Journey To The Center Of The Earth

Reading Check and Short Answer questions on key plot points are designed for guided reading assignments, in-class review, formative assessment, quizzes, and more.

Chapters 1-8

Reading Check

1. What subject does Professor Lidenbrock teach?

2. What does Axel decide to do after discovering the key to the cryptogram?

3. What does Professor Lidenbrock say is to him what darkness or obscurity is to Axel?

4. What structure do Axel and the professor practice climbing in Copenhagen?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Describe the professor’s attitude toward food.

2. How does Gräuben react when Axel tells her about the planned journey?

Paired Resource

“The Allegory of the Cave”

• An allegory presented in Plato’s Republic describes a group of people who have lived their lives chained to a wall in a cave and believe the shadows they see are reality.
• This animated video summary of the allegory may be helpful for students new to this work.
• Apply Plato’s allegory to Axel and the professor. Does either of them see reality as it truly is?

Chapters 9-16

Reading Check

1. What is Hans’s profession?

2. What does the professor do when he’s given an excessive bill for their stay at the parsonage?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Which Shakespeare character does Axel relate to, and why?

2. How do the Icelandic children behave toward Axel and the professor?

3. What is Snæfell?

Paired Resource

“To Be or Not to Be”

• This 3-minute video features Kenneth Branagh’s performance of the famous soliloquy from the 1996 film Hamlet.
• What connections can you identify between ideas expressed in the soliloquy and Axel’s character or the journey in general?

Chapters 17-29

Reading Check

1. What does Axel see before falling asleep at the bottom of the shaft?

2. What eventually turns into coal?

3. What tool does Hans use to get water?

4. What does Axel believe is the fate of prisoners in solitary confinement?

5. What does Axel intend to use as his guide when he realizes he’s lost?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What is the professor’s method of taking non-fragile items along as the group descends?

2. How does Axel react to the stalactites?

3. What scientific observation contradicts Axel’s prior expectation?

4. What bargain does the professor strike with Axel when they’re out of water and Axel wants to go back?

5. What happens when Axel takes an ascending path to find his way out of the labyrinth?

6. After being reunited with his companions, why does Axel think something is wrong with his brain?

Paired Resource

“Neuroscientists Make a Case Against Solitary Confinement”

• A Scientific American article on the effects of isolation on the brain
• Free-write about Axel’s views on solitary confinement and why prisoners are still being subjected to it today, even though there was awareness of the damage it causes at least 150 years ago.

Chapters 30-40

Reading Check

1. What natural phenomenon does Axel reference to describe the subterranean light?

2. What material does Hans use to build a raft?

3. What is the dominant feature of the island?

4. What kind of remains most astonish the explorers?

5. What sight finally makes Axel eager to press on with the journey?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What does Axel see that looks like parasols?

2. What kind of fish do they find in the sea?

3. Why does the professor grow impatient during the ocean voyage?

4. During the storm, what happens just when the professor finally agrees to lower the sail?

5. Whom does Axel describe as “a new son of Neptune”?

Chapters 41-46

Reading Check

1. What type of volcano thrusts the group toward the surface?

2. Where in the world do they emerge from the depths?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. How do they access Saknussemm’s passage?

2. Why do they eat all their remaining food at once?

3. What is the “electric joke”?

Paired Resource

“Sacred Mountain”

• Best of Sicily magazine article on Mt. Etna’s importance in ancient and popular mythology
• Connects to the theme of Travel and Descent Into the Unknown
• Why might Jules Verne have chosen Mt. Etna as the point where his band of explorers emerges from their journey to the center of the Earth?

Recommended Next Reads

The Caspak Trilogy by Edgar Rice Burroughs

• Three serial novels published in book form in 1924: The Land That Time Forgot, The People That Time Forgot, and Out of Time’s Abyss
• Common themes include Travel Into the Unknown.
• Survivors of a skirmish at sea during WWI discover an island near Antarctica inhabited by dinosaurs, prehistoric mammals, and primitive humans.

The Martian by Andy Weir

• Novel published in 2014 about an astronaut stranded on Mars who must use his knowledge of science to survive and aid his own rescue
• Common themes include Travel Into the Unknown.
• The Martian on SuperSummary