Student Question
Describe the subterranean forests in Journey to the Center of the Earth.
Quick answer:
The subterranean forests are dominated by giant mushrooms and "lowly shrubs" that have grown to massive sizes due to the unique conditions of heat and moisture underground. These forests are peculiar and unsettling, with the mushrooms resembling tall, colorless trees. Axel, the protagonist, finds the environment strange and oppressive, feeling a sense of relief upon leaving the cold, damp shadows of this eerie landscape.
The mushroom forest in the subterranean regions has a very strange aspect. At first Axel takes the mushrooms for tall and peculiarly motionless, colourless trees. Here, however, the forests contain not trees, as on the surface of the earth, but various growths that on earth normally remain small and underfoot. Due to the different conditions inside the earth, however, such as higher levels of heat and moisture, the mushrooms and various 'lowly shrubs' have sprouted to massive heights. Therefore they are weird and unnatural in appearance.
Axel feels rather uneasy while in the mushroom forest:
...it was mortally cold under those fleshy vaults. For half an hour we wandered about those damp shadows, and it was with a feeling of relief that I regained the sea-shore. (chapter 29)
The mushroom forest, then, appears as a somewhat unsettling place. Even if there is a perfectly logical, scientific explanation for these forests inside the earth, Axel finds it very strange to be among them.
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