The Mysterious Island

First published in 1875, The Mysterious Island is one of Jules Verne’s most popular and enduring works. Set during the years of the American Civil War, it tells the tale of a group of castaways who end up on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, surviving thanks to their ingenuity, skill, determination, and the intermittent help of a mysterious power that appears to benevolently assist them in their times of greatest need. Translated and published in English the very same year as the original French edition, the novel incorporates themes and characters of two other novels by Verne: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and In Search of the Castaways, both published during the previous decade.

This study guide uses the e-book of the 2001 edition by Random House, translated by Jordan Stump.

Plot Summary

The novel opens in media res, with five men aboard an air balloon caught in an enormous storm and rapidly sinking. Their names are Cyrus Smith, Gideon Spillet, Pencroff, Harbert, and Nebuchadnezzar. The year is 1865, and America is in the midst of its Civil War, with all five men having escaped from the besieged city of Richmond, Virginia. In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, they crash-land on an uninhabited and unknown island.

In the act of crash-landing, Cyrus is thrown into the sea right before the air balloon hits the shoreline, and the men spend several days searching before he is found a great deal inland. They have no explanation for how he could possibly have ended up in that location, and this proves to be the first of several mysteries they encounter during their time on the island.

The men, who all prove to be extremely resourceful, make the best of their situation. They build a temporary shelter near where they first landed on the island, dubbing it the Chimneys. The men explore large parts of the rest of the island, giving names to many of the geographical features and locations—inspired by the story of the family Robinson, who had done the same—and are quite capable and resourceful colonists. Eventually, they discover a large system of caverns in the granite cliffs on one side of the island, where they make their permanent home, Granite House.

Eventually, they build a canoe, sailing up and down the river. One day, they discover a large chest that seems to have washed ashore, filled with all manner of useful and wonderful tools and supplies that they could not have hoped to manufacture. On another occasion, they even discover the remains of their balloon, rescuing the canvas balloon and all the rigging to use it for clothing, material, and sails on the ship they build.

Once they have built their ship, they use an atlas discovered in the chest to sail to a nearby island that has been marked, where they discover a castaway named Ayrton. Out of his wits and suspicious, Ayrton eventually regains use of his reason and proceeds to live with the men on Lincoln Island (the name they have given their home island). Due to his solitary disposition, he chooses to live at the sheepfold in a house of his own.

Winter comes and goes, but the next spring the company is besieged by pirates who land in the bay near Granite House. In their skirmish with the pirates, Ayrton is captured and Harbert ends up shot and almost dying, but the men nurse him back to health. In one of the most mysterious events on the island, they eventually discover Ayrton deposited back in the sheepfold after a long spell of captivity and, at the same time, the remaining pirates all lined up in the grass, dead. The men vow not to rest until they have discovered the person behind all of these mysteries, but their search proves fruitless.

Returning to Granite House, the men busy themselves with work, spending most of their time building a new and much larger ship since their former ship was destroyed by the pirates. One evening, they are contacted by their mysterious benefactor. Led to a previously undiscovered underwater cavern, they discover Captain Nemo, captain of the Nautilus. He reveals that he was behind all of the mysterious events during their three years on the island, and he has now summoned them because he is on the brink of death. He also reveals to Cyrus that he believes the island is soon going to be destroyed by the activity of the volcano that lies at the heart of the island.

The men fulfill Captain Nemo’s dying wish of sinking the Nautilus below the sea and return to Granite House. They furiously work to finish their ship, but before they can do so, the volcano explodes, destroying the island and their ship in the process. Stranded on the rocks that remain, the men begin to lose any hope of survival, but just in the nick of time, the ship that had once left Ayrton on Tabor Island returns and rescues them. The men return to America and set up a new colony out west in Iowa, living out their days together in community.