The Lost World

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1912

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-10

Chapters 11-16

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Themes

Adventure as a Justification of Life

Several of the characters in The Lost World view their lives as meaningless without great deeds. However, they each have different motives for pursuing their legacies. Early on, when Gladys expresses her fervent admiration for the British explorer Richard Burton, she reinforces the emphasis that British society placed on exploration, risk, and courage at the turn of the century. Undertaking a dangerous adventure was a way to make a name for oneself.

Before Gladys rebuffs his proposal, Ned gives no indication that he is unsatisfied with his life as a writer. He agrees to join the quest in order to win Gladys’s approval and hand in marriage. Because she cannot view his life as worthy without a dangerous resume, neither can Ned. He writes that he hopes to “justify his life” with the expedition (11), as if his life prior to the voyage is mundane.

Despite his previous successes, Challenger tells Ned that his eventual writings on South America “will be my life’s justification” (72). A man who has accomplished so much already still describes his life as needing justification, a grand purpose to prove that his life had significance.

Summerlee tells Ned that he goes on the trip to prove Challenger a fraud. He is a judge. His commitment to scientific certainty is the justification for his existence, as he is wholly devoted to academic rigor. If he is not actively engaged in furthering scientific knowledge—or condemning those he believes to be scientific frauds—his life has little purpose to him.

When Roxton agrees to go on the expedition, he has only been back from an adventure in Uganda for three weeks. As the novel concludes, he is already planning to return to the plateau, with Ned in tow once again. Roxton justifies his life by indulging what Ned calls his “love of danger” (151).

Much of the scorn Challenger reserves for the petty academics of the zoological institute stems from the fact that they rarely venture outside of books and laboratories to increase their knowledge. They refute his claims without having experience. This tension between scientific consensus and the need for further exploration runs throughout the novel. Expeditions help build on old knowledge by both adding to it and refining it.

Evolution, Imperialism, and Racism

Doyle paints the plateau of The Lost World as a “primitive” land that has somehow managed to escape both detection and evolution. When the party first encounters the “ape-men,” Challenger says: “The question which we have to face is whether he approaches more closely to the ape or the man. In the latter case, he may well approximate to what the vulgar call the ‘missing link’” (130).

Doyle’s descriptions of South American Indigenous people are not much more charitable than his descriptions of the humanoids. Rather, he portrays anyone in the novel who is not white and European as primitive, unevolved, and often, superstitious. When Challenger describes his first encounter with the Cucama tribespeople, he states that they are “an amiable but degraded race” (27). Ned describes Zambo, a strong man with dark skin, as “a black Hercules, as willing as any horse, and about as intelligent” (64). This description is racist and offensive, indicative of the attitudes of Doyle’s times.

Essentially, Doyle describes anyone who is not white in terms of their usefulness—or danger—to the goals of the exploration party. The Cucama, Zambo, the guides, and the anthropoids are limited to descriptions of their appearance, physical abilities, and their attitudes toward the Europeans. When the English empire was expanding, the leadership viewed its goals as noble: They would bring sophistication and culture to those they believed too stunted to achieve it on their own.

The Reliability of Scientific Proof

Arthur Conan Doyle was a committed spiritualist who believed that it was possible to communicate with the dead through mediums and séances. In light of the author’s beliefs, one can argue that his treatment of scientific rigor in The Lost World has satirical aspects. Early on, Tarp Henry, the bacteriologist, say: “I can hardly claim to take serious notice of anything that I can see with my naked eye” (11). Tarp is a scientist who studies microbes that cannot be seen without a microscope. It is the trade of scientists to experiment and deduce based on what they do see with their eyes, combined with rigorous methodology.

With Tarp’s quote, Doyle may be poking fun at the narrowminded view of scientists who refuse believe in what they cannot see. At the outset of the novel, Summerlee is one of these men. He scoffs Challenger’s claims about the plateau because he has not seen anything that meets his standards of evidence. The scientific method has skepticism built into it, which is why Summerlee puts no credence into the drawings of Maple White: he believes that Challenger forged them.

At the end of the novel, one of the skeptical academics asks: “A year ago one man said certain things. Now four men have said other and more startling ones. Was this to constitute a final proof where the matters in question were of the most revolutionary and incredible character?” (193). Even though he has heard the same story from Roxton, Ned, Summerlee, and Challenger, the academic is reluctant to accept their story as evidence. They could have all colluded to fabricate the story.

It takes Challenger producing the pterodactyl to convince the learned crowd that he is telling the truth. The climactic scene in which the pterodactyl terrorizes the auditorium can be read as either satisfying or silly. They see the truth with their eyes, and only then do they believe.

Doyle did not believe that science could answer all questions. The same scientist who doubted Challenger’s claims would also mock Doyle’s claims of psychic communication with the dead.