我父親原來指望我學法律，但是我卻一心想去航海。有一天，我去赫爾，我的一位同伴正要坐他父親的船到倫敦去，再沒有什麽比這更讓我動心了，我必須跟他而去——這是1651年的8月，當時我十九歲。
船剛駛出海口，便碰到了可怕的風浪，使我感到全身說不出的難過，心裏十分恐怖。我在痛苦的心情中發了誓，假如上帝在這次航行中留下我的命，我在登上陸地後，就一直回到我慈愛的父母身邊，從此一定聽從他們的忠告辦事。
可是第二天風停了，浪也歇了。太陽西沉，繼之而來的是一個美麗可愛的黃昏，這時又喝了我的同伴釀的一碗甜酒，我就把這次航行後便回傢的决心丟到九霄雲外去了。我的這種習性給我的一生招來了巨大的不幸——任性的行動常給我帶來災難，可我總不肯在災難來臨的時刻乘機悔改。待到危險一過去，就忘掉了所有的誓言，又不顧一切地投入了我的毫無名堂的生活。
在第一次狂風暴雨似的航行後，我又有過幾次不同的冒險。在去非洲的幾內亞做生意時，我被一艘土耳其的海盜船俘虜，被賣為奴隸，經過許多危險，我逃到了巴西，在那裏獨自經營一個甘蔗種植園，生活過得很順遂。可這時我卻又成了誘惑的犧牲品。巴西因為人工不足，有幾個種植園主知道我曾為做生意而到過非洲的一些奴隸市場口岸，他們竭力哄誘我作一次航行，到那一帶去為他們的種植園買些黑奴回來。
聽從壞主意，人就會倒黴。我們的船在南美洲北岸一個無名島上觸了礁，所有的水手及乘客全都淹死了，上帝保佑，衹有我一個人被高高的海浪捲到了岸上，保住了一條命。當時我所有的衹是一把刀、一隻煙斗和一個盒子裏裝的一點兒煙草。待到我的體力恢復，可以走路了時，我就沿着海岸走去。使我大為高興的是，我發現了淡水。喝了水後，又拿一小撮煙草放在嘴裏解餓。我就在一棵樹上棲身，舒舒服服地睡了一覺振作了精神，海上風平浪靜。但最叫我高興的是我看見了那艘船，待到潮水退下，看到它竟離海岸很近，我發現可以很方便地遊到船上去。船上衹剩下一隻狗和兩衹貓，再沒有別的生物。不過船上有大量的生活必需品，這樣，我就幹了起來。為了把那些東西運到這個島的一個水灣裏，我專門製造了一隻木筏，還把島上有淡水而且比較平坦的一塊高地作了我的住所。面包、大米、大麥和小麥、幹酪和羊肉幹、糖、面粉、木板、圓木、繩子——所有這些，再加上幾支滑膛槍、兩支手槍、幾支鳥槍、一把錘子，還有——那是最沒有用的——三十六鎊英幣。所有這些東西我都一天又一天——在兩次退潮之間一一從船上運到了岸上。到了第三十天夜裏，我的搬運工作做完了，我躺下來時，雖然像平常一樣害怕，但我心裏也滿懷感恩之情，因為我知道，我已為以後對付這個荒島作好了準備而心裏感到踏實了。
《魯濱遜漂流記》《魯濱遜漂流記》
島上有不少野果樹，但這是我過了好久纔發現的,我把它曬成葡萄幹。島上還有到處亂跑的山羊，但要不是我從船上取來了槍支彈藥，它們對我又有何好處呢？因此，我有理由感謝仁慈的上帝，讓船擱在海岸邊，直至使我搬來了對我有用的一切東西。
要想確保我能在這個島上生存下來，還有許多事情要做。我盡可能地相繼辦了幾件我非辦不可的事。但是我的努力並非總是交上好運道。我在第一次播下大麥和稻子的種子時，這些寶貴的存貨就浪費了一半，原因是播種得不是時候。我辛辛苦苦花了幾個月工夫，挖了幾個地窖以備貯存淡水。花了四十二天時間，纔把一棵大樹砍劈成我的第一塊長木板。我起勁地幹了好幾個星期，想製造一個搗小麥的石臼，最後卻衹好挖空了一大塊木頭。我足足花了五個月工夫，砍倒一棵大鐵樹，又劈又削，讓它成了一隻很像樣的獨木舟，以備用來逃離這個小島，可結果卻因為怎麽也沒法子使它下到海裏去而不得不把它丟棄了。不過，每一樁失敗的事，都教給了我以前不知道的一些知識。
至於自然環境，島上有狂風暴雨，還有地震。我那時也對一切都適應了。我種植和收穫了我的大麥和小麥；我采來野葡萄，把它們曬成了很有營養的葡萄幹；我飼養溫馴的山羊，然後殺了吃，又熏又腌的。由於食物這樣多種多樣，供應還算不差。如此過了十二個年頭，其間，島上除了我本人之外，我從來沒見到過一個人跡。這樣一直到了那重大的一天，我在沙灘上偶然發現了一個人的光腳印。
我當時好像挨了一個晴天霹雷。我側耳傾聽，回頭四顧，可是什麽也沒聽見，什麽也沒看見。我跑到海岸上，還下海去查看，可是總共就衹有那麽一個腳印！我驚嚇到了極點，像一個被人跟蹤追捕的人似地逃回到我的住處。一連三天三夜，我都不敢外出。
這是人怕人的最好說明！經過十二年的痛苦和苦幹，十二年跟自然環境相抗爭，竟然會因一個人的一隻腳印而恐怖不安！但事情就是這樣。經過觀察，我瞭解到這是那塊大陸上的那些吃人生番的一種習慣。他們把打仗時抓來的俘虜帶到這個島上我很少去的那個地方，殺死後大吃一頓。有一天早晨，我從望遠鏡裏看見三十個野蠻人正在圍着篝火跳舞。他們已煮食了一個俘虜，還有兩個正準備放到火上去烤，這時我提着兩支上了子彈的滑膛槍和那柄大刀往下朝他們跑了去，及時救下了他們來不及吃掉的一個俘虜。我把我救下的這個人起名為"星期五"，以紀念他是這一天獲救的，他講話的聲音成了我在這個島上二十五年來第一次聽到的人聲。他年輕，聰明，是一個較高級的部族的野蠻人，後來在我留在島上的那段時間，他始終是我的個可靠的夥伴。在我教了他幾句英語後，星期五跟我講了那大陸上的事。我决定離開我的島了。我們製造了一隻船，這次不是在離海岸很遠的地方造。正當我們差不多已準備駕船啓航時，又有二十一個野蠻人乘着三衹獨木船，帶了三個俘虜到這個島上來開宴會了。其中一個俘虜是個白人，這可把我氣壞了。我把兩支鳥槍、四支滑膛槍、兩支手槍都裝上雙倍彈藥，給了星期五一把小斧頭，還給他喝了好多甘蔗酒，我自己帶上了大刀，我們衝下山去，把他們全殺死了，衹逃走了四個野蠻人。
《魯濱遜漂流記》魯濱遜
俘虜中有一個是星期五的父親。那個白人是西班牙人，是我前幾年看見的那艘在我的島上觸礁的船上的一個幸存者，當時我還從那艘船上取來了一千二百多枚金幣，但對這些錢我毫不看重，因為它們並不比沙灘上的許多沙子更有價值。
我給了那個西班牙人和星期五的父親槍支和食物，叫他們乘着我新造的船去把那艘西班牙船上遇難的水手們帶到我的島上來。正在等待他們回來時，有一艘英國船因水手鬧事而在我的島附近拋了錨。我幫那位船長奪回了他的船，跟他一起回到了英國。我們走時帶走了兩個也想回英國去的老實的水手，而讓鬧事鬧得最兇的一些水手留在了島上。後來，那些西班牙人回來了，都在島上居留了下來。開始時他們雙方爭吵不和，但定居後，終於建立起了一個興旺的殖民地，過了幾年，我有幸又到那個島上去過一次。
我離開那個島時，已在島上呆了二十八年兩個月二十九天。我總以為我一到英國就會高興不盡，沒想到我在那裏卻成了一個異鄉人。我的父母都已去世，真太令人遺憾了，要不我現在可以孝敬地奉養他們，因為我除了從那艘西班牙船上取來的一千二百個金幣之外，還有兩萬英鎊等待着我到一個誠實的朋友那兒去領取，這位朋友是一位葡萄牙船長，在我去幹那項倒黴的差事之前，我委托他經營我在巴西的莊園。正是為了去幹那差事，使我在島上住了二十八年。我見他如此誠實，十分高興，我决定每年付給他一百葡萄牙金幣，並在他死後每年付給他兒子五十葡萄牙金幣，作為他們終生的津貼。
我結了婚，生了三個孩子，我除了因為要到那個上面講的我住過的島上去看看，又作了一次航行之外，再沒作漫遊了。我住在這兒，為我不配得到的享受而心懷感激，决心現在就準備去作一切旅行中最長的旅行。如果說我學到了什麽的話，那就是要認識退休生活的價值和祈禱在平靜中過完我們的餘日。
《魯濱遜漂流記》-寫作背景
亞力山大•賽爾柯剋的經歷給了迪福的靈感這部小說是笛福受當時一個真實故事的啓發而創作的。1704年蘇格蘭水手賽爾科剋在海上與船長發生爭吵，被船長遺棄在荒島上，四年後被救回英國。賽爾科剋在荒島上並沒有作出什麽值得頌揚的英雄事跡。但笛福塑造的魯濱孫卻完全是個新人，成了當時中小資産階級心目中的英雄人物，是西方文學中第一個理想化的新興資産者形象。他表現了強烈的資産階級進取精神和啓蒙意識。
《魯濱遜漂流記》-人物形象
魯賓孫性格：魯濱孫是一個充滿勞動熱情的人，偉大的人，堅毅的人。孤身一人在這荒無人煙的孤島上生活了28年。面對人生睏境，魯濱孫的所作所為，顯示了一個硬漢子的堅毅性格與英雄本色，體現了資産階級上升時期的創造精神和開拓精神，他敢於同惡劣的環境作鬥爭。魯濱孫又是個資産者和殖民者，因此具有剝削掠奪的本性。
星期五性格：星期五是一個樸素的人，忠誠的朋友，智慧的勇者，孝順的兒子。他知恩圖報，忠誠有責任心，適應能力強，他和魯濱遜合作着施展不同的技能在島上度過了多年。
《魯濱遜漂流記》-社會影響
笛福的《魯濱孫漂流記》，是一部流傳很廣的代表作。1704年蘇格蘭水手賽爾科剋在海上叛變，被拋到智利海外荒島，度過5年，最後得救，笛福受到這一事件的啓發，寫成此書。魯濱孫不聽父親勸戒，出海經商販賣黑奴，在海上遇難，流落荒島28 年，在島上與自然鬥爭，收留了野人星期五，救了一艘叛變船衹的船長，回到英國，又去巴西經營種植園致富。此外還有續集。第二部寫他舊地重遊，以島的主人自居，開化島上居民，又視察巴西種植園，接着到世界各地冒險，包括中國和西伯利亞。第三部則是一部道德說教的作品。《魯濱遜漂流記》是英國小說傢丹尼爾•笛福1719年發表的第一部小說，同年又出版了續篇。
《魯濱遜漂流記》-作品評價
和作者笛福一樣，小說的主人公魯濱遜•剋羅索是一個永不疲倦、永不安生的行動者，是當時不斷擴張、不斷攫取的資本主義原始積纍時期的社會的典型産物。他不屑守成，傾心開拓，三番五次地離開小康之傢，出海闖天下；他遭遇海難流落到荒島上以後，不坐嘆命運不濟，而是充分利用自己的頭腦和雙手，修建住所、種植糧食、馴養傢畜、製造器具、縫紉衣服，把荒島改造成了井然有序、欣欣嚮榮的傢園。他流浪多年，歷經千辛萬苦，終於獲取了一筆可觀的財富，完成了他那個時代的典型英雄人物的創業歷程。
本書成型在一個萬象更新的轉型社會，奔突往復於物質追求和精神追求的雙重迷宮，魯濱遜•剋羅索這個帶有鮮明時代的人物及其敘述以其勃勃的生氣、天真的信心、堅韌奮鬥的精神和對自身的嚴肅省察喚起了一代又一代讀者的共鳴和深思。
丹尼爾•笛福的小說自19世紀末被初次譯介之後就對當時中國社會産生了很大影響.在中國的短暫輝煌主要受譯入語社會的宗教、政治和意識形態的影響。
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.
船剛駛出海口，便碰到了可怕的風浪，使我感到全身說不出的難過，心裏十分恐怖。我在痛苦的心情中發了誓，假如上帝在這次航行中留下我的命，我在登上陸地後，就一直回到我慈愛的父母身邊，從此一定聽從他們的忠告辦事。
可是第二天風停了，浪也歇了。太陽西沉，繼之而來的是一個美麗可愛的黃昏，這時又喝了我的同伴釀的一碗甜酒，我就把這次航行後便回傢的决心丟到九霄雲外去了。我的這種習性給我的一生招來了巨大的不幸——任性的行動常給我帶來災難，可我總不肯在災難來臨的時刻乘機悔改。待到危險一過去，就忘掉了所有的誓言，又不顧一切地投入了我的毫無名堂的生活。
在第一次狂風暴雨似的航行後，我又有過幾次不同的冒險。在去非洲的幾內亞做生意時，我被一艘土耳其的海盜船俘虜，被賣為奴隸，經過許多危險，我逃到了巴西，在那裏獨自經營一個甘蔗種植園，生活過得很順遂。可這時我卻又成了誘惑的犧牲品。巴西因為人工不足，有幾個種植園主知道我曾為做生意而到過非洲的一些奴隸市場口岸，他們竭力哄誘我作一次航行，到那一帶去為他們的種植園買些黑奴回來。
聽從壞主意，人就會倒黴。我們的船在南美洲北岸一個無名島上觸了礁，所有的水手及乘客全都淹死了，上帝保佑，衹有我一個人被高高的海浪捲到了岸上，保住了一條命。當時我所有的衹是一把刀、一隻煙斗和一個盒子裏裝的一點兒煙草。待到我的體力恢復，可以走路了時，我就沿着海岸走去。使我大為高興的是，我發現了淡水。喝了水後，又拿一小撮煙草放在嘴裏解餓。我就在一棵樹上棲身，舒舒服服地睡了一覺振作了精神，海上風平浪靜。但最叫我高興的是我看見了那艘船，待到潮水退下，看到它竟離海岸很近，我發現可以很方便地遊到船上去。船上衹剩下一隻狗和兩衹貓，再沒有別的生物。不過船上有大量的生活必需品，這樣，我就幹了起來。為了把那些東西運到這個島的一個水灣裏，我專門製造了一隻木筏，還把島上有淡水而且比較平坦的一塊高地作了我的住所。面包、大米、大麥和小麥、幹酪和羊肉幹、糖、面粉、木板、圓木、繩子——所有這些，再加上幾支滑膛槍、兩支手槍、幾支鳥槍、一把錘子，還有——那是最沒有用的——三十六鎊英幣。所有這些東西我都一天又一天——在兩次退潮之間一一從船上運到了岸上。到了第三十天夜裏，我的搬運工作做完了，我躺下來時，雖然像平常一樣害怕，但我心裏也滿懷感恩之情，因為我知道，我已為以後對付這個荒島作好了準備而心裏感到踏實了。
《魯濱遜漂流記》《魯濱遜漂流記》
島上有不少野果樹，但這是我過了好久纔發現的,我把它曬成葡萄幹。島上還有到處亂跑的山羊，但要不是我從船上取來了槍支彈藥，它們對我又有何好處呢？因此，我有理由感謝仁慈的上帝，讓船擱在海岸邊，直至使我搬來了對我有用的一切東西。
要想確保我能在這個島上生存下來，還有許多事情要做。我盡可能地相繼辦了幾件我非辦不可的事。但是我的努力並非總是交上好運道。我在第一次播下大麥和稻子的種子時，這些寶貴的存貨就浪費了一半，原因是播種得不是時候。我辛辛苦苦花了幾個月工夫，挖了幾個地窖以備貯存淡水。花了四十二天時間，纔把一棵大樹砍劈成我的第一塊長木板。我起勁地幹了好幾個星期，想製造一個搗小麥的石臼，最後卻衹好挖空了一大塊木頭。我足足花了五個月工夫，砍倒一棵大鐵樹，又劈又削，讓它成了一隻很像樣的獨木舟，以備用來逃離這個小島，可結果卻因為怎麽也沒法子使它下到海裏去而不得不把它丟棄了。不過，每一樁失敗的事，都教給了我以前不知道的一些知識。
至於自然環境，島上有狂風暴雨，還有地震。我那時也對一切都適應了。我種植和收穫了我的大麥和小麥；我采來野葡萄，把它們曬成了很有營養的葡萄幹；我飼養溫馴的山羊，然後殺了吃，又熏又腌的。由於食物這樣多種多樣，供應還算不差。如此過了十二個年頭，其間，島上除了我本人之外，我從來沒見到過一個人跡。這樣一直到了那重大的一天，我在沙灘上偶然發現了一個人的光腳印。
我當時好像挨了一個晴天霹雷。我側耳傾聽，回頭四顧，可是什麽也沒聽見，什麽也沒看見。我跑到海岸上，還下海去查看，可是總共就衹有那麽一個腳印！我驚嚇到了極點，像一個被人跟蹤追捕的人似地逃回到我的住處。一連三天三夜，我都不敢外出。
這是人怕人的最好說明！經過十二年的痛苦和苦幹，十二年跟自然環境相抗爭，竟然會因一個人的一隻腳印而恐怖不安！但事情就是這樣。經過觀察，我瞭解到這是那塊大陸上的那些吃人生番的一種習慣。他們把打仗時抓來的俘虜帶到這個島上我很少去的那個地方，殺死後大吃一頓。有一天早晨，我從望遠鏡裏看見三十個野蠻人正在圍着篝火跳舞。他們已煮食了一個俘虜，還有兩個正準備放到火上去烤，這時我提着兩支上了子彈的滑膛槍和那柄大刀往下朝他們跑了去，及時救下了他們來不及吃掉的一個俘虜。我把我救下的這個人起名為"星期五"，以紀念他是這一天獲救的，他講話的聲音成了我在這個島上二十五年來第一次聽到的人聲。他年輕，聰明，是一個較高級的部族的野蠻人，後來在我留在島上的那段時間，他始終是我的個可靠的夥伴。在我教了他幾句英語後，星期五跟我講了那大陸上的事。我决定離開我的島了。我們製造了一隻船，這次不是在離海岸很遠的地方造。正當我們差不多已準備駕船啓航時，又有二十一個野蠻人乘着三衹獨木船，帶了三個俘虜到這個島上來開宴會了。其中一個俘虜是個白人，這可把我氣壞了。我把兩支鳥槍、四支滑膛槍、兩支手槍都裝上雙倍彈藥，給了星期五一把小斧頭，還給他喝了好多甘蔗酒，我自己帶上了大刀，我們衝下山去，把他們全殺死了，衹逃走了四個野蠻人。
《魯濱遜漂流記》魯濱遜
俘虜中有一個是星期五的父親。那個白人是西班牙人，是我前幾年看見的那艘在我的島上觸礁的船上的一個幸存者，當時我還從那艘船上取來了一千二百多枚金幣，但對這些錢我毫不看重，因為它們並不比沙灘上的許多沙子更有價值。
我給了那個西班牙人和星期五的父親槍支和食物，叫他們乘着我新造的船去把那艘西班牙船上遇難的水手們帶到我的島上來。正在等待他們回來時，有一艘英國船因水手鬧事而在我的島附近拋了錨。我幫那位船長奪回了他的船，跟他一起回到了英國。我們走時帶走了兩個也想回英國去的老實的水手，而讓鬧事鬧得最兇的一些水手留在了島上。後來，那些西班牙人回來了，都在島上居留了下來。開始時他們雙方爭吵不和，但定居後，終於建立起了一個興旺的殖民地，過了幾年，我有幸又到那個島上去過一次。
我離開那個島時，已在島上呆了二十八年兩個月二十九天。我總以為我一到英國就會高興不盡，沒想到我在那裏卻成了一個異鄉人。我的父母都已去世，真太令人遺憾了，要不我現在可以孝敬地奉養他們，因為我除了從那艘西班牙船上取來的一千二百個金幣之外，還有兩萬英鎊等待着我到一個誠實的朋友那兒去領取，這位朋友是一位葡萄牙船長，在我去幹那項倒黴的差事之前，我委托他經營我在巴西的莊園。正是為了去幹那差事，使我在島上住了二十八年。我見他如此誠實，十分高興，我决定每年付給他一百葡萄牙金幣，並在他死後每年付給他兒子五十葡萄牙金幣，作為他們終生的津貼。
我結了婚，生了三個孩子，我除了因為要到那個上面講的我住過的島上去看看，又作了一次航行之外，再沒作漫遊了。我住在這兒，為我不配得到的享受而心懷感激，决心現在就準備去作一切旅行中最長的旅行。如果說我學到了什麽的話，那就是要認識退休生活的價值和祈禱在平靜中過完我們的餘日。
《魯濱遜漂流記》-寫作背景
亞力山大•賽爾柯剋的經歷給了迪福的靈感這部小說是笛福受當時一個真實故事的啓發而創作的。1704年蘇格蘭水手賽爾科剋在海上與船長發生爭吵，被船長遺棄在荒島上，四年後被救回英國。賽爾科剋在荒島上並沒有作出什麽值得頌揚的英雄事跡。但笛福塑造的魯濱孫卻完全是個新人，成了當時中小資産階級心目中的英雄人物，是西方文學中第一個理想化的新興資産者形象。他表現了強烈的資産階級進取精神和啓蒙意識。
《魯濱遜漂流記》-人物形象
魯賓孫性格：魯濱孫是一個充滿勞動熱情的人，偉大的人，堅毅的人。孤身一人在這荒無人煙的孤島上生活了28年。面對人生睏境，魯濱孫的所作所為，顯示了一個硬漢子的堅毅性格與英雄本色，體現了資産階級上升時期的創造精神和開拓精神，他敢於同惡劣的環境作鬥爭。魯濱孫又是個資産者和殖民者，因此具有剝削掠奪的本性。
星期五性格：星期五是一個樸素的人，忠誠的朋友，智慧的勇者，孝順的兒子。他知恩圖報，忠誠有責任心，適應能力強，他和魯濱遜合作着施展不同的技能在島上度過了多年。
《魯濱遜漂流記》-社會影響
笛福的《魯濱孫漂流記》，是一部流傳很廣的代表作。1704年蘇格蘭水手賽爾科剋在海上叛變，被拋到智利海外荒島，度過5年，最後得救，笛福受到這一事件的啓發，寫成此書。魯濱孫不聽父親勸戒，出海經商販賣黑奴，在海上遇難，流落荒島28 年，在島上與自然鬥爭，收留了野人星期五，救了一艘叛變船衹的船長，回到英國，又去巴西經營種植園致富。此外還有續集。第二部寫他舊地重遊，以島的主人自居，開化島上居民，又視察巴西種植園，接着到世界各地冒險，包括中國和西伯利亞。第三部則是一部道德說教的作品。《魯濱遜漂流記》是英國小說傢丹尼爾•笛福1719年發表的第一部小說，同年又出版了續篇。
《魯濱遜漂流記》-作品評價
和作者笛福一樣，小說的主人公魯濱遜•剋羅索是一個永不疲倦、永不安生的行動者，是當時不斷擴張、不斷攫取的資本主義原始積纍時期的社會的典型産物。他不屑守成，傾心開拓，三番五次地離開小康之傢，出海闖天下；他遭遇海難流落到荒島上以後，不坐嘆命運不濟，而是充分利用自己的頭腦和雙手，修建住所、種植糧食、馴養傢畜、製造器具、縫紉衣服，把荒島改造成了井然有序、欣欣嚮榮的傢園。他流浪多年，歷經千辛萬苦，終於獲取了一筆可觀的財富，完成了他那個時代的典型英雄人物的創業歷程。
本書成型在一個萬象更新的轉型社會，奔突往復於物質追求和精神追求的雙重迷宮，魯濱遜•剋羅索這個帶有鮮明時代的人物及其敘述以其勃勃的生氣、天真的信心、堅韌奮鬥的精神和對自身的嚴肅省察喚起了一代又一代讀者的共鳴和深思。
丹尼爾•笛福的小說自19世紀末被初次譯介之後就對當時中國社會産生了很大影響.在中國的短暫輝煌主要受譯入語社會的宗教、政治和意識形態的影響。
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.
活力充沛的年輕水手愛德蒙·唐太斯（詹姆斯·卡維澤）是個正直誠實的小夥子，他原本有着平靜的生活和一個美麗的 未婚妻美塞苔絲（達格瑪拉·多米尼茲剋），可這一切卻被他人的妒忌給粉碎了——就在他們將要舉行婚禮的時候，愛德蒙的好朋友費南德（蓋·皮爾斯）為了奪得美塞苔斯而設計陷害了他。清白的自己鋃鐺入獄，未婚妻則投入了仇人的懷抱，這一切徹底顛覆了愛德蒙的價值觀和是非觀念，改變了他對這個世界的看法。 所幸的是，十三年夢魘般的監獄生活沒有折磨垮愛德蒙的身心，相反，卻堅定了他報仇的决心。在一位同樣被誣陷入獄的監友（理查德·哈裏斯）的點化下，愛德蒙精心策劃了越獄行動並一舉成功，永遠離開了那座臭名昭彰的基督山城堡。此後，愛德蒙搖身一變成了神秘而富有的基督山伯爵，他憑着自己的魅力、狡詐和冷酷無情，逐漸混進了法國貴族的圈子，一步步對那個曾經背叛他的傢夥實施着殘酷的報復計劃……
《基督山伯爵》-評價
《基督山伯爵》的作者是法國作傢大仲馬，故事情節跌宕起伏，迂回麯折，從中又演化出若幹次要情節，小插麯緊湊精彩，卻不喧賓奪主；情節離奇卻不違反生活真實。小說開捲就引出幾個主要人物，前面1/4寫主人公被陷害的經過，後面3/4寫如何復仇，脈絡清楚，復仇的3條綫索交叉而不凌亂，保持一定的獨立性之後纔匯合在一起。因此，《基度山伯爵》被公認為通俗小說中的典範。這部小說出版後，很快就贏得了廣大讀者的青睞，被翻譯成幾十種文字出版，在法國和美國多次被拍成電影。
自小說問世以來 作者的人生哲學一直為世人所津津樂道。
其中最著名的句子出現在小說的最後一章：
世上沒有幸福和不幸，有的衹是境況的比較，唯有經歷苦難的人才能感受到無上的幸福。必須經歷過死亡才能感受到生的歡樂。活下去並且生活美滿，我心靈珍視的孩子們。永遠不要忘記，直至上帝嚮人揭示出未來之日，人類全部智慧就包含在兩個詞中：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》-評價
《基督山伯爵》的作者是法國作傢大仲馬，故事情節跌宕起伏，迂回麯折，從中又演化出若幹次要情節，小插麯緊湊精彩，卻不喧賓奪主；情節離奇卻不違反生活真實。小說開捲就引出幾個主要人物，前面1/4寫主人公被陷害的經過，後面3/4寫如何復仇，脈絡清楚，復仇的3條綫索交叉而不凌亂，保持一定的獨立性之後纔匯合在一起。因此，《基度山伯爵》被公認為通俗小說中的典範。這部小說出版後，很快就贏得了廣大讀者的青睞，被翻譯成幾十種文字出版，在法國和美國多次被拍成電影。
自小說問世以來 作者的人生哲學一直為世人所津津樂道。
其中最著名的句子出現在小說的最後一章：
世上沒有幸福和不幸，有的衹是境況的比較，唯有經歷苦難的人才能感受到無上的幸福。必須經歷過死亡才能感受到生的歡樂。活下去並且生活美滿，我心靈珍視的孩子們。永遠不要忘記，直至上帝嚮人揭示出未來之日，人類全部智慧就包含在兩個詞中：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.
本片是根據美國名著梅爾維爾的同名小說改編，被多次搬上屏幕，其中最出名的是1956年格裏高利.派剋主演的版本了。這個版本是1998年翻拍的電視電影版本，年邁的格裏高利.派剋出演其中一個角色。
白鯨記MobyDic)是世上偉大的小說之一。全書的焦點集中於南太平洋一條名叫莫比·迪剋的白鯨，以及捕鯨船皮廓德(Pequod)號的船長阿哈(Ahab)如何對它有不共戴天的仇恨。阿哈在一次航行中被莫比·迪剋咬掉一條腿，立志報仇，指揮皮廓德號環航全球追蹤，終於發現了它。經過三天放下小艇緊追。雖然刺中了這條白鯨，但它十分頑強狡猾，咬碎了小艇，也撞沉了大船。它拖着捕鯨船遊開時，繩子套住阿哈，把他絞死了。全船人盡皆滅頂。衹有一個水手藉着由棺材改製的救生浮子而逃得性命。整個故事以這個水手伊希梅爾(Ishmael)自述的方式展開。
《白鯨記》中的訊息
白鯨記 白鯨記密碼許多人發現，MichaelDrosnin用的方法和等距字母序列那篇論文的方法相比，相當不嚴密。不少人用相同的方法，很容易發現到處都藏有密碼，就如英王欽定版的《聖經》裏，可以找到UFO一樣，這下子整個懷疑都出來了。MichaelDrosnin面對這些批評，在《新聞周刊》的一次訪問裏，他說：“假如我的批評者，能夠在《白鯨記》裏，找到某位總理被刺殺的密碼訊息，那麽我就會相信他們。”這對批評者來說，是個挑戰！而這場戰爭到這個時候，已經是相當白熱化了。
澳洲國立大學的一位計算機教授BrendanMcKay，就接受這個挑戰，找到了底下印度總理甘地被刺的“訊息”，並且把它放在自己的網站上。
直行的IGANDHI，第一個I是他的名字Indira的縮寫，按著是甘地(Gandhi)。按著橫行是thebloodydeed。死亡的契約，預示著甘地是會被殺的。事實上，馬凱不但找到一位總理，他還在《白鯨記》找到林肯、拉賓、肯尼迪…等名人被刺殺的訊息，用的是跟MichaelDrosnin一樣的方法。這下子麻煩了，似乎到處都藏有密碼，是不是生活周遭都布滿天機，等着我們用電腦去解讀呢？這位 BrendanMcKay是個很有趣的人，他說，基督教徒也一直在尋找密碼，不過他們想找的是有關耶穌基督降臨的訊息；而這回他用的是《但以理書》，因為 MichaelDrosnin在《聖經密碼》中提到這是一本“封印之書”，預告著“彌賽亞來臨的日子”，而耶穌嚮來都被視為是彌賽亞的。 BrendanMcKay依照魏茨滕等人的方法，考慮了一些關鍵字詞，像sonofgod，去進行分析，結果發現耶穌跟sonofman較靠近。這下子耶穌由“神之子”變成“人之子”，整個論戰也跟着變得混沌、局勢不明了。
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.”
白鯨記MobyDic)是世上偉大的小說之一。全書的焦點集中於南太平洋一條名叫莫比·迪剋的白鯨，以及捕鯨船皮廓德(Pequod)號的船長阿哈(Ahab)如何對它有不共戴天的仇恨。阿哈在一次航行中被莫比·迪剋咬掉一條腿，立志報仇，指揮皮廓德號環航全球追蹤，終於發現了它。經過三天放下小艇緊追。雖然刺中了這條白鯨，但它十分頑強狡猾，咬碎了小艇，也撞沉了大船。它拖着捕鯨船遊開時，繩子套住阿哈，把他絞死了。全船人盡皆滅頂。衹有一個水手藉着由棺材改製的救生浮子而逃得性命。整個故事以這個水手伊希梅爾(Ishmael)自述的方式展開。
《白鯨記》中的訊息
白鯨記 白鯨記密碼許多人發現，MichaelDrosnin用的方法和等距字母序列那篇論文的方法相比，相當不嚴密。不少人用相同的方法，很容易發現到處都藏有密碼，就如英王欽定版的《聖經》裏，可以找到UFO一樣，這下子整個懷疑都出來了。MichaelDrosnin面對這些批評，在《新聞周刊》的一次訪問裏，他說：“假如我的批評者，能夠在《白鯨記》裏，找到某位總理被刺殺的密碼訊息，那麽我就會相信他們。”這對批評者來說，是個挑戰！而這場戰爭到這個時候，已經是相當白熱化了。
澳洲國立大學的一位計算機教授BrendanMcKay，就接受這個挑戰，找到了底下印度總理甘地被刺的“訊息”，並且把它放在自己的網站上。
直行的IGANDHI，第一個I是他的名字Indira的縮寫，按著是甘地(Gandhi)。按著橫行是thebloodydeed。死亡的契約，預示著甘地是會被殺的。事實上，馬凱不但找到一位總理，他還在《白鯨記》找到林肯、拉賓、肯尼迪…等名人被刺殺的訊息，用的是跟MichaelDrosnin一樣的方法。這下子麻煩了，似乎到處都藏有密碼，是不是生活周遭都布滿天機，等着我們用電腦去解讀呢？這位 BrendanMcKay是個很有趣的人，他說，基督教徒也一直在尋找密碼，不過他們想找的是有關耶穌基督降臨的訊息；而這回他用的是《但以理書》，因為 MichaelDrosnin在《聖經密碼》中提到這是一本“封印之書”，預告著“彌賽亞來臨的日子”，而耶穌嚮來都被視為是彌賽亞的。 BrendanMcKay依照魏茨滕等人的方法，考慮了一些關鍵字詞，像sonofgod，去進行分析，結果發現耶穌跟sonofman較靠近。這下子耶穌由“神之子”變成“人之子”，整個論戰也跟着變得混沌、局勢不明了。
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.”
世界頂級登山高手奧寺(玉木宏)終於要挑戰最難關高峰k2了。一同前往的登山隊員兼好友的是北澤（山本太郎）。他們接受了來自大型運動廠商ヤシロ的登山用具的全面贊助，兩人登山組將代表日本挑戰攀登k2的
magic line
在攀登k2的途中，北澤幫妹妹ゆかり(吹石一恵)嚮奧寺表達了愛慕之情，與此同時，北澤也質問了奧寺對ヤシロ的八代社長（石坂浩二）的妻子美那子（鶴田真由）的感覺。就在這攀登k2的途中，兩人推心置腹。而留在日本的八代和美那子對 k2也充滿了遐想。因為在出發前，奧寺曾對八代挑明：“如果我能活
着從k2回來，就把美那子交給我”
在攀登頂峰的第四天，奧寺兩人終於到達了海拔8000米的magic line的“z”型攀登區。由於高空氧氣稀薄，二人的體力已接近透支，第二天，當兩人到達號稱“三日月のガリー”的險峻岩溝時，一堵高70米的冰壁浩然聳立在他們面前。由於溫度過低，無法固定帳篷，無綫對講機也無法使用，正在此時，又突發雪崩北澤因此腳部骨折。由於那裏是雪崩多發地，奧寺馬上用恢復功能的無綫對講機聯絡本部，報告中止此次探險。攀登k2告終失敗，接下來的問題是如何生還。奧寺選擇了避開雪崩多發地，與北澤一同攀登冰壁，再由普通的山路下山的逃生措施。奧寺用盡最後的力氣，再冰壁上垂下繩索，並讓北澤先攀登，自己緊隨其後，不幸的是北澤墜落冰壁。
北澤的死隱藏了很大的謎團。回國以後，智之（武田真治）作為ヤシロ公司的法人，對外解釋說北澤的死是由於攀登的疏忽。然而奧寺卻極力否定這個表决，他認為事故是由ヤシロ公司提供的登山工具有質量隱患所導致的，這一發言，引起了很大反響。八代社長堅持說是有北澤的操作失誤導致事故，以違反信用為由起訴了奧寺。奧寺則與北澤的妹妹ゆかり以及母親秋子(吉行和子)一起攜手展開這場法庭上的鬥。。。。。。
magic line
在攀登k2的途中，北澤幫妹妹ゆかり(吹石一恵)嚮奧寺表達了愛慕之情，與此同時，北澤也質問了奧寺對ヤシロ的八代社長（石坂浩二）的妻子美那子（鶴田真由）的感覺。就在這攀登k2的途中，兩人推心置腹。而留在日本的八代和美那子對 k2也充滿了遐想。因為在出發前，奧寺曾對八代挑明：“如果我能活
着從k2回來，就把美那子交給我”
在攀登頂峰的第四天，奧寺兩人終於到達了海拔8000米的magic line的“z”型攀登區。由於高空氧氣稀薄，二人的體力已接近透支，第二天，當兩人到達號稱“三日月のガリー”的險峻岩溝時，一堵高70米的冰壁浩然聳立在他們面前。由於溫度過低，無法固定帳篷，無綫對講機也無法使用，正在此時，又突發雪崩北澤因此腳部骨折。由於那裏是雪崩多發地，奧寺馬上用恢復功能的無綫對講機聯絡本部，報告中止此次探險。攀登k2告終失敗，接下來的問題是如何生還。奧寺選擇了避開雪崩多發地，與北澤一同攀登冰壁，再由普通的山路下山的逃生措施。奧寺用盡最後的力氣，再冰壁上垂下繩索，並讓北澤先攀登，自己緊隨其後，不幸的是北澤墜落冰壁。
北澤的死隱藏了很大的謎團。回國以後，智之（武田真治）作為ヤシロ公司的法人，對外解釋說北澤的死是由於攀登的疏忽。然而奧寺卻極力否定這個表决，他認為事故是由ヤシロ公司提供的登山工具有質量隱患所導致的，這一發言，引起了很大反響。八代社長堅持說是有北澤的操作失誤導致事故，以違反信用為由起訴了奧寺。奧寺則與北澤的妹妹ゆかり以及母親秋子(吉行和子)一起攜手展開這場法庭上的鬥。。。。。。
Two Year's Holiday，中文譯名為《兩年假期》，這是一部充滿傳奇與冒險的著作，它由法國著名作傢、“現代科幻小說之父”儒勒·凡爾納編著。
故事講述的是，在一年的學習結束時，來自新西蘭某寄宿學校的一群學生將要開始一次為期幾天的航海旅行。然而，當孩子們半夜驚醒時發現，他們的船已經漂流在浩瀚的海面上，原來在出發前夜遊船的纜繩斷裂了。海面風浪大作，而船上既沒有船長，也沒有水手，危險、恐懼、絶望和孤獨籠罩着整個遊船。船隨海浪漂流停靠在一座荒無人煙的小島上，雖然身處艱難境地，但孩子們還是憑着熱情、理性和勇氣，最終擺脫了睏境回到自己的傢人身邊。故事情節跌宕起伏，而一路有關自然風光的介紹也同樣引人入勝。
該書至今已被譯成世界上多種文字。書中所展現的神奇故事伴隨了～代又一代人的美麗童年、少年直至成年。無論作為語言學習的課本，還是作為通俗的文學和科學讀本，本書對當代中國的青少年都將産生積極的影響。為了使讀者能夠瞭解英文故事概況，進而提高閱讀速度和閱讀水平，在每章的開始部分增加了中文導讀。
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.
故事講述的是，在一年的學習結束時，來自新西蘭某寄宿學校的一群學生將要開始一次為期幾天的航海旅行。然而，當孩子們半夜驚醒時發現，他們的船已經漂流在浩瀚的海面上，原來在出發前夜遊船的纜繩斷裂了。海面風浪大作，而船上既沒有船長，也沒有水手，危險、恐懼、絶望和孤獨籠罩着整個遊船。船隨海浪漂流停靠在一座荒無人煙的小島上，雖然身處艱難境地，但孩子們還是憑着熱情、理性和勇氣，最終擺脫了睏境回到自己的傢人身邊。故事情節跌宕起伏，而一路有關自然風光的介紹也同樣引人入勝。
該書至今已被譯成世界上多種文字。書中所展現的神奇故事伴隨了～代又一代人的美麗童年、少年直至成年。無論作為語言學習的課本，還是作為通俗的文學和科學讀本，本書對當代中國的青少年都將産生積極的影響。為了使讀者能夠瞭解英文故事概況，進而提高閱讀速度和閱讀水平，在每章的開始部分增加了中文導讀。
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.
這是 1873 年 2 月 2 日，帆船“浪子”號正航行在南緯 43°57′，西經165°19′。這是一艘載重 400 噸的捕鯨船，船上各式各樣的設備都是從舊金山裝備起來的。它的船主是惠爾頓，是加利福尼亞州一位富有的船隊隊長，鬍爾做這船的船長已經好幾年了。
每到捕鯨季節，惠爾頓就會命令船隊北上南下，嚮北穿過白令海峽直到北冰洋，嚮南則過合恩角直到南極洲。“浪子”號是惠爾頓的船隊中最小的一條捕鯨船，但它設備先進，操作簡便，衹用幾個船員就敢到南半球的冰山中去冒險。富有經驗的鬍爾船長很善於在這些冰山中間為“浪子”號找到一條巧妙的通道。這些冰山在夏季能漂流到新西蘭和好望角所在的那個緯度，比北冰洋冰山所能漂流的距離要遠得多。這些冰山本來體積就不太大，加上沿途的碰撞和溫暖的海流，所以它們大部分會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
每到捕鯨季節，惠爾頓就會命令船隊北上南下，嚮北穿過白令海峽直到北冰洋，嚮南則過合恩角直到南極洲。“浪子”號是惠爾頓的船隊中最小的一條捕鯨船，但它設備先進，操作簡便，衹用幾個船員就敢到南半球的冰山中去冒險。富有經驗的鬍爾船長很善於在這些冰山中間為“浪子”號找到一條巧妙的通道。這些冰山在夏季能漂流到新西蘭和好望角所在的那個緯度，比北冰洋冰山所能漂流的距離要遠得多。這些冰山本來體積就不太大，加上沿途的碰撞和溫暖的海流，所以它們大部分會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，有兩個人躺在奧蘭治河邊一棵高大的垂柳下，一邊閑談一邊全神貫註地觀察着河面。這條被荷蘭殖民者稱作格魯特河，被土著霍頓督人稱作加列普的奧蘭治河，可以與非洲大陸的三大動脈：尼羅河、尼日爾河和贊比西河相提並論。像這三大河流一樣，它也有自己的高水位、急流和瀑布。幾位在奧蘭治河部分流域很知名的旅行傢：湯普森、亞歷山大、波切爾，都相繼贊嘆其河水清澈，兩岸風光綺麗。
奧蘭治河在這一地段臨近約剋公爵山脈，呈現出一派壯麗的景觀。那些無法攀越的岩石，巨大的石堆，被歲月無情礦化的粗大樹幹和未經殖民者的斧頭開鑿的難以進入的原始老林，在加列班山脈的環繞下，形成了一方無以比擬的壯觀景色。河水在這裏由於河床太窄受到挾製，河床也因此不能承受而突然塌陷，水流於是從400法尺①的高處飛流直瀉下來。瀑布的上流，是一挂簡簡單單的翻騰不止的水簾，被幾塊岩石探出垂飾着緑色枝條的腦袋劃破了。在瀑布的下方。肉眼衹能看到一潭洶涌的陰沉沉的水渦，一團濃重潮濕、被陽光的七色光柱劃出道紋的水霧籠罩在上面。令人煩躁的嘩嘩水聲從深潭中發出來，又被山𠔌擴大成了巨大的回響。
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."
奧蘭治河在這一地段臨近約剋公爵山脈，呈現出一派壯麗的景觀。那些無法攀越的岩石，巨大的石堆，被歲月無情礦化的粗大樹幹和未經殖民者的斧頭開鑿的難以進入的原始老林，在加列班山脈的環繞下，形成了一方無以比擬的壯觀景色。河水在這裏由於河床太窄受到挾製，河床也因此不能承受而突然塌陷，水流於是從400法尺①的高處飛流直瀉下來。瀑布的上流，是一挂簡簡單單的翻騰不止的水簾，被幾塊岩石探出垂飾着緑色枝條的腦袋劃破了。在瀑布的下方。肉眼衹能看到一潭洶涌的陰沉沉的水渦，一團濃重潮濕、被陽光的七色光柱劃出道紋的水霧籠罩在上面。令人煩躁的嘩嘩水聲從深潭中發出來，又被山𠔌擴大成了巨大的回響。
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."
“這些英國報紙編得真好！”和善的大夫仰靠在一張大皮扶手椅裏自言自語地說。
薩拉贊大夫一輩子就這麽自言自語的，這是他的消遣方式之一種。
他年已五十，眉目清秀，眼睛有神，清澈亮晶，戴着一副金屬架眼鏡，相貌既嚴肅又和藹可親，讓人一看就是一個正人君子。這天早晨，儘管他此刻衣着並不十分考究，但卻早已颳好臉，結上了白領帶了。
薩拉贊大夫一輩子就這麽自言自語的，這是他的消遣方式之一種。
他年已五十，眉目清秀，眼睛有神，清澈亮晶，戴着一副金屬架眼鏡，相貌既嚴肅又和藹可親，讓人一看就是一個正人君子。這天早晨，儘管他此刻衣着並不十分考究，但卻早已颳好臉，結上了白領帶了。
“明天落潮的時候，船長K.Z.、大副理查德·山敦將率領‘前進’號從新王子碼頭出發，駛嚮陌生的海域。”
這就是人們在1860年4月5日的“利物浦先驅報”上讀到的內容。
對於英國最繁忙的商業港口來說，一艘船離港並不是什麽大不了的事。誰會在各種噸位、各個國傢的輪船當中註意到兩裏①的浮動船塢容納這麽多船有睏難？
①古海裏，約合5.556公裏。
然而，4月6日一早，一大群人聚集在新王子碼頭上，城裏海員行會裏數不清的人看起來像在這裏碰頭。附近的工人放下他們手中的活計，批發商離開了他們陰暗的櫃臺，商人們離開了他們冷冷清清的商店。沿着船塢外墻排列的五顔六色的公共馬車每分鐘都運來一些好奇的乘客；整個城市看起來衹在忙活一件事：觀看“前進”號的起航。
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).
這就是人們在1860年4月5日的“利物浦先驅報”上讀到的內容。
對於英國最繁忙的商業港口來說，一艘船離港並不是什麽大不了的事。誰會在各種噸位、各個國傢的輪船當中註意到兩裏①的浮動船塢容納這麽多船有睏難？
①古海裏，約合5.556公裏。
然而，4月6日一早，一大群人聚集在新王子碼頭上，城裏海員行會裏數不清的人看起來像在這裏碰頭。附近的工人放下他們手中的活計，批發商離開了他們陰暗的櫃臺，商人們離開了他們冷冷清清的商店。沿着船塢外墻排列的五顔六色的公共馬車每分鐘都運來一些好奇的乘客；整個城市看起來衹在忙活一件事：觀看“前進”號的起航。
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軍艦“亞洲號”，與另一艘配有8門大炮的雙桅橫帆船“康斯坦齊亞號”在格讓島解纜開航了。格讓島是馬裏亞那群島的一部分。
船上的水手伙食差，待遇低。在開往西班牙的6個月的航程中，他們睏頓不堪，正密謀策動一次嘩變。
和“亞洲號”上的水手相比，“康斯坦齊亞號”上的水手生性更加頑劣乖張。它由船長唐·奧特華指揮。這個人是個有着錚錚鐵骨的硬漢子，從來都不服輸，但這艘船的航程卻因屢次受阻而進程緩慢。顯然，有人在故意搗亂。就在這個時候，唐·羅剋指揮下的“亞洲號”也不得不入駛港口。
有天晚上，羅盤儀被打得稀巴爛，誰也弄不明白是怎麽回事。又有一天晚上，前桅的左右支索像給人砍斷了似的，轟然垮了下來，桅上的帆和索具全落到甲板上。再後來，舵繩在幾次重要的機動操作中兩度莫名其妙地綳斷了。
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。在開往西班牙的6個月的航程中，他們睏頓不堪，正密謀策動一次嘩變。
和“亞洲號”上的水手相比，“康斯坦齊亞號”上的水手生性更加頑劣乖張。它由船長唐·奧特華指揮。這個人是個有着錚錚鐵骨的硬漢子，從來都不服輸，但這艘船的航程卻因屢次受阻而進程緩慢。顯然，有人在故意搗亂。就在這個時候，唐·羅剋指揮下的“亞洲號”也不得不入駛港口。
有天晚上，羅盤儀被打得稀巴爛，誰也弄不明白是怎麽回事。又有一天晚上，前桅的左右支索像給人砍斷了似的，轟然垮了下來，桅上的帆和索具全落到甲板上。再後來，舵繩在幾次重要的機動操作中兩度莫名其妙地綳斷了。
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.
“看來你們二位的這番爭論是沒個完了……，”米蓋爾先生在吵得面紅耳赤的兩個人中間插了這麽一句。
“是啊……沒完了……，”費裏佩先生說，“除非我嚮瓦裏納斯先生的觀點投降……”
“我可是絶對不會屈從於費裏佩先生的觀點的！”瓦裏納斯先生反駁道。
這兩個固執而博學的人已經互不相讓地爭吵了整整三個小時，話題是奧裏諾科河，南美洲一條著名的河流，委內瑞拉的大動脈。兩人爭執不下的是它的支流問題：奧裏諾科河最初的一段，若果真像新近出版的地圖上所標畫的那樣是自東嚮西流，那麽阿塔巴布河就不應稱作它的支流而是它的正源；而如果是呈西南-東北方向的話，那麽瓜維業雷河就是奧裏諾科河的正源了。
“是啊……沒完了……，”費裏佩先生說，“除非我嚮瓦裏納斯先生的觀點投降……”
“我可是絶對不會屈從於費裏佩先生的觀點的！”瓦裏納斯先生反駁道。
這兩個固執而博學的人已經互不相讓地爭吵了整整三個小時，話題是奧裏諾科河，南美洲一條著名的河流，委內瑞拉的大動脈。兩人爭執不下的是它的支流問題：奧裏諾科河最初的一段，若果真像新近出版的地圖上所標畫的那樣是自東嚮西流，那麽阿塔巴布河就不應稱作它的支流而是它的正源；而如果是呈西南-東北方向的話，那麽瓜維業雷河就是奧裏諾科河的正源了。
一八七六年八月五日，星期六。那天，挂着“漁夫之約”金字招牌的小酒店裏擠滿了吵吵嚷嚷的人群。歌聲、叫聲、碰杯聲、鼓掌聲、歡呼聲，融匯成一片震耳的喧囂。人們不時地齊聲高呼“嗬呵”，這是德意志民族表示他們快樂到了極點的特有習慣。
小酒店位於迷人的齊格馬林根小城的一隅，窗外便是多瑙河。齊格馬林根是普魯士領地霍恩佐倫的首府，距離中歐這條著名大河的源頭很近。
“多瑙河協會”是河流兩岸漁夫的國際性組織團體，會員們應門楣上那塊漂亮的哥特體字招牌的邀請，聚集於此。無酒不成宴，因此，會員們斟滿了所有的大啤酒杯及葡萄酒杯，痛飲香醇可口的慕尼黑啤酒和匈牙利葡萄酒。大傢還抽着煙斗，長長的煙斗裏不停地吐出嗆鼻的煙霧，弄得整個大廳昏黑一片。但是，雖然會員們難以透過煙霧望見彼此，說話聲卻還是相互聽得到的，除非是聾子。
手持釣竿的漁夫們在作業時是冷靜且沉默的，而實際上，一放下活計，他們就成為世界上最喋喋不休的一群。一談起他們的赫赫戰功，他們的激動簡直和獵手們不相伯仲。此話絶非虛言。
小酒店位於迷人的齊格馬林根小城的一隅，窗外便是多瑙河。齊格馬林根是普魯士領地霍恩佐倫的首府，距離中歐這條著名大河的源頭很近。
“多瑙河協會”是河流兩岸漁夫的國際性組織團體，會員們應門楣上那塊漂亮的哥特體字招牌的邀請，聚集於此。無酒不成宴，因此，會員們斟滿了所有的大啤酒杯及葡萄酒杯，痛飲香醇可口的慕尼黑啤酒和匈牙利葡萄酒。大傢還抽着煙斗，長長的煙斗裏不停地吐出嗆鼻的煙霧，弄得整個大廳昏黑一片。但是，雖然會員們難以透過煙霧望見彼此，說話聲卻還是相互聽得到的，除非是聾子。
手持釣竿的漁夫們在作業時是冷靜且沉默的，而實際上，一放下活計，他們就成為世界上最喋喋不休的一群。一談起他們的赫赫戰功，他們的激動簡直和獵手們不相伯仲。此話絶非虛言。
《Phyjslyddqfdzxgasgzzqqehxgkfndrxujugiocytdxvksbxhhuypohdvyrymlhuhpuyd kjoxphetozsletnpmvffovpdpajxhyynojyggaymeqynfuqlnmvlyfgsuzmqiztlbqgyugsq eub vnrcredgruzblrmxyuhqhpzdrrgcrohepqxufivvrplphonthvddqfhqsntzhhhnfepmqkyu uex ktogzgkyuumfvijdqdpzjqsykrplxhxqrymvklohhhotozvdksppsuvjh．d．》
這是一份文件的最後一段，整份文件都是由這些奇怪的字母組合而成的。一個男人手持這份文件聚精會神地將其重讀一遍之後，陷入了沉思。
這份文件共有百餘行這樣的文字，每個詞語之間都沒有間隙。文件看來已經寫了有個把年頭了，隨着時間的流逝，寫有這些難解符號的厚厚紙頁已經開始泛黃了。
這是一份文件的最後一段，整份文件都是由這些奇怪的字母組合而成的。一個男人手持這份文件聚精會神地將其重讀一遍之後，陷入了沉思。
這份文件共有百餘行這樣的文字，每個詞語之間都沒有間隙。文件看來已經寫了有個把年頭了，隨着時間的流逝，寫有這些難解符號的厚厚紙頁已經開始泛黃了。
“你知道什麽？……”
“我知道我在港口聽到的……”
“聽人說那條船來找……要把阿迪亞爾帶走嗎？”
“是啊……去突尼斯，在那兒他將受到審判……”
“要被定罪嗎？”
“會定罪。”
“阿拉不會饒恕它，索阿爾！……不！阿拉不會饒恕它！”
“安靜……”索阿爾激動地說着，並支起耳朵，好像察覺到在沙地上有腳步聲。
他沒站起來，他嚮一個遺棄的隱士墓的入口爬去，在那兒進行着上述交談。天還亮着，太陽還遲遲未從靠近小沙洲灣海濱這一側的沙丘上落下。在三月初，在北半球34緯度，黃昏並不長。絢麗的太陽由於斜着下落並沒有接近地平綫，似乎它要垂直落下，就像受重力規律支配的物體一樣。
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.
“我知道我在港口聽到的……”
“聽人說那條船來找……要把阿迪亞爾帶走嗎？”
“是啊……去突尼斯，在那兒他將受到審判……”
“要被定罪嗎？”
“會定罪。”
“阿拉不會饒恕它，索阿爾！……不！阿拉不會饒恕它！”
“安靜……”索阿爾激動地說着，並支起耳朵，好像察覺到在沙地上有腳步聲。
他沒站起來，他嚮一個遺棄的隱士墓的入口爬去，在那兒進行着上述交談。天還亮着，太陽還遲遲未從靠近小沙洲灣海濱這一側的沙丘上落下。在三月初，在北半球34緯度，黃昏並不長。絢麗的太陽由於斜着下落並沒有接近地平綫，似乎它要垂直落下，就像受重力規律支配的物體一樣。
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並未與讀者見面。
當兩個人在塞特車站下車時——他們是從巴黎乘火車來到這個瀕臨地中海的城市的——馬塞爾·羅南對讓·塔高納說：
“在遠洋輪出發之前，我們去做些什麽呢？”
“什麽也做不了。”讓·塔高納回答說。
“據《旅遊指南》一書記載，塞特城古跡不多，可是卻很奇特。這個城市的繁榮是從建立港口開始的。這個港口也是路易十四時代開鑿的浪剋多運河的終點。”
當兩個人在塞特車站下車時——他們是從巴黎乘火車來到這個瀕臨地中海的城市的——馬塞爾·羅南對讓·塔高納說：
“在遠洋輪出發之前，我們去做些什麽呢？”
“什麽也做不了。”讓·塔高納回答說。
“據《旅遊指南》一書記載，塞特城古跡不多，可是卻很奇特。這個城市的繁榮是從建立港口開始的。這個港口也是路易十四時代開鑿的浪剋多運河的終點。”
愛爾蘭面積有兩千萬英畝，大約合一千萬公頃，由一位副國王統治。副國王也稱總督，是受大不列顛君主委任，並配備一個私人顧問團。愛爾蘭分四個省：東部倫斯特省、南部芒斯特省、西部康諾特省、北部阿爾斯特省。
據歷史學家稱，從前聯合王國是一個完整的島國；現在卻一分為二，彼此精神上的抵牾要超過自然的隔閡。從建國之初，愛爾蘭人就是法國人的朋友，英國人的對頭。
據歷史學家稱，從前聯合王國是一個完整的島國；現在卻一分為二，彼此精神上的抵牾要超過自然的隔閡。從建國之初，愛爾蘭人就是法國人的朋友，英國人的對頭。
這樁大膽的搶劫案，引起人們的普遍興趣，如此的犯罪行為是不多見的。這就是有名的“中央銀行案件”。
搶劫案發生在坐落於倫敦商場附近的中央銀行德剋辦事處。辦事處的經理那時是路易斯·羅伯特·巴剋斯頓先生。
這個辦事處設在一間用橡木櫃臺隔成不相等的兩部分的大廳裏。進門靠左手，在柵欄後面是出納處，這柵欄又有一扇鐵柵門與營業員辦公的地方相通。長橡木櫃臺右邊盡頭有一扇轉門，這是由顧客排隊到營業廳的通路。辦事處經理的辦公室，則在營業廳的深處。一條走廊把營業廳和這幢大樓的公共前廳連接起來。
前廳的一頭通過看門人的住房的門口；另一頭，在主樓梯旁邊，有雙扇玻璃門通往地下室和後樓梯。
這場神秘的搶劫案，就是在這麽個環境中發生的。
搶劫案發生在坐落於倫敦商場附近的中央銀行德剋辦事處。辦事處的經理那時是路易斯·羅伯特·巴剋斯頓先生。
這個辦事處設在一間用橡木櫃臺隔成不相等的兩部分的大廳裏。進門靠左手，在柵欄後面是出納處，這柵欄又有一扇鐵柵門與營業員辦公的地方相通。長橡木櫃臺右邊盡頭有一扇轉門，這是由顧客排隊到營業廳的通路。辦事處經理的辦公室，則在營業廳的深處。一條走廊把營業廳和這幢大樓的公共前廳連接起來。
前廳的一頭通過看門人的住房的門口；另一頭，在主樓梯旁邊，有雙扇玻璃門通往地下室和後樓梯。
這場神秘的搶劫案，就是在這麽個環境中發生的。
“獲得第一名的是路易·剋洛迪榮和羅傑·欣斯達爾。”朱利安·阿德校長聲音洪亮地宣佈道。
校長話音一落，場上響起了歡迎考試獲得並列第一名的兩位優勝者的喊聲和掌聲。
場上平靜下來以後，校長站在安的列斯中學大操場中央的講臺上，名單舉到眼前，繼續宣佈。
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.
校長話音一落，場上響起了歡迎考試獲得並列第一名的兩位優勝者的喊聲和掌聲。
場上平靜下來以後，校長站在安的列斯中學大操場中央的講臺上，名單舉到眼前，繼續宣佈。
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.
一位無名船長為搜尋一座無名小島，正駕着無標名的航船，行駛在不知曉的海洋上。
1831年9月9日，清晨6時許，船長離艙登上了尾船樓板。
東方欲曉，準確地說，圓盤般的太陽正緩緩地探頭欲出，但尚未衝出地平綫。長長地發散鋪開的光束愛撫地拍打着海面，在晨風的吹拂下，大海上蕩起了輪輪漣漪。
經過一個寧靜的夜，迎來的白天將會是一個大好的豔陽天，這是末伏後的九月難得的天氣。
Publication history
* 1895, UK, London: Sampson Low, 319 pp., English translation
1831年9月9日，清晨6時許，船長離艙登上了尾船樓板。
東方欲曉，準確地說，圓盤般的太陽正緩緩地探頭欲出，但尚未衝出地平綫。長長地發散鋪開的光束愛撫地拍打着海面，在晨風的吹拂下，大海上蕩起了輪輪漣漪。
經過一個寧靜的夜，迎來的白天將會是一個大好的豔陽天，這是末伏後的九月難得的天氣。
Publication history
* 1895, UK, London: Sampson Low, 319 pp., English translation
１８６４年７月２６日，東北風呼呼地叫，一艘典雅而華麗的遊船使足了馬力，在北愛爾蘭與蘇格蘭之間的北海峽海面上航行。英國國旗在船尾桅桿的斜竿上飄動，大桅頂上垂挂着一面小藍旗，旗上有金綫綉成的“E．G．”兩個字母（是船主姓名（Edward＆Glenarvan（愛德華·哥利納帆）這兩個字的第一個字母），字的上面還有個公爵冕冠標記。這艘遊船叫鄧肯號，它屬愛德華·哥利納帆爵士所有。爵士是英國貴族院蘇格蘭十二元老之一，同時是馳名英國的皇傢泰晤士河遊船會最出色的會員。
哥利納帆爵士和他年輕的妻子海倫夫人，以及他的一個表兄麥剋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.
哥利納帆爵士和他年輕的妻子海倫夫人，以及他的一個表兄麥剋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.
依利裏的首都——特裏埃斯特分為迥異的兩部分：富饒的新城，德雷齊安，正臨着港灣，便於開發海底資源；貧睏的舊城，破敗零亂，被夾峙在科爾索河與卡斯特山地之間。科爾索河是兩城的界河。卡斯特山頂，矗立着一座城堡，景色格外秀美。
特裏埃斯特港外延伸着桑·卡洛大堤，常有商船在此停靠。岸上遊蕩着一群群無傢可歸的人，有時候數目多得驚人。他們的上衣、長褲、背心或外套都沒有口袋，因為他們從來就沒有，可能永遠也不會有什麽東西可裝的。
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.
特裏埃斯特港外延伸着桑·卡洛大堤，常有商船在此停靠。岸上遊蕩着一群群無傢可歸的人，有時候數目多得驚人。他們的上衣、長褲、背心或外套都沒有口袋，因為他們從來就沒有，可能永遠也不會有什麽東西可裝的。
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.
《氣球上的五星期》是法國著名作傢儒勒·凡爾納的第一部科幻長篇小說，也是他的成名作。講的是十九世紀弗格森博士和他的朋友肯尼迪、他的僕人喬一起乘坐熱氣球，從非洲南部的桑給巴爾出發，穿越了非洲大陸，經歷了千難萬險，終於降落在塞內加爾河，從而完成了前人未曾完成的探險行程。
《氣球上的五星期》-內容簡介
《氣球上的五星期》是法國著名作傢儒勒·凡爾納的第一部科幻長篇小說，也是他的成名作。十九世紀上半葉，許多探險傢、地理學家、旅行傢對非洲這片廣袤的大陸進行了艱辛的探險，留下了許多珍貴的資料和地圖。但是由於自然的障礙和人為的睏難，都無法深入非洲內地。英國探險旅行傢弗格森博士决定針對前人探險的成果，對非洲地區的未知地帶再次進行考察。他想出個大膽的計劃，乘氣球橫越非洲。旅行的一切準備工作做好了，費爾久遜博士帶着他的朋友凱乃第和僕人喬，從非洲東岸桑給巴爾出發，經過五星期勞累和驚險的生活，終於橫貫非洲大陸到達非洲西岸法國在塞內加爾河的屬地，從而完成了前人未競的探險行程。
書中對非洲大陸的風景描寫十分生動細膩，高山大海、沼澤窪地、沙漠河流，還有火山等熱帶地貌在小說中全部都有所涉及；猴面包樹、無花果樹、金合歡樹、羅望子樹等熱帶植物真是千奇百怪；大象、河馬、鰐魚、禿鷲、豹子、鬣狗等熱帶動物應有盡有，還有與野人、猴子鬥智鬥勇的驚心動魄的場面，這些都不禁使人浮想聯翩，産生去非洲冒險旅行的衝動。
《氣球上的五星期》-後記
《氣球上的五星期》熱氣球
熱氣球是他們乘坐的交通工具，即使對今天的中國讀者來說，它也是一個比較陌生的事物，而書中主人公早在19世紀上半葉已經想到了用它來當做探險的工具，更有趣的是，作者連氣球的復雜結構也通過主人公詳細地介紹給了讀者，可見該書作者廣博的知識和極其豐富的想像力。新奇的交通工具加上美麗的風景增添了該書的趣味性。
書中也體現了人與人之間的友誼和關懷：三位旅行傢曾經不顧生命危險救了一位法國傳教士；當氣球快要墜入乍得湖的時候，為了讓氣球再次升起來，喬奮不顧身地跳入湖中，輓救了兩位同伴的性命；而當喬在撒哈拉大沙漠逃命的時候，肯尼迪的一槍也將喬從野蠻民族那裏輓救了回來。這種互愛互助的精神在當今個性張揚的時代是非常值得我們珍惜和發揚的。
《氣球上的五星期》創作完後，凡爾納先後給十六傢出版社投稿，然而卻無人欣賞他的作品，他憤然將書稿投入火中，被妻子及時搶救了出來，書稿送入第十七傢出版社後纔被接受。賞識此書的編輯叫赫茨爾，從此凡爾納遇到了知音，與之結下終身友誼。這部小說充分展現了凡爾納高超的寫作技巧、極其豐富的知識和收集資料的非凡能力。
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.
《氣球上的五星期》-內容簡介
《氣球上的五星期》是法國著名作傢儒勒·凡爾納的第一部科幻長篇小說，也是他的成名作。十九世紀上半葉，許多探險傢、地理學家、旅行傢對非洲這片廣袤的大陸進行了艱辛的探險，留下了許多珍貴的資料和地圖。但是由於自然的障礙和人為的睏難，都無法深入非洲內地。英國探險旅行傢弗格森博士决定針對前人探險的成果，對非洲地區的未知地帶再次進行考察。他想出個大膽的計劃，乘氣球橫越非洲。旅行的一切準備工作做好了，費爾久遜博士帶着他的朋友凱乃第和僕人喬，從非洲東岸桑給巴爾出發，經過五星期勞累和驚險的生活，終於橫貫非洲大陸到達非洲西岸法國在塞內加爾河的屬地，從而完成了前人未競的探險行程。
書中對非洲大陸的風景描寫十分生動細膩，高山大海、沼澤窪地、沙漠河流，還有火山等熱帶地貌在小說中全部都有所涉及；猴面包樹、無花果樹、金合歡樹、羅望子樹等熱帶植物真是千奇百怪；大象、河馬、鰐魚、禿鷲、豹子、鬣狗等熱帶動物應有盡有，還有與野人、猴子鬥智鬥勇的驚心動魄的場面，這些都不禁使人浮想聯翩，産生去非洲冒險旅行的衝動。
《氣球上的五星期》-後記
《氣球上的五星期》熱氣球
熱氣球是他們乘坐的交通工具，即使對今天的中國讀者來說，它也是一個比較陌生的事物，而書中主人公早在19世紀上半葉已經想到了用它來當做探險的工具，更有趣的是，作者連氣球的復雜結構也通過主人公詳細地介紹給了讀者，可見該書作者廣博的知識和極其豐富的想像力。新奇的交通工具加上美麗的風景增添了該書的趣味性。
書中也體現了人與人之間的友誼和關懷：三位旅行傢曾經不顧生命危險救了一位法國傳教士；當氣球快要墜入乍得湖的時候，為了讓氣球再次升起來，喬奮不顧身地跳入湖中，輓救了兩位同伴的性命；而當喬在撒哈拉大沙漠逃命的時候，肯尼迪的一槍也將喬從野蠻民族那裏輓救了回來。這種互愛互助的精神在當今個性張揚的時代是非常值得我們珍惜和發揚的。
《氣球上的五星期》創作完後，凡爾納先後給十六傢出版社投稿，然而卻無人欣賞他的作品，他憤然將書稿投入火中，被妻子及時搶救了出來，書稿送入第十七傢出版社後纔被接受。賞識此書的編輯叫赫茨爾，從此凡爾納遇到了知音，與之結下終身友誼。這部小說充分展現了凡爾納高超的寫作技巧、極其豐富的知識和收集資料的非凡能力。
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，又來了一份電報。”
“從哪兒來的？”
“從托木斯剋。”
“這座城市以遠的電綫都被切斷了嗎？”
“從昨天起都被切斷了。”
“將軍，每隔一小時嚮托木斯剋發一份電報，並派人嚮我匯報。”
“是，陛下，”基索夫將軍答道。
這番對話發生在凌晨兩點鐘，正是在新宮舉行的晚會異彩紛呈的時刻。
“從哪兒來的？”
“從托木斯剋。”
“這座城市以遠的電綫都被切斷了嗎？”
“從昨天起都被切斷了。”
“將軍，每隔一小時嚮托木斯剋發一份電報，並派人嚮我匯報。”
“是，陛下，”基索夫將軍答道。
這番對話發生在凌晨兩點鐘，正是在新宮舉行的晚會異彩紛呈的時刻。
為了獲得更多的毛皮，哈得孫灣皮毛公司派遣了一個小分隊，到北緯70度以北的美洲大陸邊緣地帶創建一個獵取毛皮獸的新據點。孰料，小分隊誤把據點建在了大陸邊緣的一塊巨大浮冰上。在突如其來的一場地震中，浮冰與大陸脫離，變成了一座浮島，載着小分隊隨海水漂移。由於陽光和暖流的雙重作用，浮冰漸漸融化，浮島越來越小，島上的人員面臨滅頂之災。絶境中，全體隊員團结一致，發揮巨大的勇氣和聰明才智，終於使浮冰在即將全部融化前靠上了一個小島，全體隊員得以死裏逃生。書中以讀者展現了充滿神秘色彩的極地風貌，使讀者身臨其境地領略了極地的壯麗與奇特。