The story began when Professor Lidenbrock brought home a runic manuscript. The professor and his nephew Axel figured out that this manuscript was written by Anne Saknussemm, a famous Icelandic alchemist during the 16th century. After decoding the manuscript, they find it states that if they entered a certain volcano near the end of June they would be able to reach the center of the Earth.

Axel and his uncle left immediately to Iceland, where the volcano was located. When they reached Iceland they met their guide, Hans, and started to travel up to the 5,000 foot high volcano. After completing the extremely difficult climb, they descended to lowest part of the volcano where they entered a dark tunnel. After a long walk they met a dead end which forced them to return other tunnel they had passed earlier. When they traveled back through the tunnel, Axel suddenly realized that he was alone. Axel who was close to death finally reunited with Hans and his uncle.

They journeyed out of the tunnel into what would seem like the surface of the earth, even though it was under the earth's crust. Then they built a raft to travel across a sea which was also located there. Because of a storm and other obstacles it took them a long time to get to the other end of the sea. When they continued their journey on foot they came to a tunnel which they wished to enter; however, a rock blocked the entire tunnel. They decided to blow it up with gun-cotton. They get into the raft and waited for the rock to explode. When it exploded the sea formed a wave and sent them flying into the tunnel.

Unable to stop the raft, they remained falling down until water shot up and caused the raft to head into a different passage. The passage ended up being a volcano which they were then shot out of the volcano. They found out that they were back at the surface of the earth. Even though they did not reach the center of the earth, they went back to their homes.

Axel, the main character showed that uncertainty about going on the journey. In the beginning of the story, Axel's thoughts were against going to the center of the earth. He thought to “go to the center of the earth! What a crazy idea!” However, as the journey started to enfold, Axel became a bigger part of their journey which also led to him he became uncertain throughout the entire story.

Axel also showed his uncertainty about his uncle's sincerity. In the beginning of the story, Axel thought that his uncle was the “most impatient of men” which demonstrated that he didn't have any respect for his uncle. Then in the end of the story they “were deeply attached” which now showed that they both had respect for one another unlike in the beginning. Once again, Axel showed his uncertainty throughout the entire story.

Axel also showed his uncertainty about his love for Grauben, his fiancé. However, this time his uncertainty not from beginning to end, but in one sentence. When Axel replied to whether or not he loved Grauben he says, “Yes! No!” Then in the end of the story, we see the final result of whether or not he loves her, he does “as he looked at her”.

The setting in this story was amazing or unique. One reason of why it was unique was because of the number of times the author used any form of the word phenomenon. When Axel was “witnessing phenomena quite foreign to his "terrestrial" nature.” Also when they wondered “'what phenomenon could have caused the reversal of the poles?'”. Also “the maddened compass, shaken by the electrical phenomena” was another example. “This phenomenon by itself would have not alarmed me” was once again showing its state of being unique and “for a scientist an unexplained phenomenon is a torture to the mind”. They also came “to a terrain where the phenomena of central heat occurred”.

Another way we saw that it was unique was in its mysteriousness. This showed that it was unique because no one had ever seen these things therefore it was unique. That the “behavior of the compass-remained a mystery” was talking about why the compass reversed its poles during their journey. Once again, the “mystery of its inexplicable behavior” showed the mysteriousness.

It was also unique and amazing because the center of the earth was separated from everything else. Before they even found the underground sea they discovered that they "reached a depth of ten-thousand feet!" Then when they reached the underground sea they were "at a depth of 12,000 feet".

The story begins when a pirate happens to come to Jim's house. There he is treated and receives medical treatment from the doctor. The doctor warns him not to drink rum, but the pirate refuses and drinks it anyway. The pirate dies awhile after he had received the black spot. The dead pirate's fellow pirates, who gave him the black spot, storm into Jim's house in order to get the chest. Jim escapes with the chest before the pirates could get to it.

Jim discovers that inside the chest was a map to buried treasure. He decides that he wants to go on a search for the buried treasure. So Squire Trelawney, he, and Doctor Livesey go in search a boat and a crew. They find their crew and start their journey to find the treasure. However, they accidentally recruit the pirates that were after the chest. During their voyage, Jim hears the cook, Long John Silver, talking to the pirates and then Jim finds out that there are pirates.

When they reach the island the pirates break of from the loyal seamen and go in search for the treasure. The seamen lose their ship and are forced to go on land. They have battles with the pirates and many men die. Jim kills two pirates in order to take back the ship. Then when Jim goes back on land he is captured by the pirates. Jim and the pirates go on a search for the treasure. When they get to the treasure they get ambushed by the loyal seamen, who have already dug the treasure and set a trap.

Then the loyal seamen travel to the boat and return to the mainland and live their lives.

Jim Hawkins is the main character in this story. He must learn who to trust and who not to trust. Captain Long John Silver is very deceiving and that leads to trouble for Jim. Jim likes Captain John Silver because he “made himself the most interesting companion” when Jim first meets him. Also, when he first meets John he believed the “innocence of Long John Silver.”

Jim realizes his mistake when he hides in the apple barrel. He hears Long John Silver talking about mutiny. Long John is “using the same words of flattery as he had used on me (Jim)” on the mutineers. However, Jim makes another mistake when he trusts Long John again.

The story began when Lucy and Edmund were visiting Eustace on Earth. While they were looking at a picture of a boat in the ocean, suddenly it became real. After they fell into the picture and began to drown, sailors from the boat rescued them. Lucy and Edmund discovered that the boat belonged to their friends in Narnia, Prince Caspian and Reepicheep, a talking mouse. The three children from Earth joined the sailors to find the seven banished lords and possibly sail to the end of the world.

Their first destination was the Lone Islands which on Caspian and the children from earth were captured and were made slaves. However, Caspian was sold to one of the lords. Caspian was freed and formed a plan that they would make the king of the Lone Islands think they had a large army and make him surrender his throne. After they do this, the lord is made king and the children are freed.

On the next island, they found one of the lord's arm bands and assumed he had died on this island. When they left that island they confronted a sea monster. The ship almost was crushed but they escaped. They came to another island on which they found a pool. There was a statue of a man in the pool. They figured out that the statue was a lord whom the water had turned to gold.

Once again, they traveled to an island and helped invisible people become visible by reading a magician's spell book. When they left that island they came to a black mist. After traveling through it they heard a voice. Because the voice was from one of the lords, so they brought him onto their ship. They docked on a small island where they found the three remaining lords were asleep at a banquet. Caspian learned that in order to waken them, he must travel to the end of the world and leave one member there. When they got to the end of the world, Reepicheep was left behind because he thought that after the end of the earth was Aslan's country. The three children went with Reepicheep and Aslan sent them back to Earth.

In the beginning of this story, Eustace was annoying and disrespectful. In front of Reepicheep, the mouse, Eustace blurted out, “I hate mice, they're silly and vulgar and-and sentimental.” Again, he said to the mouse “what on earth's that. Take it away, the horrid thing.” When Eustace asked “whether there was a sign of the storm getting less, but Caspian said, "What storm!"” This showed us that Eustace was being annoying when he kept on complaining.

However, after Eustace had been a dragon he became courageous and useful. He makes this change because when he is in the dragon's cave he thinks he is seeing the dragon. He is really looking at himself. Then he realizes how horrible he had become. When Eustace started to help the sailors “it was clear to everyone that Eustace's character had improved.” When the sea monster was attacking the ship Eustace “now did the first brave thing he had ever done. As soon as the serpent's body was near enough he began hacking at it with all his might.” When Eustace was on the island as a dragon he “was very anxious to help. He flew over the whole island and found that it was inhabited by only goats and droves of old swine. Of these he brought back many provisions.”

The setting in the beginning of the story was populated and corrupt or dangerous. The islands were full of corrupt leaders and society. As the story went on the setting became less populated but remained corrupt or dangerous. In the beginning of the story, when they landed on the Lone Islands, “there was slave merchants dressed in black.” The three children “were rowed out to a slave ship and taken to a long, rather dark place.”

The next place they went to an island with a dragon. Eustace “had been surprised at the dragon's behavior” on the island. The dragon “that came out of the cave was nothing he would have imagined.” The population got smaller; there was only “goats and droves of wild swine” besides the dragon.

They landed on another island. This island had “water that turned things into gold.” This was dangerous because a lord they were looking for “undressed at the top of the hill and dived into the pool.”

They traveled to an island inhabited by a small group of people. The people that inhabited this island were “wielding spears” and threatened them to do what they want. Then they traveled to an island “surrounded by a dark mist.” The island was “an accursed place.”

Because Eustace changed from useless to useful and the setting changed from being corrupt and dangerous to less populated but still corrupt this means that Eustace always had the capability to do evil actions because the corruptness was still there. However, since the population got smaller and smaller Eustace started to have more control of his actions and stop himself from doing evil actions.

Through an opening in a wall at their school two young students, Eustace and Jill, enter a passage into Narnia. They are given a mission by Aslan, the mighty lion, to find the missing prince, Prince Rilian, son of the old king, Caspian. They are given clues which are to help them find Rilian. These clues were 1: Eustace will meet an old friend to whom he must greet immediately, 2: They must journey till they reach the ruined city of the giants, 3: they will find writing on a stone; follow the commands on the stone, 4: The man who asks them to do something in the name of Aslan is the prince.

When Eustace and Jill are traveling in the forest on the mountain they continually argue. They are literally blown off the mountain and land in a distant city. They converse with an owl and are later carried off by him to a meeting place where there were numerous intelligent owls. The owls help Jill and Eustace by flying them to the land of the Marsh-Wiggles, who were “a people who like privacy.” They lived by “little islands covered with countless channels of water.” They meet a solemn Marsh-Wiggle named Puddleglum who is “all arms and legs”. He had “greeny-gray hair over his large ears, had a sharp nose, and was with rather sunken cheeks.” He desires to help them and they let him join in their quest.

Jill, Eustace, and Puddleglum travel together to the seemingly bottomless gorge where they come across frightening giants. They proceed to a giant bridge where they greet a strange knight in black and a young woman, both on horseback. This encounter may seem meaningless but is involved with the story later on. The black knight is actually the prince and the woman is a witch. They stop at a city called Harfang. Harfang is no ordinary city but a home to seemingly peaceful giants. However, these giants were actually scheming against Eustace and Co. the entire time.

While running away from the cunning giants they fall into a dark tunnel which slopes significantly downward. They are surprised to see hundreds of thousands of different creatures (mainly gnomes) living in a dark, underground kingdom. Again, Eustace and Jill are continually arguing. They talk with the same knight they saw on the bridge. They learn that every night he becomes wild and mad. So each night, they would tie him to a silver chair in order to restrain his rampage. While they are in the room of the rampaging knight he fulfills clue given by Aslan by speaking the words “in the name of Aslan” that identified him as the prince. The prince had been put under a spell by a witch (the lady next to him at the bridge) and the silver chair continued to renew the spell. The prince destroys the chair by using his sword and the curse is lifted.

After the spell is broken, the witch enters the room and tries to place a curse confuse them by hypnotizing them. However, they resist her spell by enabling pain and the prince kills her. They journey through the tunnels with a meager amount of light. They make it out of the underground kingdom and into a fruitful land with peaceful inhabitants. Here they are healed of their injuries and Rilian returns home. Jill and Eustace are then sent back to their school.

The connection I found between the setting and character study was that every time the setting is comfortable, Jill and Eustace get along with each other. Whenever the setting is uncomfortable, they have a hard time getting along.

Jill and Eustace were in a “very lonely forest” and “there was not a breath of wind, there was a sort of background of immense silence.” While they were here Eustace talked to Jill in an unkind way by saying, “What are you doing Pole? Come back- blithering idiot!”

They were underground in a “hot, dirty cave” and “it was a very sad place”. It was also a “very nasty place” and “it was hot. Jill felt she was being smothered.” This place “was full of a dim, drowsy radiance.” This place was almost unbearable to Jill, “And when, as they went on, the cave got lower and narrower, and when, at last, the light-bearer stood aside, and the gnomes, one by one, stooped down (all except the smallest ones) and stepped into a little dark crack and disappeared, she felt she could bear it no longer. "I can"t go in there, I can't! I can't! I won't' she (Jill) panted.'” Eustace tried to calm Jill down while there are in this place but Jill responded, “Oh, you don't understand. I can't,” wailed Jill. Again we see Eustace and Jill struggling to get along.

I think what C.S. Lewis was trying to show was that the things around you, both physical things and people can alter how you think and act. Eustace and Jill's actions and thoughts are indeed altered by their surrounding environment.

The Mountain of Aslan, at the beginning and end of the story, is the Mountain of God because Aslan is God. Aslan is shown to be God because when Eustace “set his teeth and drove the thorn into the Lion's paw. And there came out a great drop of blood, redder than all the redness that you have ever imagined. And it splashed over the body of the dead King. And the King began to be changed. His white beard turned to yellow and his wrinkles were smoothed, and his eyes opened, and suddenly he leaped up and stood before them- a very young man.” Jesus Christ died for us and his death (blood) saved us from sins.

Because we were saved from our sins we will be born again or renewed and we will become better than we were before. Jesus, the Son, is God so his blood is God's blood. Therefore, Aslan must be God because he uses the blood of himself to renew the dead king and make him born again. Also Aslan says, “He has died. Most people have, you know. Even I have.” This proves that C.S. Lewis was trying to point to Jesus' death because Aslan tells us that he has also died. And because he is living then he has resurrected.

Eustace and Jill are at the Mountain of God, the dwelling place of God, at the beginning and end of the story which means that they have been reborn and become better people by confronting Aslan at the mountain for a second time( Christ's second coming, they have matured. This is true because the Mountain Of God symbolizes Heaven and when we are born again by God we go to Heaven. This is what I think C.S. Lewis was trying to get at. However, we are Catholics and do not believe in being “reborn”. C.S. Lewis was Protestant so he had different beliefs.

In conclusion, this book was meant to tell us that we must allow ourselves to be continually converted by God. We cannot allow our environment or our culture of death to influence us in anyway. If that happens, we will not be able to open ourselves to God After they have already been influenced by their environment, they go through the process of opening themselves up to God when they are being taken care of by the Dwarves and the Centaurs by giving them food, water, and shelter because it as scarce in the tunnels and be converted. Eustace and Jill began their journey on the mountain to represent that we all come from God and to return to God.

During one night, Charles Wallace's father receives a phone call from the President telling him of the threat that Mad Dog Branzillo made. He had threatened that he would start a nuclear war that could potentially destroy the world. During that same night, Calvin's mother, who was the mother-in-law of Meg, gives Charles Wallace a strange rune meant to help him along his mission to stop Branzillo.

Charles Wallace goes to his star-watching rock and says the first part of the rune. Immediately after a unicorn, Gaudior, appears to help Charles undertake the journey that lay ahead. In order to stop Branzillo, they must travel through time and change a Might-Have-Been, which are events that could happen or might have happened, and stop Branzillo. In order to change the Might-Have-Beens they must find out about Mad Dog's past. But they can only travel through time in that spot and cannot control where they go in time. Also, while they are traveling through time Echthroi, the source of all evil, will try to disrupt their travel and throw them into oblivion. Charles has the ability to go “within” people, which means he can become that person but can't control them. This would enable him to find out about Branzillo's past.

Charles and Gaudior travel through time and end up in a time where Charles becomes within a boy, Harcels, who was a Native American who was over a millennium ago. Charles also becomes Madoc, a man who traveled; he becomes Brandon Llawcae, a settler who was from Wales, Mrs. O'Keefe's brother, Chuck Maddox, which takes place during Mrs. O' Keefe's childhood. Lastly, Charles goes within Matthew Maddox, a talented writer during the Civil War who wrote a story about someone connected to Mad Dog.

All these people have connections with Mad Dog but a greater connection is discovered when two Welsh princes come to America to avoid civil war at there own country. During their stay at America, one of the brothers, Gwyddyr, turns on his brother, Madoc, and tries to conquer the land they had just found. When Madoc defeated Gwyddyr, Gwyddyr flees to South America, to a city were Branzillo is from, and settles there. Both of the brothers were married to natives and become part of the Indian culture. Hundreds of years later, descendants of both brothers marry and Branzillo comes from them eventually. However, thanks to Charles changing a Might-Have-Been, descendants of the Madoc line marry resulting in Branzillo being born in a peaceful environment, thwarting the nuclear threat.

This book contains stories which parallels to the story of Cain and Abel. Gwyddyr causes trouble when he grows jealous of his brother, Madoc, is in love with someone who is also loved by him. Gwyddyr fights Madoc but eventually losses the battle. Cain grows jealous of his Abel just like in the book. This theme repeats throughout the story, for example, the story about Chuck. Duthbert Mortmain loved Chuck's mother and was jealous of her husband. Once Chuck's father dies Duthbert marries Chuck's mother. Even though Duthbert didn't make an attempt on Chuck's father's life, which happened in the other stories, he did fight his opposition. His opposition was Chuck, who had always been against the marriage. He hits Chuck which results in Chuck receiving a mental disability.

The hero of the story, Charles Wallace, travels through time with Gaudior, but they can't control the “wind”, which is what controls their time travel. Oddly enough, whoever Charles Wallace goes within is similar to him which came from Gaudior saying to Charles, “You know, you are who you have gone within.” This plays into the theme that if you are around someone you can be influenced by that person. In this case, Charles is influenced by good a person which is why Charles matures throughout the story.

The rune in the story symbolizes a prayer which I think is St. Michael's Prayer. This prayer was developed to call on Michael to defeat the temptations of the devil which is what Charles is doing, he is calling for help. While “Goodman Higgins and Pastor Mortmain led Zylle across the dusty compound and up the steps to the gallows,” Brandon, who at the time was Charles, called “to Heaven and all its power….and the lighting with its rapid wrath.” Brandon is calling on Heaven (St. Michael) to save from Zylle from being hanged and Michael saves Zylle. This is one example of many examples of Heaven helping Charles, in fact, in every chapter.

In conclusion, this book is teaching us the power of prayer, in every adversity that Charles Wallace and Gaudior faced; they called “to Heaven and all its power”. The theme of jealousy was telling me what makes people avoid prayer; the jealous people will not take into consideration what can accomplish for them when you ask for their help like Charles did.