Jason Zhang

Mrs. Heimburger

Honors English 9

28 April 2017

The Mysterious Island

Deadly animals, pirates, a supernatural force, an exploding volcano. The Mysterious

Island by Jules Verne is a must-read. It is an amazing novel full of adventure, relatable themes,

and mystery. If you enjoy books like Robinson Crusoe you will definitely enjoy this book. In the

midst of the Civil War, five prisoners manage a daring escape from Richmond in an air balloon.

However, disaster strikes when a tempest hits them and blows them off course onto a mysterious

island in the middle of the Pacific. At first, the brave five struggle to survive, but they eventually,

using their combined intellect, thrive on the island. Just as they start to settle on the island,

supernatural events start to occur, and the secrets of the island slowly unravel. The Mysterious

Island is a great book for many reasons.

The Mysterious Island has been adapted into numerous movies. It has been translated

from French, its original language, into English, Marathi, and Bengali. It has even been

referenced in the popular show Lost. The Mysterious Island is a survival, adventure, and mystery

novel and a literary classic. Popular ebook website, manybooks.com rates The Mysterious Island

as a 4.8/5.

The novel has five lovable main characters: Cyrus Harding, the brilliant engineer and

charismatic leader, Gideon Spillett, a fearless reporter and fantastic artist, Herbert, an intelligent

natural history student, Neb, a loyal servant to Cyrus, and Pencroft, the hilarious, good natured,
and skilled sailor. Together these characters tell a tale of friendship, sacrifice, redemption, and

determination. The friendship of these five characters moves and inspires, as in the book the

author writes, By degrees he became interested in their efforts when he saw them[five

castaways] honest, energetic, and bound to each other by the ties of friendship.-(Verne 465)

Additionally, the author of the book, Jules Verne, is highly acclaimed. He is considered

one of the greats of literature and is said to have founded of the genre of science fiction. Verne

is also the author of other classics such as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Around the World in

80 Days, and Journey to the Center of the Earth. The translated version by no means hinders any

of the same depth of the original novel in French,. . .The many good things contained in this

book begin and rely on translator Sydney Kravitz's wonderful rendering of Verne's original

words. There is nothing fusty or dull about this tale, as filtered through Kravitz's talents. The

dialogue sounds like actual people might speak it, and hardly any archaic constructions obtrude.

Reading this prose is pure pleasure; it allows the story itself to leap free.SciFi.com

The Mysterious Island is great because it is popular internationally, it has fantastic

characters, and it was written by the great Jules Verne. The struggle of the five stranded men and

the mystery of the novel will keep you hooked until the very end. Will you discover the secret of

the Mysterious Island?

 Works Cited

The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne. ManyBooks.net, Manybooks,

manybooks.net/titles/vernejuletext98milnd11.html. Accessed 28 Apr. 2017.

"Scifi.com." Syfy. A.L. Sirous, n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

Verne, Jules. The mysterious island. New York- Dodd, Mead & Company, 2016. Print.

"The Mysterious Island." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 26 Apr. 2017. Web. 28 Apr.

2017.