion a new whalebone leg after the one he wears is damaged; later he has Perth forge a special harpoon that he carries into the final confrontation with Moby-Dick.
The crew as a whole is exceedingly international, having constituents from both the United States and the world. Chapter 40, "Midnight, Forecastle," highlights, in its stage-play manner (in Shakespearean style), the striking variety in the sailors' origins. A partial list of the speakers includes sailors from the Isle of Man, France, Iceland, the Netherlands, the Azores, Sicily and Malta, China, Denmark, Portugal, India, England, Spain and Ireland.
Critical reception
Melville's expectations
In a letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne written within days of Moby-Dick's American publication, Melville made a number of revealing comments:
... for not one man in five cycles, who is wise, will expect appreciative recognition from his fellows, or any one of them. Appreciation! Recognition! Is Jove appreciated? Why, ever since Adam, who has got to the meaning of his great allegory—the world? Then we pigmies must be content to have our paper allegories but ill comprehended. I say your appreciation is my glorious gratuity.
A sense of unspeakable security is in me this moment, on account of your understanding the book. I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. Ineffable sociabilities are in me. I would sit down and dine with you and all the gods in old Rome's Pantheon. It is a strange feeling—no hopefulness is in it, no despair. Content—that is it; and irresponsibility; but without licentious inclination. I speak now of my profoundest sense of being, not of an incidental feeling.
You did not care a penny for the book. But, now and then as you read, you understood the pervading thought that impelled the book—and that you praised. Was it not so? You were archangel enough to despise the imperfect body, and embrace the soul.
Contemporary
Moby-Dick received decidedly mixed reviews from critics at the time it was published. Since the book first appeared in England, the American literary establishment took note of what the English critics said, especially when these critics were attached to the more prestigious journals. Although many critics praised it for its unique style, interesting characters and poetic language, others agreed with a critic for the highly regarded London Athenaeum, who described it as: "[A]n ill-compounded mixture of romance and matter-of-fact. The idea of a connected and collected story has obviously visited and abandoned its writer again and again in the course of composition. The style of his tale is in places disfigured by mad (rather than bad) English; and its catastrophe is hastily, weakly, and obscurely managed."
One problem was that publisher Peter Bentley botched the English edition, most significantly in omitting the (somewhat perfunctory[citation needed]) epilogue. For this reason, many of the critics faulted the book on what little they could grasp of it, namely on purely formal grounds, e.g., how the tale could have been told if no one survived to tell it. The generally bad reviews from across the ocean made American readers skittish about picking up the tome. Still, a handful of American critics saw much more in it than most of their U.S. and English colleagues. Hawthorne said of the book: "What a book Melville has written! It gives me an idea of much greater power than his preceding ones". Perhaps the most perceptive review came from the pen of Evert Augustus Duyckinck, a friend of Melville who was able to introduce Melville to Hawthorne.
Underground
Within a year after Melville's death, Moby-Dick, along with Typee, Omoo and Mardi, was reprinted by Harper & Brothers, giving it a chance to be rediscovered. However, only New York's literary underground seemed to take much interest, just enough to keep Melville's name circulating for the next 25 years in the capital of American publishing. During this time, a few critics were willing to devote time, space, and a modicum of praise to Melville and his works, or at least those that could still be fairly easily obtained or remembered. Other works, especially the poetry, went largely forgotten.
Then came World War I and its consequences, particularly the shaking or destruction of faith in so many aspects of Western civilization, all of which caused people concerned with culture and its potential redemptive value to experiment with new aesthetic techniques. The stage was set for Melville to find his place.
The Melville Revival
With the burgeoning of Modernist aesthetics (see Modernism and American modernism) and the war that tore everything apart still so fresh in memory, Moby-Dick began to seem increasingly relevant. Many of Melville's techniques echo those of Modernism: kaleidoscopic, hybrid in genre and tone, monumentally ambitious in trying to unite so many disparate elements and loose ends. His new readers also found in him an almost too-profound exploration of violence, hunger for power, and quixotic goals. Although many critics of this time still considered Moby-Dick extremely difficult to come to grips with, they largely saw this lack of easy understanding as an asset rather than a liability.[citation needed]
In 1917, American author Carl Van Doren became the first of this period to proselytize about Melville's value.[citation needed]
In the 1920s, British literary critics began to take notice. In his idiosyncratic but landmark Studies in Classic American Literature, novelist, poet, and short story writer D. H. Lawrence directed Americans' attention to the great originality and value of many American authors, among them Melville. Perhaps most surprising is that Lawrence saw Moby-Dick as a work of the first order despite his using the original English edition.
In his 1921 study, The American Novel, Carl Van Doren returns to Melville with much more depth. Here he calls Moby-Dick a pinnacle of American Romanticism.
Post-revival
The next great wave of Moby-Dick appraisal came with the publication of F. O. Matthiessen's American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman. Published in 1941, the book proposed that Emerson, Whitman, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Melville were the most prominent figures of a flowering of conflicted (and mostly pre-Civil War) literature important for its promulgation of democracy and the exploration of its possibilities, successes, and failures. Since Matthiessen's book came out shortly before the entry of the U.S. into World War II, the end of which found the U.S. in possession of the atomic bomb and thus a superpower, critic Nick Selby argues that
… Moby-Dick was now read as a text that reflected the power struggles of a world concerned to uphold democracy, and of a country seeking an identity for itself within that world.
On October 9, 2008, the Massachusetts House of Representatives passed a bill naming Moby-Dick Massachusetts' official “epic novel.”
世界顶级登山高手奥寺(玉木宏)终于要挑战最难关高峰k2了。一同前往的登山队员兼好友的是北沢（山本太郎）。他们接受了来自大型运动厂商ヤシロ的登山用具的全面赞助，两人登山组将代表日本挑战攀登k2的
magic line
在攀登k2的途中，北沢帮妹妹ゆかり(吹石一恵)向奥寺表达了爱慕之情，与此同时，北泽也质问了奥寺对ヤシロ的八代社长（石坂浩二）的妻子美那子（鹤田真由）的感觉。就在这攀登k2的途中，两人推心置腹。而留在日本的八代和美那子对 k2也充满了遐想。因为在出发前，奥寺曾对八代挑明：“如果我能活
着从k2回来，就把美那子交给我”
在攀登顶峰的第四天，奥寺两人终于到达了海拔8000米的magic line的“z”型攀登区。由于高空氧气稀薄，二人的体力已接近透支，第二天，当两人到达号称“三日月のガリー”的险峻岩沟时，一堵高70米的冰壁浩然耸立在他们面前。由于温度过低，无法固定帐篷，无线对讲机也无法使用，正在此时，又突发雪崩北沢因此脚部骨折。由于那里是雪崩多发地，奥寺马上用恢复功能的无线对讲机联络本部，报告中止此次探险。攀登k2告终失败，接下来的问题是如何生还。奥寺选择了避开雪崩多发地，与北泽一同攀登冰壁，再由普通的山路下山的逃生措施。奥寺用尽最后的力气，再冰壁上垂下绳索，并让北泽先攀登，自己紧随其后，不幸的是北泽坠落冰壁。
北泽的死隐藏了很大的谜团。回国以后，智之（武田真治）作为ヤシロ公司的法人，对外解释说北泽的死是由于攀登的疏忽。然而奥寺却极力否定这个表决，他认为事故是由ヤシロ公司提供的登山工具有质量隐患所导致的，这一发言，引起了很大反响。八代社长坚持说是有北泽的操作失误导致事故，以违反信用为由起诉了奥寺。奥寺则与北沢的妹妹ゆかり以及母亲秋子(吉行和子)一起携手展开这场法庭上的斗。。。。。。
magic line
在攀登k2的途中，北沢帮妹妹ゆかり(吹石一恵)向奥寺表达了爱慕之情，与此同时，北泽也质问了奥寺对ヤシロ的八代社长（石坂浩二）的妻子美那子（鹤田真由）的感觉。就在这攀登k2的途中，两人推心置腹。而留在日本的八代和美那子对 k2也充满了遐想。因为在出发前，奥寺曾对八代挑明：“如果我能活
着从k2回来，就把美那子交给我”
在攀登顶峰的第四天，奥寺两人终于到达了海拔8000米的magic line的“z”型攀登区。由于高空氧气稀薄，二人的体力已接近透支，第二天，当两人到达号称“三日月のガリー”的险峻岩沟时，一堵高70米的冰壁浩然耸立在他们面前。由于温度过低，无法固定帐篷，无线对讲机也无法使用，正在此时，又突发雪崩北沢因此脚部骨折。由于那里是雪崩多发地，奥寺马上用恢复功能的无线对讲机联络本部，报告中止此次探险。攀登k2告终失败，接下来的问题是如何生还。奥寺选择了避开雪崩多发地，与北泽一同攀登冰壁，再由普通的山路下山的逃生措施。奥寺用尽最后的力气，再冰壁上垂下绳索，并让北泽先攀登，自己紧随其后，不幸的是北泽坠落冰壁。
北泽的死隐藏了很大的谜团。回国以后，智之（武田真治）作为ヤシロ公司的法人，对外解释说北泽的死是由于攀登的疏忽。然而奥寺却极力否定这个表决，他认为事故是由ヤシロ公司提供的登山工具有质量隐患所导致的，这一发言，引起了很大反响。八代社长坚持说是有北泽的操作失误导致事故，以违反信用为由起诉了奥寺。奥寺则与北沢的妹妹ゆかり以及母亲秋子(吉行和子)一起携手展开这场法庭上的斗。。。。。。
Two Year's Holiday，中文译名为《两年假期》，这是一部充满传奇与冒险的著作，它由法国著名作家、“现代科幻小说之父”儒勒·凡尔纳编著。
故事讲述的是，在一年的学习结束时，来自新西兰某寄宿学校的一群学生将要开始一次为期几天的航海旅行。然而，当孩子们半夜惊醒时发现，他们的船已经漂流在浩瀚的海面上，原来在出发前夜游船的缆绳断裂了。海面风浪大作，而船上既没有船长，也没有水手，危险、恐惧、绝望和孤独笼罩着整个游船。船随海浪漂流停靠在一座荒无人烟的小岛上，虽然身处艰难境地，但孩子们还是凭着热情、理性和勇气，最终摆脱了困境回到自己的家人身边。故事情节跌宕起伏，而一路有关自然风光的介绍也同样引人入胜。
该书至今已被译成世界上多种文字。书中所展现的神奇故事伴随了～代又一代人的美丽童年、少年直至成年。无论作为语言学习的课本，还是作为通俗的文学和科学读本，本书对当代中国的青少年都将产生积极的影响。为了使读者能够了解英文故事概况，进而提高阅读速度和阅读水平，在每章的开始部分增加了中文导读。
Publication
As with most of Verne's works, it was serialised (in twenty-four parts between January and December 1888) in the "Extraordinary Journeys" section of the French Magasin d’Éducation et de Récréation by Parisian publisher Hetzel. It was also published in book form in two volumes in June and early November of that year. An illustrated double volume with a colour map and a preface by Verne was released in late November.
Translations and adaptations
An English translation of the book was serialised in 36 installments in the Boy's Own Paper between 1888 and 1889.
In 1889 a two-volume English-language book titled A Two Year's Vacation was published by Munro in the United States. Later the same year, a single-volume abridged edition in the United Kingdom was released by Sampson Low under the title of Adrift in the Pacific.
In 1890, from February 22 through March 14, the Boston Daily Globe newspaper serialized Adrift in the Pacific; the Strange Adventures of a Schoolboy Crew.
In 1965 the I. O. Evens version of the Sampson Low translation was published in England (ARCO) and the U.S. (Associated Publishers) in two volumes: Adrift in the Pacific and Second Year Ashore.
In 1967 a new modified and abridged translation by Olga Marx with illustrations by Victor Ambrus titled A Long Vacation was published by Oxford University Press in the United Kingdom and Holt, Rinehart & Winston in the United States.
In 1967 Czech filmmaker Karel Zeman made a loose adaptation under the title The Stolen Airship / Ukradená vzducholod.
In 1987 a made-for-TV animation was produced by the Japanese studio Nippon Animation under the title of The Story of Fifteen Boys (Japanese: 十五少年漂流記).
Plot summary
The story starts with a group of schoolboys aged between eight and thirteen on board a schooner moored at Auckland, New Zealand, and preparing to set off on a six-week vacation. With the exception of the oldest boy Gordon, an American, and Briant and Jacques, two French brothers, all the boys are British.
While the schooner's crew are ashore, the moorings are cast off under unknown circumstances and the ship drifts to sea, where it is caught by a storm. Twenty-two days later, the boys find themselves cast upon the shore of an uncharted island, which they name "Chairman Island." They remain there for the next two years until a passing ship lands. The ship has been taken over by mutineers, intent on trafficking weapons, alcohol and drugs. With the aid of the two surviving members of the original crew, the boys are able to defeat the criminals and make their escape.
The struggles for survival and dominance amongst the boys were to be echoed in William Golding's Lord of the Flies, written some 66 years later.
故事讲述的是，在一年的学习结束时，来自新西兰某寄宿学校的一群学生将要开始一次为期几天的航海旅行。然而，当孩子们半夜惊醒时发现，他们的船已经漂流在浩瀚的海面上，原来在出发前夜游船的缆绳断裂了。海面风浪大作，而船上既没有船长，也没有水手，危险、恐惧、绝望和孤独笼罩着整个游船。船随海浪漂流停靠在一座荒无人烟的小岛上，虽然身处艰难境地，但孩子们还是凭着热情、理性和勇气，最终摆脱了困境回到自己的家人身边。故事情节跌宕起伏，而一路有关自然风光的介绍也同样引人入胜。
该书至今已被译成世界上多种文字。书中所展现的神奇故事伴随了～代又一代人的美丽童年、少年直至成年。无论作为语言学习的课本，还是作为通俗的文学和科学读本，本书对当代中国的青少年都将产生积极的影响。为了使读者能够了解英文故事概况，进而提高阅读速度和阅读水平，在每章的开始部分增加了中文导读。
Publication
As with most of Verne's works, it was serialised (in twenty-four parts between January and December 1888) in the "Extraordinary Journeys" section of the French Magasin d’Éducation et de Récréation by Parisian publisher Hetzel. It was also published in book form in two volumes in June and early November of that year. An illustrated double volume with a colour map and a preface by Verne was released in late November.
Translations and adaptations
An English translation of the book was serialised in 36 installments in the Boy's Own Paper between 1888 and 1889.
In 1889 a two-volume English-language book titled A Two Year's Vacation was published by Munro in the United States. Later the same year, a single-volume abridged edition in the United Kingdom was released by Sampson Low under the title of Adrift in the Pacific.
In 1890, from February 22 through March 14, the Boston Daily Globe newspaper serialized Adrift in the Pacific; the Strange Adventures of a Schoolboy Crew.
In 1965 the I. O. Evens version of the Sampson Low translation was published in England (ARCO) and the U.S. (Associated Publishers) in two volumes: Adrift in the Pacific and Second Year Ashore.
In 1967 a new modified and abridged translation by Olga Marx with illustrations by Victor Ambrus titled A Long Vacation was published by Oxford University Press in the United Kingdom and Holt, Rinehart & Winston in the United States.
In 1967 Czech filmmaker Karel Zeman made a loose adaptation under the title The Stolen Airship / Ukradená vzducholod.
In 1987 a made-for-TV animation was produced by the Japanese studio Nippon Animation under the title of The Story of Fifteen Boys (Japanese: 十五少年漂流記).
Plot summary
The story starts with a group of schoolboys aged between eight and thirteen on board a schooner moored at Auckland, New Zealand, and preparing to set off on a six-week vacation. With the exception of the oldest boy Gordon, an American, and Briant and Jacques, two French brothers, all the boys are British.
While the schooner's crew are ashore, the moorings are cast off under unknown circumstances and the ship drifts to sea, where it is caught by a storm. Twenty-two days later, the boys find themselves cast upon the shore of an uncharted island, which they name "Chairman Island." They remain there for the next two years until a passing ship lands. The ship has been taken over by mutineers, intent on trafficking weapons, alcohol and drugs. With the aid of the two surviving members of the original crew, the boys are able to defeat the criminals and make their escape.
The struggles for survival and dominance amongst the boys were to be echoed in William Golding's Lord of the Flies, written some 66 years later.
这是 1873 年 2 月 2 日，帆船“浪子”号正航行在南纬 43°57′，西经165°19′。这是一艘载重 400 吨的捕鲸船，船上各式各样的设备都是从旧金山装备起来的。它的船主是惠尔顿，是加利福尼亚州一位富有的船队队长，胡尔做这船的船长已经好几年了。
每到捕鲸季节，惠尔顿就会命令船队北上南下，向北穿过白令海峡直到北冰洋，向南则过合恩角直到南极洲。“浪子”号是惠尔顿的船队中最小的一条捕鲸船，但它设备先进，操作简便，只用几个船员就敢到南半球的冰山中去冒险。富有经验的胡尔船长很善于在这些冰山中间为“浪子”号找到一条巧妙的通道。这些冰山在夏季能漂流到新西兰和好望角所在的那个纬度，比北冰洋冰山所能漂流的距离要远得多。这些冰山本来体积就不太大，加上沿途的碰撞和温暖的海流，所以它们大部分会消失在太平洋或大西洋中。
Themes explored in the novel include:
* The painful learning of adult life - the hero, Dick Sand, must assume command of a ship after the disappearance of its captain.
* The discovery of entomology
* Condemnation of slavery
* Revenge
Plot
Dick Sand is a fifteen year old boy serving on the schooner "Pilgrim" as a sailor. The crew are whale hunters that voyage every year down to New Zealand. After an unsuccessful season of hunting, as they plan to return the wife of the owner of the hunting firm, Mrs Weldon, her five year old son Jack Weldon and her cousin, Bénédict, an entomologist ask for a return passege to San Francisco. Several days into the journey they save five shipwrecked passengers from another ship and a dog who was with them at the time (Tom, Actéon, Austin, Bat, Nan and Dingo (the dog)). Towards the end of their passage, they notice a whale and the crew, hoping for some profit after a bad season, decide to hunt it. Captain Hull reluctantly leaves Dick responsible for the ship. But the hunt goes awry and all the crew members are killed. Now Dick is left in charge of the ship with no experienced sailors to help him. He tries to teach the five survivors of the shipwreck and tries to reach the coast of South America, but Negoro, the ship's cook manages to trick them, breaking one of their compasses and their speed measuring device and eventually, after making sure the rest were lost, leads them to equatorial Africa.
List of characters
These names are as given in the original French version:
* Dick Sand
* Actéon
* Alvez
* Austin
* Bat
* Cousin Bénédict
* Coïmbra
* Dingo
* Halima
* Harris
* Big D
* Hercule, a recurring Verne character, here given the pseudonym Mgannga
* Howik
* Captain Hull
* Ibn Hamis
* Moina
* Moini Loungga
* Munito
* Nan
* Negoro
* Tipo-Tipo
* Tom
* Samuel Vernon
* Jack Weldon
* James-W. Weldon
* Mrs. Weldon
每到捕鲸季节，惠尔顿就会命令船队北上南下，向北穿过白令海峡直到北冰洋，向南则过合恩角直到南极洲。“浪子”号是惠尔顿的船队中最小的一条捕鲸船，但它设备先进，操作简便，只用几个船员就敢到南半球的冰山中去冒险。富有经验的胡尔船长很善于在这些冰山中间为“浪子”号找到一条巧妙的通道。这些冰山在夏季能漂流到新西兰和好望角所在的那个纬度，比北冰洋冰山所能漂流的距离要远得多。这些冰山本来体积就不太大，加上沿途的碰撞和温暖的海流，所以它们大部分会消失在太平洋或大西洋中。
Themes explored in the novel include:
* The painful learning of adult life - the hero, Dick Sand, must assume command of a ship after the disappearance of its captain.
* The discovery of entomology
* Condemnation of slavery
* Revenge
Plot
Dick Sand is a fifteen year old boy serving on the schooner "Pilgrim" as a sailor. The crew are whale hunters that voyage every year down to New Zealand. After an unsuccessful season of hunting, as they plan to return the wife of the owner of the hunting firm, Mrs Weldon, her five year old son Jack Weldon and her cousin, Bénédict, an entomologist ask for a return passege to San Francisco. Several days into the journey they save five shipwrecked passengers from another ship and a dog who was with them at the time (Tom, Actéon, Austin, Bat, Nan and Dingo (the dog)). Towards the end of their passage, they notice a whale and the crew, hoping for some profit after a bad season, decide to hunt it. Captain Hull reluctantly leaves Dick responsible for the ship. But the hunt goes awry and all the crew members are killed. Now Dick is left in charge of the ship with no experienced sailors to help him. He tries to teach the five survivors of the shipwreck and tries to reach the coast of South America, but Negoro, the ship's cook manages to trick them, breaking one of their compasses and their speed measuring device and eventually, after making sure the rest were lost, leads them to equatorial Africa.
List of characters
These names are as given in the original French version:
* Dick Sand
* Actéon
* Alvez
* Austin
* Bat
* Cousin Bénédict
* Coïmbra
* Dingo
* Halima
* Harris
* Big D
* Hercule, a recurring Verne character, here given the pseudonym Mgannga
* Howik
* Captain Hull
* Ibn Hamis
* Moina
* Moini Loungga
* Munito
* Nan
* Negoro
* Tipo-Tipo
* Tom
* Samuel Vernon
* Jack Weldon
* James-W. Weldon
* Mrs. Weldon
1854年2月27日，有两个人躺在奥兰治河边一棵高大的垂柳下，一边闲谈一边全神贯注地观察着河面。这条被荷兰殖民者称作格鲁特河，被土著霍顿督人称作加列普的奥兰治河，可以与非洲大陆的三大动脉：尼罗河、尼日尔河和赞比西河相提并论。像这三大河流一样，它也有自己的高水位、急流和瀑布。几位在奥兰治河部分流域很知名的旅行家：汤普森、亚历山大、波切尔，都相继赞叹其河水清澈，两岸风光绮丽。
奥兰治河在这一地段临近约克公爵山脉，呈现出一派壮丽的景观。那些无法攀越的岩石，巨大的石堆，被岁月无情矿化的粗大树干和未经殖民者的斧头开凿的难以进入的原始老林，在加列班山脉的环绕下，形成了一方无以比拟的壮观景色。河水在这里由于河床太窄受到挟制，河床也因此不能承受而突然塌陷，水流于是从400法尺①的高处飞流直泻下来。瀑布的上流，是一挂简简单单的翻腾不止的水帘，被几块岩石探出垂饰着绿色枝条的脑袋划破了。在瀑布的下方。肉眼只能看到一潭汹涌的阴沉沉的水涡，一团浓重潮湿、被阳光的七色光柱划出道纹的水雾笼罩在上面。令人烦躁的哗哗水声从深潭中发出来，又被山谷扩大成了巨大的回响。
Plot introduction
Three Russian and three English scientists depart to South Africa to measure the meridian. As their mission is proceeding, the Crimean war breaks out, and the members of the expedition find themselves citizens of enemy countries. This novel can be found under alternate titles such as "Adventures in the Land of the Behemoth," "Measuring a Meridian" and "Meridiana or Adventures in South Africa."
奥兰治河在这一地段临近约克公爵山脉，呈现出一派壮丽的景观。那些无法攀越的岩石，巨大的石堆，被岁月无情矿化的粗大树干和未经殖民者的斧头开凿的难以进入的原始老林，在加列班山脉的环绕下，形成了一方无以比拟的壮观景色。河水在这里由于河床太窄受到挟制，河床也因此不能承受而突然塌陷，水流于是从400法尺①的高处飞流直泻下来。瀑布的上流，是一挂简简单单的翻腾不止的水帘，被几块岩石探出垂饰着绿色枝条的脑袋划破了。在瀑布的下方。肉眼只能看到一潭汹涌的阴沉沉的水涡，一团浓重潮湿、被阳光的七色光柱划出道纹的水雾笼罩在上面。令人烦躁的哗哗水声从深潭中发出来，又被山谷扩大成了巨大的回响。
Plot introduction
Three Russian and three English scientists depart to South Africa to measure the meridian. As their mission is proceeding, the Crimean war breaks out, and the members of the expedition find themselves citizens of enemy countries. This novel can be found under alternate titles such as "Adventures in the Land of the Behemoth," "Measuring a Meridian" and "Meridiana or Adventures in South Africa."
“这些英国报纸编得真好！”和善的大夫仰靠在一张大皮扶手椅里自言自语地说。
萨拉赞大夫一辈子就这么自言自语的，这是他的消遣方式之一种。
他年已五十，眉目清秀，眼睛有神，清澈亮晶，戴着一副金属架眼镜，相貌既严肃又和蔼可亲，让人一看就是一个正人君子。这天早晨，尽管他此刻衣着并不十分考究，但却早已刮好脸，结上了白领带了。
萨拉赞大夫一辈子就这么自言自语的，这是他的消遣方式之一种。
他年已五十，眉目清秀，眼睛有神，清澈亮晶，戴着一副金属架眼镜，相貌既严肃又和蔼可亲，让人一看就是一个正人君子。这天早晨，尽管他此刻衣着并不十分考究，但却早已刮好脸，结上了白领带了。
“明天落潮的时候，船长K.Z.、大副理查德·山敦将率领‘前进’号从新王子码头出发，驶向陌生的海域。”
这就是人们在1860年4月5日的“利物浦先驱报”上读到的内容。
对于英国最繁忙的商业港口来说，一艘船离港并不是什么大不了的事。谁会在各种吨位、各个国家的轮船当中注意到两里①的浮动船坞容纳这么多船有困难？
①古海里，约合5.556公里。
然而，4月6日一早，一大群人聚集在新王子码头上，城里海员行会里数不清的人看起来像在这里碰头。附近的工人放下他们手中的活计，批发商离开了他们阴暗的柜台，商人们离开了他们冷冷清清的商店。沿着船坞外墙排列的五颜六色的公共马车每分钟都运来一些好奇的乘客；整个城市看起来只在忙活一件事：观看“前进”号的起航。
The novel was published for the first time in 1864. The definitive version from 1866 was included into Voyages Extraordinaires series (The Extraordinary Voyages). Although it was the first book of the series it was labeled as number two. Three Verne's books from 1863-65 (Five Weeks in a Balloon, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and From the Earth to the Moon) were added into the series retroactively. Captain Hatteras shows many similarities with British explorer John Franklin.
Plot summary
The novel, set in 1861, described adventures of British expedition led by Captain John Hatteras to the North Pole. Hatteras is convinced that the sea around the pole is not frozen and his obsession is to reach the place no matter what. Mutiny by the crew results in destruction of their ship but Hatteras, with a few men, continues on the expedition. On the shore of the island of "New America" he discovers the remains of a ship used by the previous expedition from the United States. Doctor Clawbonny recalls in mind the plan of the real Ice palace, constructed completely from ice in Russia in 1740 to build a snow-house, where they should spend a winter. The travellers winter on the island and survive mainly due to the ingenuity of Doctor Clawbonny (who is able to make fire with an ice lens, make bullets from frozen mercury and repel attacks by polar bears with remotely controlled explosions of black powder).
When the winter ends the sea becomes ice-free. The travellers build a boat from the shipwreck and head towards the pole. Here they discover an island, an active volcano, and name it after Hatteras. With difficulty a fjord is found and the group get ashore. After three hours climbing they reach the mouth of the volcano. The exact location of the pole is in the crater and Hatteras jumps into it. As the sequence was originally written, Hatteras perishes in the crater; Verne's editor, Jules Hetzel, suggested or rather required that Verne do a rewrite so that Hatteras survives but is driven insane by the intensity of the experience, and after return to England he is put into an asylum for the insane. Losing his "soul" in the cavern of the North Pole, Hatteras never speaks another word. He spends the remainder of his days walking the streets surrounding the asylum with his faithful dog Duke. While mute and deaf to the world Hatteras' walks are not without a direction. As indicated by the last line "Captain Hatteras forever marches northward".
New America
New America (Nouvelle-Amerique) in map of Captain Hatteras' voyage
New America is the name given to a large Arctic island, a northward extension of Ellesmere Island, as discovered by Captain John Hatteras and his crew. Its features include, on the west coast, Victoria Bay, Cape Washington, Johnson Island, Bell Mountain, and Fort Providence, and at its northern point (87°5′N 118°35′W / 87.083°N 118.583°W / 87.083; -118.583), Altamont Harbour.
As with many of Verne's imaginative creations, his description of Arctic geography was based on scientific knowledge at the time the novel was written (1866) but foreshadowed future discoveries. Ellesmere Island had been re-discovered and named by Edward Inglefield in 1852 and further explored by Isaac Israel Hayes in 1860-61. Forty years after the novel's publication, in 1906, Robert Peary claimed to have sighted Crocker Land around 83° N, and in 1909, Frederick Cook sighted Bradley Land at 85° N, both at locations occupied by Verne's New America. Cook's choice of route may actually have been inspired by his reading of Verne.
The land is named by Captain Altamont, an American explorer, who is first to set foot on the land. In the novel as published, it is unclear whether New America is meant to be a territorial claim for the United States. As William Butcher points out, this would not be surprising, since Verne wrote about the US acquisition of Alaska in The Fur Country, and Lincoln Island is proposed as a US possession in The Mysterious Island. In fact, a deleted chapter, "John Bull and Jonathan," had Hatteras and Altamont dueling for the privilege of claiming the land for their respective countries.
In popular culture
In 1912, Georges Méliès made a film based on the story entitled Conquest of the Pole (French: Conquête du pôle).
这就是人们在1860年4月5日的“利物浦先驱报”上读到的内容。
对于英国最繁忙的商业港口来说，一艘船离港并不是什么大不了的事。谁会在各种吨位、各个国家的轮船当中注意到两里①的浮动船坞容纳这么多船有困难？
①古海里，约合5.556公里。
然而，4月6日一早，一大群人聚集在新王子码头上，城里海员行会里数不清的人看起来像在这里碰头。附近的工人放下他们手中的活计，批发商离开了他们阴暗的柜台，商人们离开了他们冷冷清清的商店。沿着船坞外墙排列的五颜六色的公共马车每分钟都运来一些好奇的乘客；整个城市看起来只在忙活一件事：观看“前进”号的起航。
The novel was published for the first time in 1864. The definitive version from 1866 was included into Voyages Extraordinaires series (The Extraordinary Voyages). Although it was the first book of the series it was labeled as number two. Three Verne's books from 1863-65 (Five Weeks in a Balloon, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and From the Earth to the Moon) were added into the series retroactively. Captain Hatteras shows many similarities with British explorer John Franklin.
Plot summary
The novel, set in 1861, described adventures of British expedition led by Captain John Hatteras to the North Pole. Hatteras is convinced that the sea around the pole is not frozen and his obsession is to reach the place no matter what. Mutiny by the crew results in destruction of their ship but Hatteras, with a few men, continues on the expedition. On the shore of the island of "New America" he discovers the remains of a ship used by the previous expedition from the United States. Doctor Clawbonny recalls in mind the plan of the real Ice palace, constructed completely from ice in Russia in 1740 to build a snow-house, where they should spend a winter. The travellers winter on the island and survive mainly due to the ingenuity of Doctor Clawbonny (who is able to make fire with an ice lens, make bullets from frozen mercury and repel attacks by polar bears with remotely controlled explosions of black powder).
When the winter ends the sea becomes ice-free. The travellers build a boat from the shipwreck and head towards the pole. Here they discover an island, an active volcano, and name it after Hatteras. With difficulty a fjord is found and the group get ashore. After three hours climbing they reach the mouth of the volcano. The exact location of the pole is in the crater and Hatteras jumps into it. As the sequence was originally written, Hatteras perishes in the crater; Verne's editor, Jules Hetzel, suggested or rather required that Verne do a rewrite so that Hatteras survives but is driven insane by the intensity of the experience, and after return to England he is put into an asylum for the insane. Losing his "soul" in the cavern of the North Pole, Hatteras never speaks another word. He spends the remainder of his days walking the streets surrounding the asylum with his faithful dog Duke. While mute and deaf to the world Hatteras' walks are not without a direction. As indicated by the last line "Captain Hatteras forever marches northward".
New America
New America (Nouvelle-Amerique) in map of Captain Hatteras' voyage
New America is the name given to a large Arctic island, a northward extension of Ellesmere Island, as discovered by Captain John Hatteras and his crew. Its features include, on the west coast, Victoria Bay, Cape Washington, Johnson Island, Bell Mountain, and Fort Providence, and at its northern point (87°5′N 118°35′W / 87.083°N 118.583°W / 87.083; -118.583), Altamont Harbour.
As with many of Verne's imaginative creations, his description of Arctic geography was based on scientific knowledge at the time the novel was written (1866) but foreshadowed future discoveries. Ellesmere Island had been re-discovered and named by Edward Inglefield in 1852 and further explored by Isaac Israel Hayes in 1860-61. Forty years after the novel's publication, in 1906, Robert Peary claimed to have sighted Crocker Land around 83° N, and in 1909, Frederick Cook sighted Bradley Land at 85° N, both at locations occupied by Verne's New America. Cook's choice of route may actually have been inspired by his reading of Verne.
The land is named by Captain Altamont, an American explorer, who is first to set foot on the land. In the novel as published, it is unclear whether New America is meant to be a territorial claim for the United States. As William Butcher points out, this would not be surprising, since Verne wrote about the US acquisition of Alaska in The Fur Country, and Lincoln Island is proposed as a US possession in The Mysterious Island. In fact, a deleted chapter, "John Bull and Jonathan," had Hatteras and Altamont dueling for the privilege of claiming the land for their respective countries.
In popular culture
In 1912, Georges Méliès made a film based on the story entitled Conquest of the Pole (French: Conquête du pôle).
1825年10月18日，一艘精心打造的西班牙军舰“亚洲号”，与另一艘配有8门大炮的双桅横帆船“康斯坦齐亚号”在格让岛解缆开航了。格让岛是马里亚那群岛的一部分。
船上的水手伙食差，待遇低。在开往西班牙的6个月的航程中，他们困顿不堪，正密谋策动一次哗变。
和“亚洲号”上的水手相比，“康斯坦齐亚号”上的水手生性更加顽劣乖张。它由船长唐·奥特华指挥。这个人是个有着铮铮铁骨的硬汉子，从来都不服输，但这艘船的航程却因屡次受阻而进程缓慢。显然，有人在故意捣乱。就在这个时候，唐·罗克指挥下的“亚洲号”也不得不入驶港口。
有天晚上，罗盘仪被打得稀巴烂，谁也弄不明白是怎么回事。又有一天晚上，前桅的左右支索像给人砍断了似的，轰然垮了下来，桅上的帆和索具全落到甲板上。再后来，舵绳在几次重要的机动操作中两度莫名其妙地绷断了。
The story was first published in July 1851 under the title "The First Ships of the Mexican Navy" ("L'Amérique du Sud. Etudes historiques. Les Premiers Navires de la Marine Mexicaine") in Museé des Familles with three illustrations by Eugène Forest and Alexandre de Bar. The revised version with six illustrations by Férat was published in 1876 together with the novel Michel Strogoff as a part of the Voyages Extraordinaires series. The first English translation by W. H. G. Kingston was published in 1876.
Plot outline
In 1825, off the islands of Guam on a passage from Spain, Lieutenant Martinez, and his associates plot a mutiny on board of two Spanish warships. Conspirators murder Captain Don Orteva, take command of the ships, and plan to sell them to the republican government in Mexico. But on arrival in Acapulco, Lieutenant Martinez and Jose[who?] are forced to embark on a cross-country trip to Mexico City that proves fatal to both.
船上的水手伙食差，待遇低。在开往西班牙的6个月的航程中，他们困顿不堪，正密谋策动一次哗变。
和“亚洲号”上的水手相比，“康斯坦齐亚号”上的水手生性更加顽劣乖张。它由船长唐·奥特华指挥。这个人是个有着铮铮铁骨的硬汉子，从来都不服输，但这艘船的航程却因屡次受阻而进程缓慢。显然，有人在故意捣乱。就在这个时候，唐·罗克指挥下的“亚洲号”也不得不入驶港口。
有天晚上，罗盘仪被打得稀巴烂，谁也弄不明白是怎么回事。又有一天晚上，前桅的左右支索像给人砍断了似的，轰然垮了下来，桅上的帆和索具全落到甲板上。再后来，舵绳在几次重要的机动操作中两度莫名其妙地绷断了。
The story was first published in July 1851 under the title "The First Ships of the Mexican Navy" ("L'Amérique du Sud. Etudes historiques. Les Premiers Navires de la Marine Mexicaine") in Museé des Familles with three illustrations by Eugène Forest and Alexandre de Bar. The revised version with six illustrations by Férat was published in 1876 together with the novel Michel Strogoff as a part of the Voyages Extraordinaires series. The first English translation by W. H. G. Kingston was published in 1876.
Plot outline
In 1825, off the islands of Guam on a passage from Spain, Lieutenant Martinez, and his associates plot a mutiny on board of two Spanish warships. Conspirators murder Captain Don Orteva, take command of the ships, and plan to sell them to the republican government in Mexico. But on arrival in Acapulco, Lieutenant Martinez and Jose[who?] are forced to embark on a cross-country trip to Mexico City that proves fatal to both.
“看来你们二位的这番争论是没个完了……，”米盖尔先生在吵得面红耳赤的两个人中间插了这么一句。
“是啊……没完了……，”费里佩先生说，“除非我向瓦里纳斯先生的观点投降……”
“我可是绝对不会屈从于费里佩先生的观点的！”瓦里纳斯先生反驳道。
这两个固执而博学的人已经互不相让地争吵了整整三个小时，话题是奥里诺科河，南美洲一条著名的河流，委内瑞拉的大动脉。两人争执不下的是它的支流问题：奥里诺科河最初的一段，若果真像新近出版的地图上所标画的那样是自东向西流，那么阿塔巴布河就不应称作它的支流而是它的正源；而如果是呈西南-东北方向的话，那么瓜维业雷河就是奥里诺科河的正源了。
“是啊……没完了……，”费里佩先生说，“除非我向瓦里纳斯先生的观点投降……”
“我可是绝对不会屈从于费里佩先生的观点的！”瓦里纳斯先生反驳道。
这两个固执而博学的人已经互不相让地争吵了整整三个小时，话题是奥里诺科河，南美洲一条著名的河流，委内瑞拉的大动脉。两人争执不下的是它的支流问题：奥里诺科河最初的一段，若果真像新近出版的地图上所标画的那样是自东向西流，那么阿塔巴布河就不应称作它的支流而是它的正源；而如果是呈西南-东北方向的话，那么瓜维业雷河就是奥里诺科河的正源了。
一八七六年八月五日，星期六。那天，挂着“渔夫之约”金字招牌的小酒店里挤满了吵吵嚷嚷的人群。歌声、叫声、碰杯声、鼓掌声、欢呼声，融汇成一片震耳的喧嚣。人们不时地齐声高呼“嗬呵”，这是德意志民族表示他们快乐到了极点的特有习惯。
小酒店位于迷人的齐格马林根小城的一隅，窗外便是多瑙河。齐格马林根是普鲁士领地霍恩佐伦的首府，距离中欧这条著名大河的源头很近。
“多瑙河协会”是河流两岸渔夫的国际性组织团体，会员们应门楣上那块漂亮的哥特体字招牌的邀请，聚集于此。无酒不成宴，因此，会员们斟满了所有的大啤酒杯及葡萄酒杯，痛饮香醇可口的慕尼黑啤酒和匈牙利葡萄酒。大家还抽着烟斗，长长的烟斗里不停地吐出呛鼻的烟雾，弄得整个大厅昏黑一片。但是，虽然会员们难以透过烟雾望见彼此，说话声却还是相互听得到的，除非是聋子。
手持钓竿的渔夫们在作业时是冷静且沉默的，而实际上，一放下活计，他们就成为世界上最喋喋不休的一群。一谈起他们的赫赫战功，他们的激动简直和猎手们不相伯仲。此话绝非虚言。
小酒店位于迷人的齐格马林根小城的一隅，窗外便是多瑙河。齐格马林根是普鲁士领地霍恩佐伦的首府，距离中欧这条著名大河的源头很近。
“多瑙河协会”是河流两岸渔夫的国际性组织团体，会员们应门楣上那块漂亮的哥特体字招牌的邀请，聚集于此。无酒不成宴，因此，会员们斟满了所有的大啤酒杯及葡萄酒杯，痛饮香醇可口的慕尼黑啤酒和匈牙利葡萄酒。大家还抽着烟斗，长长的烟斗里不停地吐出呛鼻的烟雾，弄得整个大厅昏黑一片。但是，虽然会员们难以透过烟雾望见彼此，说话声却还是相互听得到的，除非是聋子。
手持钓竿的渔夫们在作业时是冷静且沉默的，而实际上，一放下活计，他们就成为世界上最喋喋不休的一群。一谈起他们的赫赫战功，他们的激动简直和猎手们不相伯仲。此话绝非虚言。
《Phyjslyddqfdzxgasgzzqqehxgkfndrxujugiocytdxvksbxhhuypohdvyrymlhuhpuyd kjoxphetozsletnpmvffovpdpajxhyynojyggaymeqynfuqlnmvlyfgsuzmqiztlbqgyugsq eub vnrcredgruzblrmxyuhqhpzdrrgcrohepqxufivvrplphonthvddqfhqsntzhhhnfepmqkyu uex ktogzgkyuumfvijdqdpzjqsykrplxhxqrymvklohhhotozvdksppsuvjh．d．》
这是一份文件的最后一段，整份文件都是由这些奇怪的字母组合而成的。一个男人手持这份文件聚精会神地将其重读一遍之后，陷入了沉思。
这份文件共有百余行这样的文字，每个词语之间都没有间隙。文件看来已经写了有个把年头了，随着时间的流逝，写有这些难解符号的厚厚纸页已经开始泛黄了。
这是一份文件的最后一段，整份文件都是由这些奇怪的字母组合而成的。一个男人手持这份文件聚精会神地将其重读一遍之后，陷入了沉思。
这份文件共有百余行这样的文字，每个词语之间都没有间隙。文件看来已经写了有个把年头了，随着时间的流逝，写有这些难解符号的厚厚纸页已经开始泛黄了。
“你知道什么？……”
“我知道我在港口听到的……”
“听人说那条船来找……要把阿迪亚尔带走吗？”
“是啊……去突尼斯，在那儿他将受到审判……”
“要被定罪吗？”
“会定罪。”
“阿拉不会饶恕它，索阿尔！……不！阿拉不会饶恕它！”
“安静……”索阿尔激动地说着，并支起耳朵，好像察觉到在沙地上有脚步声。
他没站起来，他向一个遗弃的隐士墓的入口爬去，在那儿进行着上述交谈。天还亮着，太阳还迟迟未从靠近小沙洲湾海滨这一侧的沙丘上落下。在三月初，在北半球34纬度，黄昏并不长。绚丽的太阳由于斜着下落并没有接近地平线，似乎它要垂直落下，就像受重力规律支配的物体一样。
Translation history
Parts of the novel, under the title Captain Hardizan, were serialized in The American Weekly (the Sunday Supplement to the Boston American newspaper) from August 6, 1905 to August 13, 1905. The first complete English translation was published by Wesleyan University Press in 2001.
“我知道我在港口听到的……”
“听人说那条船来找……要把阿迪亚尔带走吗？”
“是啊……去突尼斯，在那儿他将受到审判……”
“要被定罪吗？”
“会定罪。”
“阿拉不会饶恕它，索阿尔！……不！阿拉不会饶恕它！”
“安静……”索阿尔激动地说着，并支起耳朵，好像察觉到在沙地上有脚步声。
他没站起来，他向一个遗弃的隐士墓的入口爬去，在那儿进行着上述交谈。天还亮着，太阳还迟迟未从靠近小沙洲湾海滨这一侧的沙丘上落下。在三月初，在北半球34纬度，黄昏并不长。绚丽的太阳由于斜着下落并没有接近地平线，似乎它要垂直落下，就像受重力规律支配的物体一样。
Translation history
Parts of the novel, under the title Captain Hardizan, were serialized in The American Weekly (the Sunday Supplement to the Boston American newspaper) from August 6, 1905 to August 13, 1905. The first complete English translation was published by Wesleyan University Press in 2001.
本故事的主人公在第一章中并未与读者见面。
当两个人在塞特车站下车时——他们是从巴黎乘火车来到这个濒临地中海的城市的——马塞尔·罗南对让·塔高纳说：
“在远洋轮出发之前，我们去做些什么呢？”
“什么也做不了。”让·塔高纳回答说。
“据《旅游指南》一书记载，塞特城古迹不多，可是却很奇特。这个城市的繁荣是从建立港口开始的。这个港口也是路易十四时代开凿的浪克多运河的终点。”
当两个人在塞特车站下车时——他们是从巴黎乘火车来到这个濒临地中海的城市的——马塞尔·罗南对让·塔高纳说：
“在远洋轮出发之前，我们去做些什么呢？”
“什么也做不了。”让·塔高纳回答说。
“据《旅游指南》一书记载，塞特城古迹不多，可是却很奇特。这个城市的繁荣是从建立港口开始的。这个港口也是路易十四时代开凿的浪克多运河的终点。”
爱尔兰面积有两千万英亩，大约合一千万公顷，由一位副国王统治。副国王也称总督，是受大不列颠君主委任，并配备一个私人顾问团。爱尔兰分四个省：东部伦斯特省、南部芒斯特省、西部康诺特省、北部阿尔斯特省。
据历史学家称，从前联合王国是一个完整的岛国；现在却一分为二，彼此精神上的抵牾要超过自然的隔阂。从建国之初，爱尔兰人就是法国人的朋友，英国人的对头。
据历史学家称，从前联合王国是一个完整的岛国；现在却一分为二，彼此精神上的抵牾要超过自然的隔阂。从建国之初，爱尔兰人就是法国人的朋友，英国人的对头。
这桩大胆的抢劫案，引起人们的普遍兴趣，如此的犯罪行为是不多见的。这就是有名的“中央银行案件”。
抢劫案发生在坐落于伦敦商场附近的中央银行德克办事处。办事处的经理那时是路易斯·罗伯特·巴克斯顿先生。
这个办事处设在一间用橡木柜台隔成不相等的两部分的大厅里。进门靠左手，在栅栏后面是出纳处，这栅栏又有一扇铁栅门与营业员办公的地方相通。长橡木柜台右边尽头有一扇转门，这是由顾客排队到营业厅的通路。办事处经理的办公室，则在营业厅的深处。一条走廊把营业厅和这幢大楼的公共前厅连接起来。
前厅的一头通过看门人的住房的门口；另一头，在主楼梯旁边，有双扇玻璃门通往地下室和后楼梯。
这场神秘的抢劫案，就是在这么个环境中发生的。
抢劫案发生在坐落于伦敦商场附近的中央银行德克办事处。办事处的经理那时是路易斯·罗伯特·巴克斯顿先生。
这个办事处设在一间用橡木柜台隔成不相等的两部分的大厅里。进门靠左手，在栅栏后面是出纳处，这栅栏又有一扇铁栅门与营业员办公的地方相通。长橡木柜台右边尽头有一扇转门，这是由顾客排队到营业厅的通路。办事处经理的办公室，则在营业厅的深处。一条走廊把营业厅和这幢大楼的公共前厅连接起来。
前厅的一头通过看门人的住房的门口；另一头，在主楼梯旁边，有双扇玻璃门通往地下室和后楼梯。
这场神秘的抢劫案，就是在这么个环境中发生的。
“获得第一名的是路易·克洛迪荣和罗杰·欣斯达尔。”朱利安·阿德校长声音洪亮地宣布道。
校长话音一落，场上响起了欢迎考试获得并列第一名的两位优胜者的喊声和掌声。
场上平静下来以后，校长站在安的列斯中学大操场中央的讲台上，名单举到眼前，继续宣布。
The novel has not been translated to English as of 2009.
Plot summary
Antilian School is a renowned London college, which hosts only young people born in the Caribbean. Nine of its students are to be awarded travel grants offered by a wealthy Barbados man.
Harry Markel, (ex-captain become pirate) has been captured and transferred to England, he escaped with his accomplices and seized the Alert, a three-masted leaving, after having massacred the captain and crew. It is precisely on that ship that just embarking winners, accompanied by their mentor Horatio Patterson, the bursar of the school.
The long voyage across the Atlantic starts and Markel, who has assumed the identity of the murdered officer, prepares to kill its passengers. But he learns that they must receive a large sum of money from the hands of their benefactor upon their arrival in Barbados. By greed, he resigns himself to save the college temporarily.
On stops in stops, they will visit the islands where they were born, receiving a warm welcome from their parents and their friends. The trip in the archipelago is a delight, but it may end tragically. Indeed, when Markel became convinced that young people are in possession of the prize offered by Mrs. Seymour, he is preparing to commit his crime.
A sailor named Will Mitz, which took place on board the Alert on the recommendation of Mrs. Seymour, surprises the criminal plan of the false captain. Taking advantage of the night, he attempts an escape with the students, but fails, then takes command of the ship after locking up the pirates. The pirates experience a horrible end, having accidentally caused a fire that will sink the vessel.
Mitz and his proteges succeed in escaping in the boat's demise and live through difficult times before being rescued by a steamer and are repatriated to Britain. Residents gather when their school for another busy year after the trip as exciting as eventful.
校长话音一落，场上响起了欢迎考试获得并列第一名的两位优胜者的喊声和掌声。
场上平静下来以后，校长站在安的列斯中学大操场中央的讲台上，名单举到眼前，继续宣布。
The novel has not been translated to English as of 2009.
Plot summary
Antilian School is a renowned London college, which hosts only young people born in the Caribbean. Nine of its students are to be awarded travel grants offered by a wealthy Barbados man.
Harry Markel, (ex-captain become pirate) has been captured and transferred to England, he escaped with his accomplices and seized the Alert, a three-masted leaving, after having massacred the captain and crew. It is precisely on that ship that just embarking winners, accompanied by their mentor Horatio Patterson, the bursar of the school.
The long voyage across the Atlantic starts and Markel, who has assumed the identity of the murdered officer, prepares to kill its passengers. But he learns that they must receive a large sum of money from the hands of their benefactor upon their arrival in Barbados. By greed, he resigns himself to save the college temporarily.
On stops in stops, they will visit the islands where they were born, receiving a warm welcome from their parents and their friends. The trip in the archipelago is a delight, but it may end tragically. Indeed, when Markel became convinced that young people are in possession of the prize offered by Mrs. Seymour, he is preparing to commit his crime.
A sailor named Will Mitz, which took place on board the Alert on the recommendation of Mrs. Seymour, surprises the criminal plan of the false captain. Taking advantage of the night, he attempts an escape with the students, but fails, then takes command of the ship after locking up the pirates. The pirates experience a horrible end, having accidentally caused a fire that will sink the vessel.
Mitz and his proteges succeed in escaping in the boat's demise and live through difficult times before being rescued by a steamer and are repatriated to Britain. Residents gather when their school for another busy year after the trip as exciting as eventful.
一位无名船长为搜寻一座无名小岛，正驾着无标名的航船，行驶在不知晓的海洋上。
1831年9月9日，清晨6时许，船长离舱登上了尾船楼板。
东方欲晓，准确地说，圆盘般的太阳正缓缓地探头欲出，但尚未冲出地平线。长长地发散铺开的光束爱抚地拍打着海面，在晨风的吹拂下，大海上荡起了轮轮涟漪。
经过一个宁静的夜，迎来的白天将会是一个大好的艳阳天，这是末伏后的九月难得的天气。
Publication history
* 1895, UK, London: Sampson Low, 319 pp., English translation
1831年9月9日，清晨6时许，船长离舱登上了尾船楼板。
东方欲晓，准确地说，圆盘般的太阳正缓缓地探头欲出，但尚未冲出地平线。长长地发散铺开的光束爱抚地拍打着海面，在晨风的吹拂下，大海上荡起了轮轮涟漪。
经过一个宁静的夜，迎来的白天将会是一个大好的艳阳天，这是末伏后的九月难得的天气。
Publication history
* 1895, UK, London: Sampson Low, 319 pp., English translation
１８６４年７月２６日，东北风呼呼地叫，一艘典雅而华丽的游船使足了马力，在北爱尔兰与苏格兰之间的北海峡海面上航行。英国国旗在船尾桅杆的斜竿上飘动，大桅顶上垂挂着一面小蓝旗，旗上有金线绣成的“E．G．”两个字母（是船主姓名（Edward＆Glenarvan（爱德华·哥利纳帆）这两个字的第一个字母），字的上面还有个公爵冕冠标记。这艘游船叫邓肯号，它属爱德华·哥利纳帆爵士所有。爵士是英国贵族院苏格兰十二元老之一，同时是驰名英国的皇家泰晤士河游船会最出色的会员。
哥利纳帆爵士和他年轻的妻子海伦夫人，以及他的一个表兄麦克那布斯少校都在船上。
Plot summary
The book tells the story of the quest for Captain Grant of the Britannia. After finding a bottle cast into the ocean by the captain himself after the Britannia is shipwrecked, Lord and Lady Glenarvan of Scotland contact Mary and Robert, the young daughter and son of Captain Grant, through an announcement in a newspaper. Moved by the children's condition, Lord and Lady Glenarvan decide to launch a rescue expedition. The main difficulty is that the coordinates of the wreckage are mostly erased, and only the latitude (37 degrees) is known; thus, the expedition would have to circumnavigate the 37th parallel south. Remaining clues consist of a few words in three languages. They are re-interpreted several times throughout the novel to make various destinations seem likely.
Lord Glenarvan makes it his quest to find Grant; together with his wife, Grant's children and the crew of his yacht the Duncan they set off for South America. An unexpected passenger in the form of French geographer Jacques Paganel (he missed his steamer to India by accidentally boarding on the Duncan) joins the search. They explore Patagonia, Tristan da Cunha Island, Amsterdam Island, and Australia (a pretext to describe the flora, fauna, and geography of numerous places to the targeted audience).
There, they find a former quarter-master of the Britannia, Ayrton, who proposes to lead them to the site of the wreckage. However, Ayrton is a traitor, who was not present during the loss of the Britannia, but was abandoned in Australia after a failed attempt to seize control of the ship to practice piracy. He tries to take control of the Duncan, but out of sheer luck, this attempt also fails. However the Glenarvans, the Grant children, Paganel and some sailors are left in Australia, and mistakenly believing that the Duncan is lost, they sail to Auckland, New Zealand, from where they want to come back to Europe. When their ship is wrecked south of Auckland on the New Zealand coast, they are captured by a Māori tribe, but luckily manage to escape and board a ship that they discover, with their greatest surprise, to be the Duncan.
Ayrton, made a prisoner, offers to trade his knowledge of Captain Grant in exchange for being abandoned on a desert island instead of being surrendered to the British authorities. The Duncan sets sail for the Tabor Island, which, out of sheer luck, turns out to be Captain Grant's shelter. They leave Ayrton in his place to live among the beasts and regain his humanity.
Ayrton reappears in Verne's later novel, L'Île mystérieuse (The Mysterious Island, 1874).
Film, TV, or theatrical adaptations
* 1936 - Дети капитана Гранта (Deti kapitana Granta), Soviet Union, directed by Vladimir Vajnshtok and starring Nikolai Cherkasov, film score composed by Isaak Dunayevsky. The film was released in USA as Captain Grant's Children. (see Deti kapitana Granta at the Internet Movie Database).
* 1962 - In Search of the Castaways, United States, directed by Robert Stevenson and starring Maurice Chevalier, Hayley Mills, and George Sanders. Songs by the Sherman Brothers were: "Castaway", "Enjoy It!", "Let's Climb", "Merci Beaucoup". (see In Search of the Castaways at the Internet Movie Database).
* 1985 - В поисках капитана Гранта (V poiskah kapitana Granta, In Search of Captain Grant, "Децата на капитан Грант"), Bulgaria - Soviet Union, TV mini-series directed by Stanislav Govorukhin starring Nikolai Yeryomenko, Lembit Ulfsak, Aleksandr Abdulov, Kosta Tsonev, Anya Pencheva. (see V poiskah kapitana Granta at the Internet Movie Database)
* Los sobrinos del Capitán Grant ("Captain Grant's nephews") is an 1877 Spanish comic zarzuela (operetta) by Miguel Ramos Carrión and Manuel Fernández Caballero.
哥利纳帆爵士和他年轻的妻子海伦夫人，以及他的一个表兄麦克那布斯少校都在船上。
Plot summary
The book tells the story of the quest for Captain Grant of the Britannia. After finding a bottle cast into the ocean by the captain himself after the Britannia is shipwrecked, Lord and Lady Glenarvan of Scotland contact Mary and Robert, the young daughter and son of Captain Grant, through an announcement in a newspaper. Moved by the children's condition, Lord and Lady Glenarvan decide to launch a rescue expedition. The main difficulty is that the coordinates of the wreckage are mostly erased, and only the latitude (37 degrees) is known; thus, the expedition would have to circumnavigate the 37th parallel south. Remaining clues consist of a few words in three languages. They are re-interpreted several times throughout the novel to make various destinations seem likely.
Lord Glenarvan makes it his quest to find Grant; together with his wife, Grant's children and the crew of his yacht the Duncan they set off for South America. An unexpected passenger in the form of French geographer Jacques Paganel (he missed his steamer to India by accidentally boarding on the Duncan) joins the search. They explore Patagonia, Tristan da Cunha Island, Amsterdam Island, and Australia (a pretext to describe the flora, fauna, and geography of numerous places to the targeted audience).
There, they find a former quarter-master of the Britannia, Ayrton, who proposes to lead them to the site of the wreckage. However, Ayrton is a traitor, who was not present during the loss of the Britannia, but was abandoned in Australia after a failed attempt to seize control of the ship to practice piracy. He tries to take control of the Duncan, but out of sheer luck, this attempt also fails. However the Glenarvans, the Grant children, Paganel and some sailors are left in Australia, and mistakenly believing that the Duncan is lost, they sail to Auckland, New Zealand, from where they want to come back to Europe. When their ship is wrecked south of Auckland on the New Zealand coast, they are captured by a Māori tribe, but luckily manage to escape and board a ship that they discover, with their greatest surprise, to be the Duncan.
Ayrton, made a prisoner, offers to trade his knowledge of Captain Grant in exchange for being abandoned on a desert island instead of being surrendered to the British authorities. The Duncan sets sail for the Tabor Island, which, out of sheer luck, turns out to be Captain Grant's shelter. They leave Ayrton in his place to live among the beasts and regain his humanity.
Ayrton reappears in Verne's later novel, L'Île mystérieuse (The Mysterious Island, 1874).
Film, TV, or theatrical adaptations
* 1936 - Дети капитана Гранта (Deti kapitana Granta), Soviet Union, directed by Vladimir Vajnshtok and starring Nikolai Cherkasov, film score composed by Isaak Dunayevsky. The film was released in USA as Captain Grant's Children. (see Deti kapitana Granta at the Internet Movie Database).
* 1962 - In Search of the Castaways, United States, directed by Robert Stevenson and starring Maurice Chevalier, Hayley Mills, and George Sanders. Songs by the Sherman Brothers were: "Castaway", "Enjoy It!", "Let's Climb", "Merci Beaucoup". (see In Search of the Castaways at the Internet Movie Database).
* 1985 - В поисках капитана Гранта (V poiskah kapitana Granta, In Search of Captain Grant, "Децата на капитан Грант"), Bulgaria - Soviet Union, TV mini-series directed by Stanislav Govorukhin starring Nikolai Yeryomenko, Lembit Ulfsak, Aleksandr Abdulov, Kosta Tsonev, Anya Pencheva. (see V poiskah kapitana Granta at the Internet Movie Database)
* Los sobrinos del Capitán Grant ("Captain Grant's nephews") is an 1877 Spanish comic zarzuela (operetta) by Miguel Ramos Carrión and Manuel Fernández Caballero.
依利里的首都——特里埃斯特分为迥异的两部分：富饶的新城，德雷齐安，正临着港湾，便于开发海底资源；贫困的旧城，破败零乱，被夹峙在科尔索河与卡斯特山地之间。科尔索河是两城的界河。卡斯特山顶，矗立着一座城堡，景色格外秀美。
特里埃斯特港外延伸着桑·卡洛大堤，常有商船在此停靠。岸上游荡着一群群无家可归的人，有时候数目多得惊人。他们的上衣、长裤、背心或外套都没有口袋，因为他们从来就没有，可能永远也不会有什么东西可装的。
Overview
Trieste, 1867. Two petty criminals, Sarcany and Zirone, intercept a carrier pigeon. They find a ciphered message attached to its leg and uncover a plot to liberate Hungary from Habsburg-Austrian rule. The two meet with Silas Toronthal, a corrupt banker, and form a plan to deliver the conspirators to the police in exchange for a rich reward. The three Hungarian conspirators, Count Mathias Sandorf, Stephen Bathory and Ladislas Zathmar (in their Hungarian form: Sándor Mátyás, Báthory István and Szatmári László, respectively) are arrested and sentenced to death. Only Sandorf can escape.
Fifteen years later, the renowned physician Dr. Antekirtt (actually Sandorf) sets out to avenge his friends. Enlisting the aid of two French acrobats, Pescade and Matifou, he scours the Mediterranean in search of those who planned the betrayal. Rich beyond all imagination, wielding great power and master of an island fortress filled with advanced weaponry, Dr. Antekirtt will not rest until justice is done.
The Wanderer's Tale: An Adventure Subgenre
In the generation after Dumas, Jules Verne wrote a number of Wanderer adventures. Three of the most notable, Michael Strogoff, the Steam House (La Maison à vapeur) and Mathias Sandorf, are set in three of Europe's great Empires: the Russian, the British (in India,) and the Austrian. Their plots and themes have a good deal in common, as Jean Yves Tadie points out. Each one is about the empire's political troubles, each features a pursuer who is himself pursued, each has a trio of characters at its centre and each grants minor importance (compared with other Verne books) to machinery.
(From Seven Types of Adventure: An Eniology of Major Genre by Martin Green Penn State Press).
Background on the novel
Verne claimed that Sandorf was modeled on his publisher. Like Hetzel, a former exile, Sandorf has fervent patriotism and a high moral sense. Dr Antekirtt is a mixture of Hetzel and Bixio, one of the publisher's friends. Others see similarities with Hungarian freedom fighter Lajos Kossuth and Austrian prince Louis Salvator.
The action moves from Trieste down the Adriatic coast, to Sicily and the shores of North Africa. "I wish my readers to learn everything they should know about the Mediterranean," Verne wrote Hetzel," which is why the action transports them to twenty different places" (Simon Vierne, Jules Verne, Paris Ballard 1986). Several of the settings come from Verne's own travels, a rescue during a storm off Malta and visits to Catania and Etna.
Verne researched the Italian landscape by rereading some of Stendhal's works notably Promenades in Rome and The Charterhourse of Parma. Verne may have first heard about the Foiba beneath Pisino castle in Charles Yriarte’s works Les Bords de l'Adriatique (The Ports of the Adriatic) - (Hachette, Paris 1878) and Trieste e l'Istria (Trieste and Istria) - (Hachette, Paris 1875). Yriatre described the old castle as well as his trip down into the gorge. He also mentioned an experiment by a young nobleman, Count Esdorff, to find the end of the underground river. Unfortunately the count's boat never made it out of the underground cave.
Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
Mathias Sandorf was performed as a five act play in Paris in the 1880s. It even played the Boston theatre in the fall of 1888.
There have also been three screen adaptations of Mathias Sandorf. The first was made in 1921 and directed by Henri Fescourt. It starred Yvette Andréyor, Romuald Joube, Jean Toulout. During the 20s Fescourt was one of the most successful directors working for Cineroman, and Mathias Sandorf, Les Gransa and Mandarin were among his most popular works.
In in 1963 Georges Lampin directed another version and starring Louis Jourdan, Francisco Rabal, Renaud Mary, Serena Vergano. The most recent version was a TV miniseries made for French television in 1979. Directed by Jean-Pierre Decourt it starred the hungarian Istvan Bujtor as Mathias Sandorf, Ivan Desny as Zathmar, Amadeus August, Claude Giraud, Monika Peitsch, Sissy Höfferer, Jacques Breuer.
特里埃斯特港外延伸着桑·卡洛大堤，常有商船在此停靠。岸上游荡着一群群无家可归的人，有时候数目多得惊人。他们的上衣、长裤、背心或外套都没有口袋，因为他们从来就没有，可能永远也不会有什么东西可装的。
Overview
Trieste, 1867. Two petty criminals, Sarcany and Zirone, intercept a carrier pigeon. They find a ciphered message attached to its leg and uncover a plot to liberate Hungary from Habsburg-Austrian rule. The two meet with Silas Toronthal, a corrupt banker, and form a plan to deliver the conspirators to the police in exchange for a rich reward. The three Hungarian conspirators, Count Mathias Sandorf, Stephen Bathory and Ladislas Zathmar (in their Hungarian form: Sándor Mátyás, Báthory István and Szatmári László, respectively) are arrested and sentenced to death. Only Sandorf can escape.
Fifteen years later, the renowned physician Dr. Antekirtt (actually Sandorf) sets out to avenge his friends. Enlisting the aid of two French acrobats, Pescade and Matifou, he scours the Mediterranean in search of those who planned the betrayal. Rich beyond all imagination, wielding great power and master of an island fortress filled with advanced weaponry, Dr. Antekirtt will not rest until justice is done.
The Wanderer's Tale: An Adventure Subgenre
In the generation after Dumas, Jules Verne wrote a number of Wanderer adventures. Three of the most notable, Michael Strogoff, the Steam House (La Maison à vapeur) and Mathias Sandorf, are set in three of Europe's great Empires: the Russian, the British (in India,) and the Austrian. Their plots and themes have a good deal in common, as Jean Yves Tadie points out. Each one is about the empire's political troubles, each features a pursuer who is himself pursued, each has a trio of characters at its centre and each grants minor importance (compared with other Verne books) to machinery.
(From Seven Types of Adventure: An Eniology of Major Genre by Martin Green Penn State Press).
Background on the novel
Verne claimed that Sandorf was modeled on his publisher. Like Hetzel, a former exile, Sandorf has fervent patriotism and a high moral sense. Dr Antekirtt is a mixture of Hetzel and Bixio, one of the publisher's friends. Others see similarities with Hungarian freedom fighter Lajos Kossuth and Austrian prince Louis Salvator.
The action moves from Trieste down the Adriatic coast, to Sicily and the shores of North Africa. "I wish my readers to learn everything they should know about the Mediterranean," Verne wrote Hetzel," which is why the action transports them to twenty different places" (Simon Vierne, Jules Verne, Paris Ballard 1986). Several of the settings come from Verne's own travels, a rescue during a storm off Malta and visits to Catania and Etna.
Verne researched the Italian landscape by rereading some of Stendhal's works notably Promenades in Rome and The Charterhourse of Parma. Verne may have first heard about the Foiba beneath Pisino castle in Charles Yriarte’s works Les Bords de l'Adriatique (The Ports of the Adriatic) - (Hachette, Paris 1878) and Trieste e l'Istria (Trieste and Istria) - (Hachette, Paris 1875). Yriatre described the old castle as well as his trip down into the gorge. He also mentioned an experiment by a young nobleman, Count Esdorff, to find the end of the underground river. Unfortunately the count's boat never made it out of the underground cave.
Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
Mathias Sandorf was performed as a five act play in Paris in the 1880s. It even played the Boston theatre in the fall of 1888.
There have also been three screen adaptations of Mathias Sandorf. The first was made in 1921 and directed by Henri Fescourt. It starred Yvette Andréyor, Romuald Joube, Jean Toulout. During the 20s Fescourt was one of the most successful directors working for Cineroman, and Mathias Sandorf, Les Gransa and Mandarin were among his most popular works.
In in 1963 Georges Lampin directed another version and starring Louis Jourdan, Francisco Rabal, Renaud Mary, Serena Vergano. The most recent version was a TV miniseries made for French television in 1979. Directed by Jean-Pierre Decourt it starred the hungarian Istvan Bujtor as Mathias Sandorf, Ivan Desny as Zathmar, Amadeus August, Claude Giraud, Monika Peitsch, Sissy Höfferer, Jacques Breuer.
《气球上的五星期》是法国著名作家儒勒·凡尔纳的第一部科幻长篇小说，也是他的成名作。讲的是十九世纪弗格森博士和他的朋友肯尼迪、他的仆人乔一起乘坐热气球，从非洲南部的桑给巴尔出发，穿越了非洲大陆，经历了千难万险，终于降落在塞内加尔河，从而完成了前人未曾完成的探险行程。
《气球上的五星期》-内容简介
《气球上的五星期》是法国著名作家儒勒·凡尔纳的第一部科幻长篇小说，也是他的成名作。十九世纪上半叶，许多探险家、地理学家、旅行家对非洲这片广袤的大陆进行了艰辛的探险，留下了许多珍贵的资料和地图。但是由于自然的障碍和人为的困难，都无法深入非洲内地。英国探险旅行家弗格森博士决定针对前人探险的成果，对非洲地区的未知地带再次进行考察。他想出个大胆的计划，乘气球横越非洲。旅行的一切准备工作做好了，费尔久逊博士带着他的朋友凯乃第和仆人乔，从非洲东岸桑给巴尔出发，经过五星期劳累和惊险的生活，终于横贯非洲大陆到达非洲西岸法国在塞内加尔河的属地，从而完成了前人未竞的探险行程。
书中对非洲大陆的风景描写十分生动细腻，高山大海、沼泽洼地、沙漠河流，还有火山等热带地貌在小说中全部都有所涉及；猴面包树、无花果树、金合欢树、罗望子树等热带植物真是千奇百怪；大象、河马、鳄鱼、秃鹫、豹子、鬣狗等热带动物应有尽有，还有与野人、猴子斗智斗勇的惊心动魄的场面，这些都不禁使人浮想联翩，产生去非洲冒险旅行的冲动。
《气球上的五星期》-后记
《气球上的五星期》热气球
热气球是他们乘坐的交通工具，即使对今天的中国读者来说，它也是一个比较陌生的事物，而书中主人公早在19世纪上半叶已经想到了用它来当做探险的工具，更有趣的是，作者连气球的复杂结构也通过主人公详细地介绍给了读者，可见该书作者广博的知识和极其丰富的想像力。新奇的交通工具加上美丽的风景增添了该书的趣味性。
书中也体现了人与人之间的友谊和关怀：三位旅行家曾经不顾生命危险救了一位法国传教士；当气球快要坠入乍得湖的时候，为了让气球再次升起来，乔奋不顾身地跳入湖中，挽救了两位同伴的性命；而当乔在撒哈拉大沙漠逃命的时候，肯尼迪的一枪也将乔从野蛮民族那里挽救了回来。这种互爱互助的精神在当今个性张扬的时代是非常值得我们珍惜和发扬的。
《气球上的五星期》创作完后，凡尔纳先后给十六家出版社投稿，然而却无人欣赏他的作品，他愤然将书稿投入火中，被妻子及时抢救了出来，书稿送入第十七家出版社后才被接受。赏识此书的编辑叫赫茨尔，从此凡尔纳遇到了知音，与之结下终身友谊。这部小说充分展现了凡尔纳高超的写作技巧、极其丰富的知识和收集资料的非凡能力。
It is the first Verne novel in which he perfected the "ingredients" of his later work, skillfully mixing a plot full of adventure and twists that hold the reader's interest with passages of technical, geographic, and historic description. The book gives readers a glimpse of the exploration of Africa, which was still not completely known to Europeans of the time, with explorers traveling all over the continent in search of its secrets.
Public interest in fanciful tales of African exploration was at its height, and the book was an instant hit; it made Verne financially independent and got him a contract with Jules Hetzel's publishing house, which put out several dozen more works of his for over forty years afterward.
Plot summary
A scholar, Dr. Samuel Ferguson, accompanied by his manservant Joe and his friend Richard "Dick" Kennedy, sets out to travel across the African continent — still not fully explored — with the help of a hot-air balloon filled with hydrogen. He has invented a mechanism that, by eliminating the need to release gas or throw ballast overboard to control his altitude, allows very long trips to be taken. This voyage is meant to link together the voyages of Sir Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke in East Africa with those of Heinrich Barth in the regions of the Sahara and Chad. The trip begins in Zanzibar on the east coast, and passes across Lake Victoria, Lake Chad, Agadez, Timbuktu, Djenné and Ségou to St Louis in modern day Senegal on the west coast. The book describes the unknown interior of Africa near modern day Central African Republic as a desert, when it is actually savanna.
Map of the trip described in the book from the east to the west coast of Africa.
A good deal of the initial exploration is to focus on the finding of the source of the Nile, an event that occurs in chapter 18 (out of 43). The second leg is to link up the other explorers. There are numerous scenes of adventure, composed of either a conflict with a native or a conflict with the environment. Some examples include:
* Rescuing of a missionary from a tribe that was preparing to sacrifice him.
* Running out of water while stranded, windless, "over" the Sahara.
* An attack on the balloon by condors, leading to a dramatic action as Joe leaps out of the balloon.
* The actions taken to rescue Joe later.
* Narrowly escaping the remnants of a militant army as the balloon dwindles to nothingness with the loss of hydrogen.
In all these adventures, the protagonists overcome by continued perseverance more than anything else. The novel is filled with coincidental moments where trouble is avoided because wind catches up at just the right time, or the characters look in just the right direction. There are frequent references to a higher power watching out for them, as tidy an explanation as any.
The balloon itself ultimately fails before the end, but makes it far enough across to get the protagonists to friendly lands, and eventually back to England, therefore succeeding in the expedition. The story abruptly ends after the African trip, with only a brief synopsis of what follows.
Themes of the novel
The novel has several themes and motifs central to European exploration: scientific achievement, the otherworldliness of the region explored, and the question of how much shared humanity there is between the explorers and the natives. The balloon is a straight allegory of scientific achievement overcoming the wild, as well as overcoming the limitations of the Western world. Most of the Africans are contrasted as being superstitious and quick to worship any object cast down from the balloon, though Verne does not generalize this to all religion. The treatment of animals is in line with the image of the Great White Hunter. This is most obvious by Dick's statement, upon seeing a herd of elephants, "Oh, what magnificent elephants! Is there no way to get a little shooting?" These aspects are both tied into the explorers being above, quite literally in this novel, the region they are traveling across, and Verne makes them worthy of their status through their technological achievements.
As one scene where the explorers confuse baboons for black men illustrates, Africa is approached as an alien place. The explorers do not, and maybe cannot, fully understand the people they are interacting with (or, as the case may be, avoiding). Only later in the novel do they comment on the similarities between themselves and the people they have flown over, when they hold that the Africans' ways of war are not one whit worse than white men's, only filthier. In most scenes, neither the Africans nor the explorers show much compassion for the other.
In Chapter 16, the Doctor equates Africa to the "Last Machine", which will serve as the place of human growth after the Americas are dry. His depiction is of an Africa tamed and cultivated over years to come.
Inconsistent scientific/technological reference
The description of the apparatus used to heat the hydrogen gas in the balloon is deeply flawed. Jules Verne states that it uses a powerful electric battery to electrolyze water into hydrogen and oxygen, and then burns resulting hydrogen in a blow-pipe. He also says that the apparatus weighs 700 pounds (including the battery) and it is able to process 25 gallons of water. This is physically impossible. Even using state-of-the-art 21st century batteries (e.g. lithium-ion batteries) and assuming zero losses, one needs over 4000 pounds of batteries to electrolyze that much water. This number should be increased by at least a factor of five if authentic mid-19th century batteries are to be used. It would have been far more realistic simply to electrolyze the water up front and to load a tank of compressed hydrogen onto the balloon (electrolysis of that quantity of water produces less than 25 pounds of hydrogen).
Further, it would have been more efficient to use the energy contained in the battery to heat the gas directly. Electrolysis of water is not 100% efficient. So some of the energy contained in the battery is wasted and the heat generated by burning the obtained hydrogen is less than the heat that could have been obtained by simply using a resistance connected to the battery. In fact, Verne implies that the described device is a perpetual motion machine, since he implies that greater energy can be obtained by electrolysis than could have been obtained from the battery directly: if this were true, then the obtained hydrogen could be used to boil water to create steam to power an electrical generator to create more electricity for the battery. This may have been a deliberate joke by Verne.
Though the novel goes into great detail with much of the calculations involving the lift power of the hydrogen balloon, and how to obtain the proper amount of volume through changes in temperature, there are gaps in the logic. The balloon rises up when heated, and lowers as it is allowed to cool. This pattern is used as numerous plot points and is shown to be a somewhat quick process of cooling. At night, however, there is little mention of them maintaining the temperature through the night. Another gap in the scientific logic is the lack of reference to the effect of atmospheric temperature on the balloon itself, though the temperature is referenced as affecting the heating coil.
And it would be very dangerous to light a fire in the nacelle under a balloon filled with hydrogen.
Further, in Chapter 41, the load carried is progressively reduced in order to allow the balloon to rise higher and higher. But in fact a single load reduction would have been sufficient, because at that point the lift of the balloon would have exceeded the weight and it would have continued to rise until the volume of gas was reduced. (The density of air decreases with increasing altitude, thus reducing the lift at constant balloon volume, but the balloon would expand proportionately, due to decreasing air pressure, thus maintaining constant total lift.)
In Chapter 26, it says the doctor takes the balloon up to five miles. Later, in Chapter 29, in order to get over Mount Mendif, the doctor "by means of a temperature increased to one hundred and eighty degrees, gave the balloon a fresh ascensional force of nearly sixteen hundred pounds, and it went up to an elevation of more than eight thousand feet" which is noted as being "the greatest height attained during the journey." If this is meant to imply that the doctor went eight thousand feet above Mount Mendif, at a height greater than five miles, Jules Verne would have greatly underestimated the drop in temperature and how much heat would have been required to keep the balloon at that height for any length of time.
At the time when the book was first written, lands to the north and northwest of Lake Victoria were still poorly known to Europeans. Jules Verne makes a few inaccurate predictions here, such as placing the source of the Nile river at 2°40′N (instead of 0°45′N); claiming that this source is just over 90 miles from of Gondokoro (the actual distance is closer to 300 miles); not mentioning Lake Albert at all (it was not discovered by Europeans until after the publication of the book). Much of the geography described further in the book is completely fictional. For example, coordinates given for the "desert oasis" in chapter 27 correspond to a location in a savanna region of southern Chad, less than twenty miles from a big river.
Similarities to later novels
Five Weeks has a handful of similarities to the novel Journey to the Center of the Earth. There is the same sort of conjecture from current scientific ideas and what Verne puts forth as the actual truth (though Five Weeks is far more successful, assuming there is any attempt at accuracy with Journey). The party of three characters is similarly divided into the Doctor, the doubtful companion who initially balks at the journey, and the servant who is quite able. In both novels, Purdey rifles are referenced. In both novels, there is an episode of despair categorized by thirst.
Also, neither novel deals directly with the French, but with (generally positive) stereotypes of other countries.
《气球上的五星期》-内容简介
《气球上的五星期》是法国著名作家儒勒·凡尔纳的第一部科幻长篇小说，也是他的成名作。十九世纪上半叶，许多探险家、地理学家、旅行家对非洲这片广袤的大陆进行了艰辛的探险，留下了许多珍贵的资料和地图。但是由于自然的障碍和人为的困难，都无法深入非洲内地。英国探险旅行家弗格森博士决定针对前人探险的成果，对非洲地区的未知地带再次进行考察。他想出个大胆的计划，乘气球横越非洲。旅行的一切准备工作做好了，费尔久逊博士带着他的朋友凯乃第和仆人乔，从非洲东岸桑给巴尔出发，经过五星期劳累和惊险的生活，终于横贯非洲大陆到达非洲西岸法国在塞内加尔河的属地，从而完成了前人未竞的探险行程。
书中对非洲大陆的风景描写十分生动细腻，高山大海、沼泽洼地、沙漠河流，还有火山等热带地貌在小说中全部都有所涉及；猴面包树、无花果树、金合欢树、罗望子树等热带植物真是千奇百怪；大象、河马、鳄鱼、秃鹫、豹子、鬣狗等热带动物应有尽有，还有与野人、猴子斗智斗勇的惊心动魄的场面，这些都不禁使人浮想联翩，产生去非洲冒险旅行的冲动。
《气球上的五星期》-后记
《气球上的五星期》热气球
热气球是他们乘坐的交通工具，即使对今天的中国读者来说，它也是一个比较陌生的事物，而书中主人公早在19世纪上半叶已经想到了用它来当做探险的工具，更有趣的是，作者连气球的复杂结构也通过主人公详细地介绍给了读者，可见该书作者广博的知识和极其丰富的想像力。新奇的交通工具加上美丽的风景增添了该书的趣味性。
书中也体现了人与人之间的友谊和关怀：三位旅行家曾经不顾生命危险救了一位法国传教士；当气球快要坠入乍得湖的时候，为了让气球再次升起来，乔奋不顾身地跳入湖中，挽救了两位同伴的性命；而当乔在撒哈拉大沙漠逃命的时候，肯尼迪的一枪也将乔从野蛮民族那里挽救了回来。这种互爱互助的精神在当今个性张扬的时代是非常值得我们珍惜和发扬的。
《气球上的五星期》创作完后，凡尔纳先后给十六家出版社投稿，然而却无人欣赏他的作品，他愤然将书稿投入火中，被妻子及时抢救了出来，书稿送入第十七家出版社后才被接受。赏识此书的编辑叫赫茨尔，从此凡尔纳遇到了知音，与之结下终身友谊。这部小说充分展现了凡尔纳高超的写作技巧、极其丰富的知识和收集资料的非凡能力。
It is the first Verne novel in which he perfected the "ingredients" of his later work, skillfully mixing a plot full of adventure and twists that hold the reader's interest with passages of technical, geographic, and historic description. The book gives readers a glimpse of the exploration of Africa, which was still not completely known to Europeans of the time, with explorers traveling all over the continent in search of its secrets.
Public interest in fanciful tales of African exploration was at its height, and the book was an instant hit; it made Verne financially independent and got him a contract with Jules Hetzel's publishing house, which put out several dozen more works of his for over forty years afterward.
Plot summary
A scholar, Dr. Samuel Ferguson, accompanied by his manservant Joe and his friend Richard "Dick" Kennedy, sets out to travel across the African continent — still not fully explored — with the help of a hot-air balloon filled with hydrogen. He has invented a mechanism that, by eliminating the need to release gas or throw ballast overboard to control his altitude, allows very long trips to be taken. This voyage is meant to link together the voyages of Sir Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke in East Africa with those of Heinrich Barth in the regions of the Sahara and Chad. The trip begins in Zanzibar on the east coast, and passes across Lake Victoria, Lake Chad, Agadez, Timbuktu, Djenné and Ségou to St Louis in modern day Senegal on the west coast. The book describes the unknown interior of Africa near modern day Central African Republic as a desert, when it is actually savanna.
Map of the trip described in the book from the east to the west coast of Africa.
A good deal of the initial exploration is to focus on the finding of the source of the Nile, an event that occurs in chapter 18 (out of 43). The second leg is to link up the other explorers. There are numerous scenes of adventure, composed of either a conflict with a native or a conflict with the environment. Some examples include:
* Rescuing of a missionary from a tribe that was preparing to sacrifice him.
* Running out of water while stranded, windless, "over" the Sahara.
* An attack on the balloon by condors, leading to a dramatic action as Joe leaps out of the balloon.
* The actions taken to rescue Joe later.
* Narrowly escaping the remnants of a militant army as the balloon dwindles to nothingness with the loss of hydrogen.
In all these adventures, the protagonists overcome by continued perseverance more than anything else. The novel is filled with coincidental moments where trouble is avoided because wind catches up at just the right time, or the characters look in just the right direction. There are frequent references to a higher power watching out for them, as tidy an explanation as any.
The balloon itself ultimately fails before the end, but makes it far enough across to get the protagonists to friendly lands, and eventually back to England, therefore succeeding in the expedition. The story abruptly ends after the African trip, with only a brief synopsis of what follows.
Themes of the novel
The novel has several themes and motifs central to European exploration: scientific achievement, the otherworldliness of the region explored, and the question of how much shared humanity there is between the explorers and the natives. The balloon is a straight allegory of scientific achievement overcoming the wild, as well as overcoming the limitations of the Western world. Most of the Africans are contrasted as being superstitious and quick to worship any object cast down from the balloon, though Verne does not generalize this to all religion. The treatment of animals is in line with the image of the Great White Hunter. This is most obvious by Dick's statement, upon seeing a herd of elephants, "Oh, what magnificent elephants! Is there no way to get a little shooting?" These aspects are both tied into the explorers being above, quite literally in this novel, the region they are traveling across, and Verne makes them worthy of their status through their technological achievements.
As one scene where the explorers confuse baboons for black men illustrates, Africa is approached as an alien place. The explorers do not, and maybe cannot, fully understand the people they are interacting with (or, as the case may be, avoiding). Only later in the novel do they comment on the similarities between themselves and the people they have flown over, when they hold that the Africans' ways of war are not one whit worse than white men's, only filthier. In most scenes, neither the Africans nor the explorers show much compassion for the other.
In Chapter 16, the Doctor equates Africa to the "Last Machine", which will serve as the place of human growth after the Americas are dry. His depiction is of an Africa tamed and cultivated over years to come.
Inconsistent scientific/technological reference
The description of the apparatus used to heat the hydrogen gas in the balloon is deeply flawed. Jules Verne states that it uses a powerful electric battery to electrolyze water into hydrogen and oxygen, and then burns resulting hydrogen in a blow-pipe. He also says that the apparatus weighs 700 pounds (including the battery) and it is able to process 25 gallons of water. This is physically impossible. Even using state-of-the-art 21st century batteries (e.g. lithium-ion batteries) and assuming zero losses, one needs over 4000 pounds of batteries to electrolyze that much water. This number should be increased by at least a factor of five if authentic mid-19th century batteries are to be used. It would have been far more realistic simply to electrolyze the water up front and to load a tank of compressed hydrogen onto the balloon (electrolysis of that quantity of water produces less than 25 pounds of hydrogen).
Further, it would have been more efficient to use the energy contained in the battery to heat the gas directly. Electrolysis of water is not 100% efficient. So some of the energy contained in the battery is wasted and the heat generated by burning the obtained hydrogen is less than the heat that could have been obtained by simply using a resistance connected to the battery. In fact, Verne implies that the described device is a perpetual motion machine, since he implies that greater energy can be obtained by electrolysis than could have been obtained from the battery directly: if this were true, then the obtained hydrogen could be used to boil water to create steam to power an electrical generator to create more electricity for the battery. This may have been a deliberate joke by Verne.
Though the novel goes into great detail with much of the calculations involving the lift power of the hydrogen balloon, and how to obtain the proper amount of volume through changes in temperature, there are gaps in the logic. The balloon rises up when heated, and lowers as it is allowed to cool. This pattern is used as numerous plot points and is shown to be a somewhat quick process of cooling. At night, however, there is little mention of them maintaining the temperature through the night. Another gap in the scientific logic is the lack of reference to the effect of atmospheric temperature on the balloon itself, though the temperature is referenced as affecting the heating coil.
And it would be very dangerous to light a fire in the nacelle under a balloon filled with hydrogen.
Further, in Chapter 41, the load carried is progressively reduced in order to allow the balloon to rise higher and higher. But in fact a single load reduction would have been sufficient, because at that point the lift of the balloon would have exceeded the weight and it would have continued to rise until the volume of gas was reduced. (The density of air decreases with increasing altitude, thus reducing the lift at constant balloon volume, but the balloon would expand proportionately, due to decreasing air pressure, thus maintaining constant total lift.)
In Chapter 26, it says the doctor takes the balloon up to five miles. Later, in Chapter 29, in order to get over Mount Mendif, the doctor "by means of a temperature increased to one hundred and eighty degrees, gave the balloon a fresh ascensional force of nearly sixteen hundred pounds, and it went up to an elevation of more than eight thousand feet" which is noted as being "the greatest height attained during the journey." If this is meant to imply that the doctor went eight thousand feet above Mount Mendif, at a height greater than five miles, Jules Verne would have greatly underestimated the drop in temperature and how much heat would have been required to keep the balloon at that height for any length of time.
At the time when the book was first written, lands to the north and northwest of Lake Victoria were still poorly known to Europeans. Jules Verne makes a few inaccurate predictions here, such as placing the source of the Nile river at 2°40′N (instead of 0°45′N); claiming that this source is just over 90 miles from of Gondokoro (the actual distance is closer to 300 miles); not mentioning Lake Albert at all (it was not discovered by Europeans until after the publication of the book). Much of the geography described further in the book is completely fictional. For example, coordinates given for the "desert oasis" in chapter 27 correspond to a location in a savanna region of southern Chad, less than twenty miles from a big river.
Similarities to later novels
Five Weeks has a handful of similarities to the novel Journey to the Center of the Earth. There is the same sort of conjecture from current scientific ideas and what Verne puts forth as the actual truth (though Five Weeks is far more successful, assuming there is any attempt at accuracy with Journey). The party of three characters is similarly divided into the Doctor, the doubtful companion who initially balks at the journey, and the servant who is quite able. In both novels, Purdey rifles are referenced. In both novels, there is an episode of despair categorized by thirst.
Also, neither novel deals directly with the French, but with (generally positive) stereotypes of other countries.
“陛下，又来了一份电报。”
“从哪儿来的？”
“从托木斯克。”
“这座城市以远的电线都被切断了吗？”
“从昨天起都被切断了。”
“将军，每隔一小时向托木斯克发一份电报，并派人向我汇报。”
“是，陛下，”基索夫将军答道。
这番对话发生在凌晨两点钟，正是在新宫举行的晚会异彩纷呈的时刻。
“从哪儿来的？”
“从托木斯克。”
“这座城市以远的电线都被切断了吗？”
“从昨天起都被切断了。”
“将军，每隔一小时向托木斯克发一份电报，并派人向我汇报。”
“是，陛下，”基索夫将军答道。
这番对话发生在凌晨两点钟，正是在新宫举行的晚会异彩纷呈的时刻。
为了获得更多的毛皮，哈得孙湾皮毛公司派遣了一个小分队，到北纬70度以北的美洲大陆边缘地带创建一个猎取毛皮兽的新据点。孰料，小分队误把据点建在了大陆边缘的一块巨大浮冰上。在突如其来的一场地震中，浮冰与大陆脱离，变成了一座浮岛，载着小分队随海水漂移。由于阳光和暖流的双重作用，浮冰渐渐融化，浮岛越来越小，岛上的人员面临灭顶之灾。绝境中，全体队员团结一致，发挥巨大的勇气和聪明才智，终于使浮冰在即将全部融化前靠上了一个小岛，全体队员得以死里逃生。书中以读者展现了充满神秘色彩的极地风貌，使读者身临其境地领略了极地的壮丽与奇特。