Five Weeks in a Balloon

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**Five Weeks in a Balloon**

Author	Jules Verne
Original title (if not in English)	Cinq semaines en ballon
Country	France
Language	French
Genre(s)	Adventure novel
Publisher
Released	1863
ISBN	ISBN

Five Weeks in a Balloon, or, Journeys and Discoveries in Africa by Three Englishmen is an 1863 novel by Jules Verne.

It is the first Verne novel in which he perfected the "ingredients" of his later work, skillfully mixing a plot full of adventure and twists that hold the reader's interest with passages of technical, geographic, and historic description. The book gives readers a glimpse of the exploration of Africa, which was still not completely known to Europeans of the time, with explorers traveling all over the continent in search of its secrets.

Public interest in fanciful tales of African exploration was at its height, and the book was an instant hit; it made Verne financially independent and got him a contract with Jules Hetzel's publishing house, which put out several dozen more works of his for over forty years afterward.

1 Synopsis
2 Racial Stereotypes
3 Treatment of Africa's Wildlife
4 Inconsistent Scientific/Technological Reference
5 Similarities to Later Novels
6 Movie Adaption
7 External links

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

A scholar, Samuel Ferguson, accompanied by his manservant Joe and his friend Richard "Dick" Kennedy, sets out to travel across the African continent - still not fully explored - with the help of a hot-air balloon filled with hydrogen. He has invented a mechanism that, by eliminating the need to release gas or throw ballast overboard to control his altitude, allows very long trips to be taken. This voyage is meant to link together the voyages of Sir Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke in East Africa with those of Heinrich Barth in the regions of the Sahara and Chad. The trip begins in Zanzibar on the east coast, and passes across Lake Victoria, Lake Chad, Agadez, Timbuktu, Djenné and Ségou to St Louis in modern day Senegal on the west coast. The book describes the unknown interior of Africa near modern day Central African Republic as a desert, when it is actually savanna.

A good deal of the initial exploration is to focus on the finding of the source of the Nile, an event that occurs in chapter 18 (out of 43). The second leg is to link up the other explorers.

Map of the trip described in the book from the east to the west coast.

There are numerous scenes of adventure, composed of either a conflict with a native or a conflict with the environment. Some examples include:

Rescuing of a missionary from a tribe that was preparing to sacrifice him.
Running out of water while stranded, windless, "over" the Sahara.
An attack on the balloon by condors, leading to a dramatic action as Joe leaps out of the balloon.
The actions taken to rescue Joe later.
Narrowly escaping the remnants of a militant army as the balloon dwindles to nothingness with the loss of air.

In all these adventures, the protagonists overcome by continued perseverance more than anything else. The novel is filled with coincidental moments where trouble is avoided because wind catches up at just the right time, or the characters look in just the right direction. There are frequent references to a higher power watching out for them, as tidy of an explanation as any.

The balloon itself ultimately fails before the end, but makes it far enough across to get the protagonists to friendly lands, and eventually back to England, therefore succeeding in the expedition. The story abruptly ends after the African trip, with only a brief synopsis of what follows.

[edit] Racial Stereotypes

Blacks are negatively portrayed in much of the novel. Without fail, they take the balloon as being a threat or a divine device. Many are depicted as running into their huts, chucking spears or arrows at the balloon, or making lots noise and stupid faces at its passing. This description is used also to describe the Arabs/Muslims in the novel, despite the general level of learning that would have present in some of the Arabian cities. The one change is that they weild muskets instead of using more primitive weapons.

In Chapter 16, Dick and Joe confuse a group of baboons for black men.

There are multiple references to Africans worshiping things at a whim. A bottle tossed out by Joe in Chapter 20 is accompanied by the quote “I’ll throw them an empty bottle, with your leave, doctor, and if it reaches them safe and sound, they’ll worship it; if it breaks, they’ll make talismans of the pieces.” Joe is treated as a god or divine power twice. Later, as much of the supplies have to be tossed over the side, Joe reiterates his former statements with “The black fellows will be mightily astonished...at finding things like those in the woods; they’ll make idols of them!”

It is not infrequent that the portrayal of Africans as extremely primitive are juxtaposed against descriptions of cultivated fields.

Nearly all of the racial profiling happens in character voice, leading to possible speculation as to whether Verne was truly believing in the words his characters spoke or if he was merely trying to capture sentiments of the time, or more specifically sentiments held by the British and Scottish (the main characters all being non-French). Even if the narrator's voice does not condemn Africans, there are several scenes that show little concern for them. In the scene with the rescue of the missionary, who is French, at least one African falls to his death and this is written off as inconsequential. An entire island is wiped out through a flood, and it is meant to be a positive thing because one of the main characters is able to survive. In both cases, the Africans affected were depicted as violent and irrational.

The closest thing to a positive reflection upon Africans occurs in Chapter 20, in which their methods of war and execution are declared as being "no whit" worse than the European method, "just filthier".

[edit] Treatment of Africa's Wildlife

There are multiple episodes that depict the ideas of the "Great White Hunter". One elephant is hooked by an anchor for the balloon (by accident) and is then used as a method of locomotion for a short while, before being shot repetitively until it collapses. At this time, the character hasten to take small portions of it for food, and to collect its ivory. Later, at the sighting of elephants of good size, Dick says "“Oh, what magnificent elephants! Is there no way to get a little shooting?”.

In Chapter 16, the Doctor equates Africa to the "Last Machine", which will serve as the place of human growth after the Americas are dry. His depiction is of an Africa tamed and cultivated.

[edit] Inconsistent Scientific/Technological Reference

Though the novel goes into great detail with much of the calculations involving the lift power of the hydrogen balloon, and how to obtain the proper amount of volume through changes in temperature; there are gaps in the logic. The balloon rises up when heated, and lowers as it is allowed to cool. This pattern is used as numerous plot points and is shown to be a somewhat quick process of cooling. At night, however, there is little mention of them maintaining the temperature through the night. Another gap in the scientific logic is the lack of reference to atmospheric temperature on the balloon itself, though the temperature is referenced as affecting the heating coil.

In Chapter 26, it says the doctor takes the balloon up to five miles. Later, in Chapter 29, in order to get over Mount Mendif, the doctor "by means of a temperature increased to one hundred and eighty degrees, gave the balloon a fresh ascensional force of nearly sixteen hundred pounds, and it went up to an elevation of more than eight thousand feet" which is noted as being "the greatest height attained during the journey." If this is to imply that the doctor went eight thousand feet above Mount Mendif, at a height greater than five miles; Jules Verne would have greatly underestimated the drop in temperature and how much heat would have been required to keep the balloon at that height for any length of time.

[edit] Similarities to Later Novels

Five Weeks has a handful of similarities to the novel Journey to the Center of the Earth. There is the same sort of conjecture from current scientific ideas and what Verne puts forth as the actual truth (though Five Weeks is far more successful, assuming there is any attempt at accuracy with Journey). The party of three characters is similarly divided into the Doctor, the doubtful companion who initially balks at the journey, and the servant who is quite able. In both novels, Purdy rifles are referenced. In both novels, there is an episode of despair categorized by thirst.

Also, neither novel deals directly with the French, but with (generally positive) stereotypes of other countries.