Movies - Mysterious Island

Home > Listing Index > Movies > Mysterious Island

	Movies - Mysterious Island

Mysterious Island (L'Île mystérieuse) is a novel by the French writer Jules Verne, published in 1874. The original edition, by Hetzel, contains a number of illustrations by Jules Férat.

It can also refer to the "Lincoln Island" itself, the "mysterious island" on which the story is set (a fictitious island in the Pacific located at about 2,500 km east of New Zealand).

The plot

The book tells the adventures of Americans on an uncharted island in the South Pacific. The story begins in the American Civil War, during the siege of Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederate States of America. As famine and death ravage the city, five northern prisoners of war decide to escape in a rather unusual way – by hijacking a balloon.

The five are Cyrus Smith, a railroad engineer in the Union army, and his African-American manservant of whom, although Verne repeatedly states that he is not a slave but instead a loyal butler, we only get to know his first name Neb, short for Nebuchadnezzar; the sailor Bonadventure Pencroft and his protegé Herbert Brown (a young boy whom Pencroft raises after the death of his father, Pencroft's former captain); fifth in the group is the journalist Gideon Spilett; the company is completed by Cyrus' dog 'Top'.

After flying in stormy weather for several days, the group crash-lands on a cliff-bound, volcanic, unknown (and fictitious) island, which they decide to name Lincoln Island, in honour of President Abraham Lincoln. With the knowledge of the brilliant engineer Smith, the five are able to sustain themselves on the island, producing fire, pottery, bricks, nitroglycerine, iron, a simple electric telegraph, and even a sea-worthy ship. They also manage to find their geographical location.

Throughout their stay on the island, the group has to overcome bad weather, and eventually adopts and domesticates an orangutan, Jupiter, abbreviated to Jupe.

The mystery of the island seems to come from periodic inexplicable deus ex machinas: the unexplainable survival of Smith from his fall from the balloon, the mysterious rescue of his dog Top from a wild manatee, a box full of equipment (guns and ammunition, tools, etc...), the finding of a message in the sea calling for help, ...

Finding a message in a bottle, the group decides to use a freshly-built small ship to explore the nearby Tabor Island, where a castaway is supposedly sheltered. They go and find Ayrton (from In Search of the Castaways), living like a wild beast, and bring him back to civilization and redemption. Coming back to Lincoln Island, they are confused by a tempest, but find their way to the island thanks to a fire beacon; which no one seems to have lit.

At a point, Ayrton's former crew of pirates arrives at the Lincoln Island to use it as their hideout. After some fighting with the heroes, the pirate ship is mysteriously destroyed by an explosion, and the pirates themselves are found dead, apparently in combat, but with no visible wounds.

The secret of the island is revealed when it turns out to be Captain Nemo's hideout, and home harbour of the Nautilus (from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
). Captain Nemo had been the savior of the heroes, provided them with the box of equipment, sent the message about Ayrton, torpedoed the pirate ship and killed the pirates with an electric gun. Nemo dies of old age and the Nautilus is scuttled to be Nemo's tomb.

Eventually, the island explodes in a volcano eruption, and the castaways, warned by Nemo, find themselves at sea on the last remaining boulder of the island that is above sea level. They are rescued by the Duncan ship, come to pick up Ayrton, and itself informed by a message left on Tabor Island by Nemo.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Mysterious Island ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Mysterious Island; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Movies - Mysterious Island

The plot

Searches on eBay

Related searches on eBay