The dystopian society is mainly how the adventurers end up
on a deserted island in the middle of nowhere and have no idea what will become
of them, with danger around every turn. Also, strange things keep happening,
like Captain Harding mysteriously appearing on the shore and the discovery of a
chest full of supplies. The characters have no idea what challenge they will
face next, just like any book such as 1984
or Divergent. The strange events save
the characters almost every time they occur. The characters always seem to be
in a situation that seems impossible to survive but the adventurers always do
sometimes thanks to a strange event like the pirates mysteriously being killed.
It seems like the island is alive and helping them when they are in trouble.
For a dystopian society, that idea is not too far-fetched.
The social injustices in the novel are how everything bad
happens to the main characters. Almost everything doesn't go their way. It starts when they
escape in the balloon and are promptly smashed by the tempest over the Pacific Ocean
and land on Lincoln Island. Then they lose Captain Harding and the dog. It
keeps going like that throughout the rest of the book like Herbert getting shot
and the island exploding in a volcano. It should be impossible for such bad
luck to keep going for so long. Also, the pirates attack the colonists, another
injustice.
The author, Jules Verne, in my opinion, is not trying to
make the reader aware of social injustices in the story. He might have done so accidently,
like with the pirates invading, but I don't think he meant to. I think that
Verne meant for this book to be purely an adventure story, like what he intended
when he wrote Journey to the Centre of
the Earth and Twenty Thousand Leagues
Under the Sea. The lack of social injustices makes it hard for the reader
to understand the book in our world. Also, as it was written nearly 140 years
ago, the world that Jules Verne lived in is much different than it is today.
The author's message is that you can survive any peril, no
matter how bad it is as long as you know you can survive. The adventurers land
on a deserted island and manage to make items from bricks to a sailing ship.
Partly this happened because in the story, the engineer is brilliant in ways of
making tools such as making fire from 2 watches and figuring out the island's
global position by using the stars and sun. Also, it is unrealistic that even a
group of expert survivors could even survive like that without help. Verne
makes the character's survival possible by using Captain Nemo to help them in
secret like saving the Captain and blowing up the pirates. I think that the
novel is extremely effective in showing that message. The adventurers keep
their heads up with the vision of them colonizing the island the whole story
and falter only when the island explodes. That message from 140 years ago can
be translated to how today you will get a job if you keep your head up looking
for one.
