The Lost World

Ned relays the majority of The Lost World through letters and newspaper articles. The epistolary form of the letters gives the story additional tension. Because readers know the letters were being written as events unfolded, they can’t be sure that Ned survives the adventure. Ned’s journalistic style allows Doyle to write with more description and floridity than one might include in a simple travel log. Ned wants his account to be an exciting, irresistible narrative that will both inform and entertain. In a story filled with trophies and artifacts, the letters are one more piece of evidence about their story’s truth.

Professor Challenger is one of the novel’s major characters, but he is also a symbol. His name describes him aptly: he is an iconoclast who challenges nearly everything and everyone he encounters. He is uncompromising in his pursuit of knowledge and refuses to succumb to the pressures of the scientific community, whose members see him as a liar who cares only for glory. Challenger symbolizes the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. When he says, “The individual must not monopolize what is meant for the world” (38), he reinforces the theme that knowledge belongs to the world, not to the one who discovers it.