It took me three read-throughs to work
out why I like about Jules Verne's Round the World in 80 Days
so much as to number it among my favourite books. It isn't what one
may call an epic or a masterpiece like a few other books on that list
– but it is entertaining, visionary, and it inspires ideas.
I had one question
on my mind when I was reading through Phileas Fogg's adventures this
time: What makes it plausible? Where does the protagonist find the
time to have adventure alongside his mathematical circumscription of
the world? More directly: to what degree is humanity allowed in
mechanics, and why is it a deficit?
Let me tell you a
little bit about Phileas Fogg.
Verne endeavoured
to make a clockwork man. Phileas Fogg has no past, but has simply
'been' for as long as anyone can remember. Every day he follows the
same routine. His obsession with rigorous time-keeping has led him to
a very orderly life. He rises at the same hour, goes to and returns
from the Reform Club at the same stroke every day, and plays whist
like an automaton. And it isn't just time – Fogg demands certain
conditions in which his time is spent. A difference of 2 degrees
Celsius in the temperature of his shaving foam is enough to upset the
balance of his life.
From this
introduction to Fogg, we learn two things. First, that he is capable.
To keep such rigorous discipline in his life is no easy task – most
people find it impossible to live by a schedule, not only because
they are undisciplined, but because the world changes around them.
Every day demands new activities and trials, hosts upsets and
challenges, and we rise to meet them or fail, and in doing so lost
time and unbalance the schedule.
What Fogg has
created in his London life is a static world: one in which every
disaster can be foreseen and averted, and in which conditions can
speed progress in his favour. One of Fogg's greatest benefits is that
unlike most people he has no need to work or procure finances – he
focuses his energies on keeping what he already has and maximising
its use.
And then, when he
appears to have tuned his life to a perfect state of efficiency, Fogg
departs on the greatest journey of his life. In most of the essays
I've read on the subject, Fogg is seen as a gambler. But that's not
right. A gambler weights odds and accepts the chance of loss. Fogg
intimately understands the universe and how it works, and in doing so
knows he cannot lose. He is not a gambler, no more than the rest of
us are gamblers for going out of our bedrooms every morning and
hoping we won't be tackled by flying walruses.
Fogg's comments are
brief, and to the point. He himself offers no clues to his immaculate
time keeping, claiming only that all is foreseen, and taken into
account. That itself holds so much mystery: how and what has Fogg
foreseen, and how did he do so?
The answer is quite
simple, and comes out as the true nature of the bet Fogg has set to
prove to his fellows at the Reform Club that we live in an ordered
universe. First; every disaster is foreseen. Fogg is aware of all the
delays that come with travel and living. He is aware that life is not
static, that there are problems which prevent absolutely fluid
motion. The gentlemen at the Reform Club have foreseen these
difficulties too, and hope to win their wager by them.
But what they have
not foreseen and what Fogg knows as the missing scientific principle
that shall save him is that every journey will also have unpredicted
windfalls. There will be times when travel goes smoothly, and times
when a typhoon pushes you towards your goals. Circumstances can be
kind as well as cruel. Fogg knows this. Fogg believes that we are not
men desperately struggling in a chaotic world, but finding the
measure of a balanced world where luck and misfortune exist in equal
measure.
Windfalls
are where Fogg's extra time comes from. What makes Phileas Fogg so
special, and what makes me love him as a character is that he is
optimism engaged as realism; he knows that life isn't as difficult as
it appears.
