Phileas Fogg

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Phileas Fogg is the main fictional character in the 1872 Jules Verne novel Around the World in Eighty Days.

The character of Phileas Fogg was played by David Niven in the 1956 film adaptation of the book, by Pierce Brosnan in the 1989 film adaptation, and by Steve Coogan in the 2004 film adaptation by The Walt Disney Company.

As a well known name associated with travel and exotic locations, the name "Phileas Fogg" has been used to brand a number of products including:

Fountain pen: Waterman Phileas
Travel agencies and services
Hotels and other forms of travel accommodation
Restaurants and exotic foods
A foreign-style snack food range in the United Kingdom, including Tortilla chips
a Bus rapid transit project in the Netherlands called Phileas

Fogg is a member of Philip José Farmer's Wold Newton family.

[edit] Personality

Phileas Fogg lives at No. 7 Saville-Row, Burlington Gardens, a fashionable upmarket area of 1870's London. He is quite wealthy, although none of the other characters in the novel know how he acquired his money. He does not appear to have any occupation and very little is known about his earlier life (the novel specifies on occasions that he is a natural sailor, but the reasons for this remain unknown. Likewise, he appears to be well-travelled, but the details of his past travels remain elusive). Despite his mysterious and vague background, Mr Fogg is highly knowledgable about a great variety of subjects and analyzes every news story with impeccable logic. Due to his large fortune and excellent credit history, Mr Fogg is a member of the Reform Club on Pall Mall, an exclusive political establishment for liberally-minded men. Mr Fogg does not have any surviving relatives and by his own admission, does not have very many friends, apart from a circle of men at the Reform Club with whom he regularly plays his favourite game of whist.

Mr Fogg lives alone, with one manservant, in his house on Saville-Row, which is modern and comfortable but fairly cold and uninviting. Phileas Fogg appears to use his house only for sleeping, and spends every day at the Reform Club, where he takes his meals and spends his time reading newspapers and playing whist.

He appears to be familiar with a variety of topics which seem out-of-character for a member of London's high society. When served with a suspicious rabbit pie at an Indian railway restaurant, he clearly identifies the pie as being made with cat meat, which one would not expect a member of the Reform Club to be familiar with. Mr Fogg exhibits remarkable courage, selflessness, and chivalry at several points in the novel - after winning the small fortune of twenty guineas at whist, he does not keep the money but gives it to a beggar he passes in the street. In India, he risks his wager and life to rescue Aouda from death, and when his train is attacked by Sioux warriors in the United States, he again risks his wager and life to lead a military mission to rescue Passepartout from the Sioux. In San Francisco, Mr Fogg bravely defends Aouda from drunken revellers using only his fists, and when faced with the prospect of a duel, accepts the offer without flinching. In many respects, Phileas Fogg fits the stereotype of the "stiff upper lip" eccentric English gentleman.

In terms of personality and social actions, Phileas Fogg appears on the surface to be a cold and obsessive character. His personal life is strictly governed by bizarre and neurotically precise standards, such as the exact temperature of his morning toast and the number of steps it takes him to walk from his house to the Reform Club each day. At the beginning of the novel, it is revealed that Mr Fogg's strict demands have driven his manservant, James Forster, into a nervous breakdown, prompting Mr Fogg to hire Passepartout. When Passepartout arrives at the house for his job interview, he finds Mr Fogg sitting like a statue in his silent living room, watching one of his innumerable clocks. He retains this composure throughout most of the novel, until rescuing the beautiful Indian princess Aouda, with whom he falls in love. By the end of the novel, Aouda's influence has prompted Phileas Fogg to abandon his cold and mechanical exterior, and the novel ends with him having become a warm and kind character, happy and content in his new life with Aouda.

[edit] Around the World in Eighty Days

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Accompanied by his manservant Passepartout, he attempts to circumnavigate the late Victorian world in 80 days or less on a wager of £20,000 set by the Reform Club. He takes the wager and on that day leaves with Passepartout, vowing to return by 8.45pm on Saturday 21 December 1872. He is followed by a detective named Fix, under suspicion of robbing the Bank of England. Fogg has no idea about Fix's true intentions, yet he works with him throughout the last half of the book. While in India, he saves a widow princess from a tribe of natives who wish to sacrifice her. Passepartout rescues her and she accompanies Fogg in his journey around the world. While with Fogg, they eventually fall in love and marry at the end of the book. Fogg is arrested by Fix near the end of the book, but is quickly released. He then believes he has lost his wager. However, he discovers almost too late that he has forgotten to adjust his timekeeping for having crossed the International Date Line, and he wins his bet after all.

In Philip José Farmer's The Other Log of Phileas Fogg, he is said to be Eridanean, a member of the (ostensibly) more benevolent of two extraterrestrial factions attempting to control the Earth.