Around the World in 80 Days: Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

The Elephant

The Parsee’s elephant in India is a symbol of the undeveloped world in the novel. While India, at the time in which the story takes place, was well under Britain’s control, the land was still very much what it had been for thousands of years: a landscape of thick forests teeming with rich local cultures and centuries-old religious traditions. At first, the Parsee feels reluctant to sell Fogg his elephant, signaling Indian culture’s close connection to nature and animals. Fogg and his crew are, at first, dismayed at the thought of traveling by what they considered to be an uncivilized mode of transportation, but the elephant proves to be reliable and efficient, and the animal ultimately gets Fogg to where he needs to go. The elephant also proves to be a good “getaway” vehicle when Fogg needs to escape. The elephant reveals that some of the “old ways” of getting from here to there are just as good as the more modern modes of transportation, and emphasizes the unfairness and wrongness of assuming one culture is superior to another.

Weather

Weather, like time, symbolizes the forces that are outside human control. The weather represents an unorderly, unpredictable entity that cannot be tamed, no matter how much Fogg plans for the forecast ahead of time. At the beginning of the story, Fogg thinks he has taken sufficient account of the inevitable impact weather will have on his trip by assuredly claiming to his Reform Club members that he’s allotted time in his calculations for bad weather. However, weather affects Fogg’s trip constantly and diverts and redirects Fogg’s plans over and over again. In some ways, weather helps Fogg, such as earning him an extra day on his way to Singapore. But more often, the weather becomes a huge obstacle, often manifesting as the storms and typhoons that threaten to block Fogg from crossing oceans and making connections on time. Here, weather symbolizes civilization’s futile attempts to control the natural world. Like the forces of luck and risk, weather provides just as much as it takes away.

The Reform Clubhouse

The Reform Clubhouse represents modern British society and its grand perspectives and motivations in creating the modern world in the nineteenth century. Inside the Reform Club walls, Fogg reads newspapers and plays games with other members. One of his fellow whist players is a beer brewer, but for the most part, the Reform Club is an insular world of upper-class society in London. Inside the club, Fogg makes grand conjectures about the state of the world, but when he actually steps foot in these other countries, Fogg finds that things are quite different than he believed, like when he is surprised to learn that, despite what’s reported in newspapers, the railroad track does not yet stretch across India. The Reform Club symbolizes the peak of the modern world in the nineteenth century as well as the misconceptions, goals, and ambitions that lie within Britain at that time.

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