Journey To The Center Of The Earth

Axel is Otto’s nephew who was orphaned as a young boy and lives with his uncle. He works as the Professor’s assistant, helped along by Gräuben, Otto’s goddaughter and Axel’s love interest. Despite being the novel’s narrator, he shares almost no personal information. The reader is unaware of his physical appearance, exact age, or interests outside of minerology.

The first-person point of view, combined with the lack of personal information, renders Axel’s character as a sort of a placeholder. The reader can step into his shoes and experience the events through Axel’s eyes. This role could also explain, in part, why the young man does not behave as a typical hero—most people reading Verne’s works would have a difficult time identifying with someone like Otto, who is not afraid of anything and completely disregards social niceties. Thus, Axel’s more malleable personality and his doubts and fears are easier to identify with in the context of the group’s daring journey.

Hans is the group’s Icelandic guide. He is described as a “very tall man, of strong, well-built frame” with red hair and blue eyes “full of intelligence” (40). His demeanor is calm and silent, contrasting somewhat comically with the thin, energetic, and wordy Otto. By occupation, he is an eider-duck hunter, but this, in fact, does not mean that he hunts ducks. In Iceland, female eider ducks are known for their soft feathers, so collecting down is more profitable than actually killing the birds. In the spring, the females tear out their own breast feathers to line their nests, so the hunters go to the rocks where the birds nest and collect these feathers until the females have torn out all of their breast feathers and the males begin to do the same. In other words, Hans’s occupation is non-violent, fitting in with his calm and phlegmatic temperament.

Despite the thorough physical description given in Chapter 11, Hans remains a one-dimensional character throughout the book. He is mostly silent and remains preternaturally calm in the face of any calamity. Given the dangers the group faces, he does not question Otto’s decisions even once, despite evidence that the Professor is not infallible. The only emotion he expresses is homesickness at the end of the story, which is the reason he goes back to Iceland. All this points to the fact that he is a side character who serves more as an animated tool, rather than as a third protagonist. His local knowledge and survival skills are central to the plot, but if Otto or Axel could realistically have possessed that same knowledge, the story could have proceeded without Hans’s presence.