Jules Verne, "The Mysterious Island" - immortal Robinsonade

If you ask a modern reader about the most famous work written in the Robinsonade style, then, after the Defoe novel itself, there will undoubtedly be named Jules Verne, The Mysterious Island. The content of the novel is known to almost everyone and does not need additional advertising.

In fact, in modern literature, Robinsonade refers to any work where heroes are put in conditions under which they only need to rely on their knowledge and skills for survival. Its name derives from the work of Defoe, who tells of a shipwrecked shipwright named Robinson Crusoe. The popularity of this novel was so great that the name Robinson became a household name and gave birth to an endless chain of sequels and imitations.

Did not stay aloof and Jules Verne. "The Mysterious Island" is still almost an ideal Robinsonade. The word "almost" is by no means accidental, since this work is not at all a survival aid, but is simply an adventure romance with elements of fantasy. The fantasy of the work is that such an island simply can not be in nature, nor can the achievements of the islanders in terms of scientific and technological progress be realized by a quartet of even very knowledgeable and able people.

But then he and Jules Verne. "The Mysterious Island" is written so convincingly that you begin to think about the impossibility of all these achievements only after reading the novel. And during the process itself, you do not pay attention to the fact that only robots are able to organize a smithy for two days in a bare place and smelt the metal for it.

The author of the novel at one time gave rise to a lot of controversy about whether he is a concrete person, or under this pseudonym lies a group of scientists. Even now it's hard to believe that such a huge amount of science fiction works was written by one person, and even in those times when there were no computers. Today, you can get any information just by clicking the mouse several times, and typing speed on the computer is an order of magnitude higher than writing the same volume by hand. But Monsieur Vern did not even have a ballpoint pen at his disposal and was forced to write with a pen. And he did it really skillfully.

True, in the novel there is an essential flaw that does not make it a robinsonade in the full sense of the word. This genre was not pulled in full by Jules Verne. "The Mysterious Island", whose heroes so quickly began life on the island, without having a single match, still did not master the industrial base on their own. They threw almost all the necessary Captain Nemo. However, Robinson also received by the will of his author a gift of fate - a chest with the necessary for a normal existence of objects. Similarly, at the critical moment, Captain Nemo at first gives our islanders a medicine for Herbert, and then provides them with rifles, cartridges, kitchen utensils, clothes and a camera.

The fact is that at first the novel was conceived as a separate work, and only later the author decided to make it part of the trilogy, combining it with other novels. Yes, the transitional romance between "Captain Grant's Children" and "20,000 leagues under the sea" did not quite fit Jules Verne here. "Mysterious Island" would have looked better as a separate work, but nothing can be changed - everything was the author's will.

But this does not detract from the merits of the novel. It is interesting not only for describing the creation of some ordinary things from scratch, especially since these descriptions are often incorrect (this is indicated in the editors' comments), but also because it praises friendship and cooperation. And also the desire of the heroes to know as much as possible and be able to.

It's hard to say how many boys and girls started gambling school subjects, inspired by the erudition of Cyrus Smith, Gideon Spilett and Herbert. And Jules Verne is "guilty" of this. "The Mysterious Island" became a real hymn to Knowledge.