Captain Grant's children
The Children of Captain Grant is a novel by the French author Jules Verne . The novel was first published in three volumes in 1867/1868 under the French title Les Enfants du Capitaine Grant by the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel . The first German-language edition appeared in 1875 under the title The Children of Captain Grant . The English title of the novel is In Search of the Castaways . Alongside the novel The Mysterious Island , it is Jules Verne's most extensive book.
action
On the maiden voyage of his steam yacht Duncan, the Scottish Lord Glenarvan finds a message in a bottle in the stomach of a hammered shark . It contains three fonts, one each in German, English and French. The combination of these messages, which were partly eaten away by the salt water, shows that Captain Grant, who was believed to be lost, survived a shipwreck with two sailors. Only the latitude , 37 ° 11 'south, is legible, not the longitude . The words “gonie” and “indi” lead to the conclusion that Grant may have been abducted by Indians in Patagonia . Glenarvan decides to save his Scottish compatriot Grant.
The Duncan is being equipped for the voyage to South America. In addition to Glenarvan's newlywed wife - Lady Helena - his cousin Major MacNabbs and Grant's children, twelve-year-old Robert and his 16-year-old sister Mary, are taking part in the trip. On board the Duncan is Jacques Paganel, an absent-minded French geographer who embarked on the Duncan due to a mix-up of ships . Through Paganels mouth Jules Verne weaves extensive geographical instructions into the text in the further course of the plot.
After a brisk journey the yacht reaches South America. Lord Glenarvan and his companions cross the continent along the 37th parallel. They get caught in an earthquake in the Andes . Robert is kidnapped by a condor , but can be saved. You won't find any trace of the missing in South America. When they get caught in a flood during their ride across the pampas , they can save themselves on a tree. While they are stuck on the tree, Paganel deals with the interpretation of the message in a bottle. He now believes that the word “austral” refers to Australia , “indi” in the French text refers to “indigenes”, native people. Back on board the Duncan , the crew heads for the fifth continent.
On the west coast of Australia, the companions set off on an expedition through the country; Duncan , damaged in the storm, is sent to Melbourne for repairs. There she should await further orders from Lord Glenarvan. Soon they meet Ayrton, a former sailor Captain Grant. He reports that the shipwreck occurred on the east coast. So far, he himself believed he was the only survivor. Ayrton advises the lord and his companions to cross the continent with him. Mysterious incidents occur along the way, which in the end lead to the travelers being helplessly stuck in the wilderness. Ayrton is exposed by the suspicious Major MacNabbs as Ben Joyce, leader of a gang of escaped convicts and cause of the incidents. Ayrton shoots Glenarvan and escapes. The lord, injured in the hand by the gunshot, dictated to the geographer an order to the Duncan to cross the east coast, only a few days' journey away, to pick up the companions. But the messenger is attacked by Ayrton's gang, who himself takes possession of the letter and rushes to Melbourne. He plans to play the ship on the east coast in the hands of the criminals in order to cruise as a pirate in the Pacific. Exhausted and deeply disappointed, Glenarvan and his followers reach the coast: The undertaking to find Grant has finally failed, Duncan lost to the pirates, the loyal crew probably killed. It is decided to return home via New Zealand .
The companions shipwreck off New Zealand. Although they can escape to the coast, they soon fall into the hands of cannibal Maori . He escapes the night before the execution. On the coast they are surprised to find the completely unharmed Duncan : Paganel had written “New Zealand” instead of “Australia” in Glenarvan's dictation. The ship's commander stubbornly stuck to that. Ayrton, seeing his plan fail, protested so violently that he was locked up by the crew.
Glenarvan orders the return to Scotland, where Ayrton is to be brought to court. However, the latter wrests the lord's promise to be abandoned on a remote, uninhabited island. For this exile one chooses the Maria-Theresia-Insel . On it you will find the long sought-after Captain Grant and his two sailors. Now the decisive misinterpretation is cleared up: the word “abor” in the French text was interpreted as “aborder”, “to go ashore”. In fact, it would have been read as “Tabor”, the French name of this island.
You return home happy.
Rating
The work thrives on its terrible catastrophes, surprising twists and turns and wonderful rescues, and in between the absent-minded Paganel reports on the history of the exploration of Patagonia, Australia and New Zealand. The novel is more colorful than many other Jules Verne novels because of the changing locations and the large number of characters involved. In the first volume the protagonists mainly deal with adversities of nature such as earthquakes, wild animals and floods, in the other two volumes they deal with human adversaries - for example convicts and cannibals. The character of Ayrton, who is finally abandoned on a desert island, also appears in Jules Verne's novel The Mysterious Island . There Ayrton is rescued from his exile by the protagonists because of a message in a bottle faked by Captain Nemo . Lord Glenarvan keeps his promise and saves him together with the stranded balloonists.
Film adaptations
- The novel was filmed in France by Ferdinand Zecca as early as 1901 under its original title .
- Two further silent film versions followed in 1913 again under the original title and in France under the direction of Victorin Jasset and Henry Rousell .
- Wladimir Wainstock made the first sound film version in 1936 in the Soviet Union under the title Deti Kapitana Granta . The film music written by Isaak Dunajewski is considered one of his greatest works.
- Walt Disney then produced the British-American feature film The Adventures of Captain Grant ( In Search of the Castaways ) in 1962 . This version, created by Robert Stevenson with Maurice Chevalier , Hayley Mills and George Sanders , is now considered the most famous film adaptation.
- In 1969, the ZDF planned to film the novel as an Advent four-part for television. However, the opinion quickly formed that the plot of the novel would not be sufficient as a template for an adventure four-part series and instead turned to other Verne novels such as Two Years of Vacation .
- A 7-part Soviet-Bulgarian TV film adaptation from 1985 was made under the direction of Stanislaw Goworuchin under the title In search of Captain Grant . The film music from the film adaptation from 1936 was used.
literature
Text output
- Jules Verne: The children of Captain Grant . 2 volumes, translated by Walter Gerull, with the illustrations of the French first edition by Riou and Pannemaker, Diogenes, Zurich 1977. ISBN 3-257-20404-3 (volume 1) and ISBN 3-257-20405-1 (volume 2)
- Jules Verne: The children of Captain Grant . Translated by Walter Gerull, illustrated by Werner Klemke, Verlag Neues Leben, Berlin 2005. ISBN 978-3-355-01706-0 (abridged edition)
Secondary literature
- Heinrich Pleticha (ed.): Jules Verne manual . Deutscher Bücherbund / Bertelsmann, Stuttgart, Munich 1992.
- Volker Dehs , Ralf Junkerjürgen: Jules Verne . Voices and interpretations of his work . Fantastic Library Wetzlar, Wetzlar 2005.
- Volker Dehs : Jules Verne . A critical biography . Artemis & Winkler, Düsseldorf 2005, ISBN 3-538-07208-6 .
- Matthias Schwartz: The children of Captain Grant . On the geopoetics of the adventure in Vladimir Vajnštok's 1936 film adaptation of Verne . In: Magdalena Marszałek, S. Sasse (Ed.): Geopoetics. Geographical drafts in the Central and Eastern European literatures . Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86599-106-5 , pp. 189-224 ( einsnull.com ).
