Tag Archives: Jules Verne

Having Tea with Jules Verne

When I found out about an online book review of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, I had to sign up. On Thursday, August 27, the St. James Literary League conducted one of their quarterly meetings online using Zoom, and just happened to select my favorite novel.

The St. James Literary League is associated with the St. James Tearoom in Albuquerque. I suspect that, pre-COVID, they held their meetings in that elegant restaurant. For this meeting, luckily, I could join in from home without traveling to New Mexico.  

Janisse Rakes hosted the event, for which there were about ten attendees. I say ‘about’ because some people came and went. Janisse started by asking people to introduce themselves and give their overall impressions of the book.

Most attendees had completed reading the novel, several for the first time. Verne’s 19th Century style of writing, combined with his interminable lists of fish, made it a difficult slog for several reviewers. Some wondered about the accuracy of Verne’s information, suspecting he must have made up many of those facts. (No, he didn’t, but the science of Marine Biology has moved on, so I wouldn’t use that novel as an ichthyology reference.)

On the positive side, they liked the steampunk nature of the book, Verne’s ahead-of-his-time predictions, and the dramatic tension between the characters.

Janisse had prepared well, and kept the discussion lively by posing questions for the group to ponder. She asked about the novel’s characters, the technology, the character names, the title of the book itself, whether Aronnax should be considered a reliable narrator, the theme of freedom in the novel, how characters changed throughout the story, and the meaning of the book’s final lines.

For me, having first read the novel a half century ago, and having re-read it several times since, I’d forgotten—and can never quite recapture—the thrill of reading it for the first time. By listening to the reviewers that night, I got a glimpse of the wonder and amazement of a first-time reader. In a sense, through their eyes, I got to read the book for the first time…again! I enjoyed that.

In my opinion, the event was a great success. I thank the St. James Tearoom, the St. James Literary League, all the attendees, and Janisse Rakes in particular for a wonderful time.

For some new stories written by modern authors, but inspired by Jules Verne’s novel, I recommend 20,000 Leagues Remembered, co-edited by Kelly A. Harmon and also…well—

Poseidon’s Scribe

August 30, 2020Permalink

It’s a Party, and You’re Invited!

Just as Jules Verne’s Nautilus traveled all over the world, we’re throwing a world-wide party. It’s on Thursday August 6th, from 8:00 PM to 9:30 PM EDT and it’s on Facebook.

We’re doing this to celebrate the launch of the new anthology 20,000 Leagues Remembered. Published on the 150th anniversary of Jules Verne’s masterwork, this book contains new stories by 16 modern authors, all paying tribute to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, that classic proto-steampunk novel of undersea adventure.

At the party, you can meet the editors and the authors of the stories and ask all the questions you want. Best of all, you can win prizes!

You’re invited! Everyone is. Now, of course, you’re wondering how to attend. Just follow these steps:

  1. Create a Facebook account if you don’t already have one.
  2. Send a friend request to me.
  3. If you don’t receive a party invitation within a day or two, send me a message to prompt me.
  4. Once you get the invitation, accept it.
  5. Share info about the party with your friends.
  6. Log into Facebook at the right date and time and join the fun.

(If anyone knows a simpler way to invite the whole world to a Facebook event, let me know in the comments to this blogpost.)

You’ve waited 150 years for this sesquicentennial celebration. It would be a shame to miss it. After all, the bicentennial won’t be until June 2070, and that’s a long time from now.

See you at the party! You’ve been cordially invited by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

July 26, 2020Permalink

Jules Verne’s Calendar Problem

Sometimes an author belatedly tries to force-fit two or more stories into the same world timeline, but it doesn’t work well. Just ask the creators of Star Trek, Star Wars, and the writers of just about any long-running comic book series.

Jules Verne tried to tie three of his novels together, recognized the chronological errors, attempted to explain them away, and ended up confusing things even more.

In Verne’s novel In Search of the Castaways (also called Captain Grant’s Children), the main characters abandon the traitorous Tom Ayrton on a deserted island in March 1865.

In the subsequent novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, three main characters are taken aboard the Nautilus in November 1867.

So far, so good. However, in The Mysterious Island, the castaways find Ayrton in December 1866. Ayrton states he was abandoned 12 years earlier, in March 1855. (Not just less than 2 years, as simple subtraction would indicate.)

Verne and his publisher included this footnote in the text:

The events which have just been briefly related are taken from a work which some of our readers have no doubt read, and which is entitled, Captain Grant’s Children. They will remark on this occasion, as well as later, some discrepancy in the dates; but later again, they will understand why the real dates were not at first given.

Thank you very much, Jules. That helps a lot.

Later in The Mysterious Island, in October 1869, the castaways come across Captain Nemo. He states it has been 16 years since the three guests came aboard the Nautilus. (It had been just shy of 2 years, but maybe time moves slower on that island.)

Again, Verne and his publisher included a footnote:

The history of Captain Nemo has, in fact, been published under the title of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Here, therefore, will apply the observation already made as to the adventures of Ayrton with regard to the discrepancy of dates. Readers should therefore refer to the note already published on this point.

Sooo, Jules, I think you’re saying you know you goofed up, and want your readers to know that you know. However, with two enigmatic footnotes that reference each other, you’re hoping we’ll accept that there’s some logical reason for these hopeless temporal contradictions.

It’s a strange attempt at chronological hand-waving, but we see what happened. Verne’s proclivity for including precise dates in his novels got the best of him. After publishing Captain Grant’s Children, he wished he had set that novel ten years earlier. That way, Ayrton would have been living alone for 12 years rather than 2, and more believably reduced to an uncivilized state.

Similarly, Verne needed a much older Captain Nemo in The Mysterious Island, an aged and lone survivor of his crew in 1869. Only then did Verne wish he’d not already written about a younger and energetic Nemo, and full crew, set in the years 1867-8.

He could have set The Mysterious Island further in the future, but he wanted his castaways to escape from a prison during the American Civil War, so that fixed his start date no later than 1865. He could have left his castaways on Lincoln Island a lot longer, say, 20 years rather than 4, but that’s stretching credibility.

If you had been Jules Verne and faced with these problems, how would you have solved them?

While you’re thinking about that, I can recommend a good book to read. 20,000 Leagues Remembered is a just-released anthology of 16 stories by modern authors, each tale inspired by…well, you can guess.

Verne wrote so many fine novels, he certainly can be pardoned for some botched stitch-up jobs. At least he’s forgiven by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

July 5, 2020Permalink

Mobili or Mobile?

Mobilis in Mobili—the motto of Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo. Or should that be Mobilis in Mobile? Let’s consider it.

Why even ask the question? Well, Verne’s publishers went back and forth, using mobili in some versions and mobile in others. It seems even they were confused.

The two are Latin words. I’m no expert in that language, but as I understand it, mobili is pronounced mob´il-ee and mobile is pronounced mob´il-ay.

Here’s the text from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, as it appears in the 1993 translation by Walter James Miller and Frederick Paul Walker:

“Each utensil, spoon, fork, knife, plate, bore a letter encircled by a motto, of which this is an exact facsimile:

Motto from Wikipedia

‘Mobile within the mobile element!’ That Latin motto was certainly appropriate for this submarine craft, so long as the preposition ‘in’ was translated as ‘within’ and not ‘upon.’ The letter N was no doubt the initial of the enigmatic person in command at the bottom of the ocean.”

Miller and Walker use their own motto image, with mobile. They state that mobili is plural and mobile is singular. Since Verne’s explanation in French (“l’element mobile”) is singular, they reason that the Latin word should be singular as well, hence mobile.

What does the motto mean? My old copy of Cassell’s New Latin Dictionary gives several meanings for mobilis including movable, easy to move, active, rapid, pliable, flexible, changeable, inconstant, with quick motion, easily, and quickly.

So we have ‘moving in a moving thing’ or ‘living free in a free world’ or ‘changing with change.’ Those first two meanings presume a singular object (moving thing or free world), so the singular mobile seems more appropriate for them.

At this point, many of you are thinking of the Monty Python Latin lesson scene in the movie Life of Brian. Now imagine John Cleese as Professor Aronnax staring at the Nautilus’ tableware and correcting Captain Nemo’s Latin!

Now that your head is spinning from that language discussion, permit me to urge you to buy and read the new anthology from Pole to Pole Publishing—20,000 Leagues Remembered. It’s available in ebook form now, and soon in paperback.

To finish up, I’ll confess to an unscholarly preference for mobili. It looks more like a Latin word than mobile, which is identical to the English word mobile.

Still, despite my preference, I guess I must be flexible and willing to change, and must therefore bow to the experts. Mobilis in Mobile it is. As you can see, there are few people more mobilis than—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 28, 2020Permalink

Launch Day!

Today’s the day! It’s launch day for the new anthology 20,000 Leagues Remembered. This book was 150 years in the making.

Let me explain. The first publication of Jules Verne’s classic Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was in serial form. It appeared in two-week intervals in a magazine, the Magasin d’éducation et de recreation, edited by Pierre-Jules Hetzel. Starting on March 20, 1869, the magazine printed a chapter or two in each issue, concluding on June 20, 1870.

The first time the public could read the novel from beginning to end was on that Wednesday in June, the first day of summer, precisely 150 years ago today.

To commemorate the sesquicentennial, Pole to Pole Publishing presents 20,000 Leagues Remembered, an anthology of works by modern authors, each inspired by Verne’s literary masterpiece. Along with the Senior Editor, Kelly A. Harmon, I co-edited the book. It’s the first book I’ve ever edited.

What will you get when you buy this book? You’ll enjoy sixteen short stories, each paying homage to the Father of Science Fiction and his novelized underwater voyage. They span the spectrum from adventures set at a time contemporary with Verne’s tale, to more thoughtful historical pieces exploring various aspects of the novel, to stories set in our present day, to others that defy easy categorization.

Our table of contents includes:
“The Ghost of Captain Nemo” by J. Woolston Carr,
“Water Whispers” by Gregory L. Norris,
“At Strange Depths” by Jason J. McCuiston,
“The Maelstrom” by Maya Chhabra,
“The Game of Hare and Hounds” by Stephen R. Wilk,
“Recruiter” by Andrew Gudgel,
“Nemo’s World” by James J.C. Kelly,
“The Silent Agenda” by Mike Adamson,
“Fools Rush In” by Allison Tebo,
“An Evening at the World’s Edge” by Alfred D. Byrd,
“A Concurrent Process” by Corrie Garrett,
“Homework Help From No One” by Demetri Capetanopoulos,
“Leviathan” by Michael D. Winkle,
“Last Year’s Water” by Nikoline Kaiser,
“Farragut’s Gambit” by M.W. Kelly, and
“Raise the Nautilus” by Eric Choi.

It’s not necessary to have read Verne’s book first. You can still enjoy these stories on their own. You might gain a deeper appreciation of them if you dive into the original first, though. For dedicated Verne scholars, be aware that some of our authors scattered ‘easter eggs’ in their stories for you—little references (some quite obscure) that will make you smile.

Where, you’re wondering, can you get your own copy of this book? I thought you’d never ask. It’s available as an ebook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.  

We’ll launch a paperback version as soon as we can, likely in a month or two. If you read my blogposts or follow me on social media, you won’t miss that announcement.

As Ned Land said, “Professor Aronnax…You talk about some future day… I’m talking about now.” Now, as in today. Launch day. After 150 years, the Nautilus sails again, thanks to Kelly A. Harmon and—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 20, 2020Permalink

How Deep is a League?

We all know Professor Aronnax and his companions traveled 20,000 leagues under the sea in Captain Nemo’s submarine, the Nautilus. Just how deep is that? It turns out, that’s the wrong question.

Let’s set that aside a moment.

You can certainly sense the excitement building—on the web, in the bookstores, and in conversations with everyone you meet. Less than a week to go, now, until the launch of the new anthology 20,000 Leagues Remembered. On Saturday, June 20, you can celebrate the 150th anniversary of the marvelous Verne novel. Remembered is a brand-new collection of stories by modern authors, each tale inspired by Jules Verne’s masterpiece. Pre-order it here.

Back to our question. What, exactly, is a league? Like most obsolete units of measurement, there is no precise answer. It dates from ancient Rome, when the leuga meant about 7500 pedes (Roman feet), or about 1.4 of our statue miles.

According to Wikipedia, the league has taken on a wide variety of lengths over the millennia. It ranged from the Roman length of 1.4 miles all the way to the Norwegian league of 11.3 miles.

That doesn’t help us much. Maybe the better question is, what did Jules Verne think a league was? Even in his time, the unit was falling out of favor. It had taken on a vague, almost poetic meaning. At one syllable, it rolled off the tongue much easier than ‘kilometer’ did.

According to the annotated Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, translated by Walter James Miller and Frederick Paul Walter, Verne used a league of 2.16 nautical miles, or 2.49 statute miles.  

So, 20,000 of Verne’s leagues would be nearly 50,000 miles. The deepest known spot in any ocean is Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, with a depth of 6.79 standard miles or 3.14 leagues.

Let’s say we stay in Verne’s fictional world. In the chapter titled “The Sargasso Sea,” the Nautilus reached a depth of 16,000 meters, which Verne translated as 4 vertical leagues.

Even if the ocean stretched all the way to Earth’s center, it could only be about 3,963 miles, or 1,592 leagues deep.

Clearly, Verne intended that the Nautilus travel 20,000 leagues horizontally in its path through the oceans. Verne later wrote a novel titled La Jangada – Huit Cents lieues sur l’Amazone, or Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon. Nobody would expect anyone to travel 800 leagues downward in a river.

For a humorous treatment of the question, we can turn to the TV show Saturday Night Live. They ran a skit, and I believe it was in Season 19, Episode 17, which originally aired on April 9, 1994. It satirized the 1954 Disney movie (then 4 decades old), and had Kelsey Grammer as Captain Nemo, Phil Harman as Ned Land, Mike Myers as Professor Aronnax, and Rob Schneider as Conseil. Here’s the transcript, and here’s a partial video clip.

The next time someone asks you how deep a league is, you have a good answer. Or, you can simply refer them to—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 14, 2020Permalink

Writing for Jules Verne

Here’s a thought experiment for you. It’s 1868, and your close friend, Jules Verne, is deathly ill. Since you’re an author too, he’s asked you to write a novel in his stead. All he’s got is a concept—a ship that travels underwater—and a title: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. You cannot refuse your friend. What will your novel be like?

Remember, nobody has ever written a novel involving a submarine. Yours will be the first. You jot down some plot ideas:

  • A single nation is the first to build and use a working military submarine. Perhaps it’s your beloved France; or the mighty seapower, Great Britain; or the science-loving and adventurous United States.
  • Some wealthy and inventive person builds a submarine and uses it purely for exploration and the advancement of Science.
  • A wealthy and evil man builds a submarine and uses it for vengeance against those who have wronged him.
  • A man is convinced Atlantis exists, and builds a submarine to search for it.
  • A sailor lost someone close (a brother?) to a specific and recognizable giant squid, and builds a submarine to pursue and destroy the creature. (If Melville’s Moby-Dick was successful, this could be too.)
  • Perhaps combine the scientist and the vengeance-obsessed pirate, and tell the story from his (or her?) point of view.
  • A sailor falls in love with a woman he believes is a mermaid, but she dives underwater. He builds a submarine and travels 20,000 leagues in search of her.
  • A treasure-hunter builds a submarine and recovers gold and other valuables from sunken ships.
  • A nation announces a huge prize for whichever privately-built submarine wins a 20,000-league race.
  • A clever criminal builds a submarine and robs banks along various coasts, escaping underwater. A detective hero must track him down.

After an hour, you’ve written down these ideas and another 20 more. Now you must select the best one. Will your eventual novel be as good as the one Jules would have written, had he not become ill?

We’ll never know, of course. It’s just a thought experiment. In real life, Verne wrote his marvelous novel himself, without your help. For its first publication, it was serialized in the Magasin d’éducation et de recreation, edited by Pierre-Jules Hetzel. The issue containing the final chapter came out on June 20, 1870.

That means June 20 of this year, just 13 days from now, is the 150th anniversary, the sesquicentennial, of that undersea classic. To commemorate this date, I’ve partnered with Kelly A. Harmon, Senior Editor at Pole to Pole Publishing, to edit an anthology of short stories inspired by Verne’s masterwork.

Titled 20,000 Leagues Remembered, it will launch on June 20. We’ve chosen 16 wonderful stories for the volume, each taking a different approach, but all born from a love of Jules Verne’s fantastic adventure novel. Each one captures some aspect of the adventure, the wonder, and the drama of Twenty Thousand Leagues.

Perhaps Verne’s book is no longer new to you, but these 16 stories will be. Beginning on June 20, you’ll be able to buy the ebook version of our anthology at Pole to Pole Publishing’s website or at other online booksellers. Pole to Pole will put out a paperback print version as soon as possible after that.

Back to that thought experiment. I’m sure you thought of some possible story ideas yourself, in addition to the ones I listed. Feel free to add a comment to this blogpost, sharing one or more of your ideas with—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 7, 2020Permalink

Jules Verne’s Impact on Undersea Fiction

The publication of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea led to a boom in books about undersea adventures. But the boom didn’t occur immediately and Verne wasn’t the sole cause.

Before explaining all that, I’ll mention an upcoming anthology of short stories titled 20,000 Leagues Remembered, scheduled for release on the 150th anniversary of Verne’s submarine novel. Until April 30, fellow editor Kelly A. Harmon and I are accepting short stories inspired by that novel. For more details and to submit your story, click here or on the cover image.

Verne wasn’t the first to venture into undersea fiction, though the predecessor works are fantasy, not science fiction. The list is brief. If I stretch the definition of undersea fiction, it includes the Biblical story of Jonah, Edgar Allan Poe’s 1831 poem “The City in the Sea,” and Theophile Gautier’s 1848 novel Les Deux Etoiles (The Two Stars). At least the latter included a submarine.

As shown by the graph, many books involving submarines appeared in the years following Verne’s undersea novel. The vast majority of these were intended for what we now call the Young Adult market, and included works by Harry Collingwood, Roy Rockwood, Luis Senarens, Victor G. Durham, Stanley R. Matthews, and Victor Appleton.

In a similar manner, Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) preceded an explosion of novels with subterranean settings. To a lesser extent, these also included many YA works.

But notice a curious thing about the two curves. The rise in subterranean fiction occurs earlier and starts its upward trend earlier than does the curve for undersea fiction.

I have three theories to explain this.

  1. The most obvious reason is that Journey to the Center was published six years before Twenty Thousand Leagues. That six-year gap doesn’t explain it all, however.
  2. I believe other authors, after reading Twenty Thousand Leagues, were daunted by the prospect of imitating that novel. To write credibly about submarines required knowledge most writers lacked. However, subterranean fiction required no geological expertise and no vehicle. Moreover, the writer’s underground setting could include any fantasy elements imaginable.
  3. I think the later peak in submarine novels had less to do with Verne than it did with the introduction of real submarines into the world’s navies. With actual submarines becoming familiar to readers, authors could pattern their fictional vehicles after real ones.

Neither of these mountain-shaped curves is due solely to Verne’s works. They both coincide with a boom in publishing adventure fiction of all kinds, not just undersea and subterranean. A drop in publishing costs, a rise in disposable income, a recognition that young people craved to read—all these factors attracted writers and publishers to new opportunities.

Still, I don’t want to understate Verne’s impact on undersea fiction either. Prior to Twenty Thousand Leagues, such works were fantasies. Afterward, they were either science fiction or real-life adventure stories.

After the publication of Twenty Thousand Leagues, it became the standard to which later submarine novels got compared. Even today, 150 years later, if you ask people to name a submarine novel, most likely they will either answer with The Hunt for Red October, or Verne’s book.

I just can’t help this fascination with stories of the sea. After all, I’m—

Poseidon’s Scribe

February 23, 2020Permalink

Jules Verne Found Alive!

French author Jules Gabriel Verne, born on this date in 1828, has been found alive at the age of 192. Reports of his death at age 77 in 1905, and accounts of his subsequent burial, apparently were in error.

Remarkable though it may seem, there is simply no other way to explain the large number of people, still today, who’ve undergone life-changing experiences after contact with Verne. This list includes people who became:

  • Astronauts or astronomers after reading From the Earth to the Moon;
  • Submariners, undersea explorers, or naval architects after reading Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea;
  • Geologists, spelunkers, or cavers after reading Journey to the Center of the Earth;
  • World travelers or circumnavigators after reading Around the World in Eighty Days; and
  • Engineers, scientists, or fiction writers after reading any of Verne’s works.
Monument to Verne at the Jardin des Plantes in Nantes

I can see you’re not buying it. Okay, Skeptic, there’s an entire Wikipedia page devoted to the Cultural Influence of Jules Verne. It lists the following people who claim to have been inspired to pursue their profession by Verne: astronaut William Anders, undersea explorer Robert Ballard, undersea explorer William Beebe, astronaut Frank Borman, polar explorer Richard E. Byrd, speleologist Norbert Casteret, undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, rocketry innovator Robert Goddard, cosmonaut Georgi Grechko, roboticist David Hanson, astronomer Edwin Hubble, submarine designer Simon Lake, astronaut Jim Lovell, French General Hubert Lyautey, inventor Guglielmo Marconi, speleologist Édouard-Alfred Martel, explorer Fridtjof Nansen, rocketry innovator Hermann Oberth, aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont, polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, aviation pioneer Igor Sikorsky, rocketry innovator Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, and rocketry innovator Wernher von Braun.

There’s a similarly long list of authors who drew inspiration from Verne. Ray Bradbury said, “We are all, in one way or another, the children of Jules Verne.”

There exists a group known as the North American Jules Verne Society. Seriously, are you likely to have an active fan club on a different continent 192 years after your birth?

Yes, Verne is still alive, if not in body, at least in spirit. Very much in spirit.

Cover image for 20,000 Leagues Remembered

You, too, can join the list of those who’ve been influenced by Verne. You can write a short story and submit it for inclusion in the upcoming anthology 20,000 Leagues Remembered. I’m co-editing it, along with Kelly A. Harmon of Pole to Pole Publishing. It’s scheduled to be published on the 150th anniversary of the publication of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea this coming June. Here you can see the cover image we’ve selected. For more information, and to submit your story, click here.

Happy 192nd Birthday, Jules, wherever you are. Today, in raising a toast to you with a glass of French wine, countless Verne fans around the world will be joining—

Poseidon’s Scribe

February 8, 2020Permalink

Character Analysis — Captain Nemo

Now we’ve come to the last major character in Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Let’s study Captain Nemo.

Before we do, I’ll remind you to submit a short story to 20,000 Leagues Remembered, a tribute anthology scheduled for publication on the 150th anniversary of Verne’s marvelous novel. Along with unparalleled word-master, Kelly A. Harmon, I’m co-editing this anthology for Pole to Pole Publishing. The official closing date is April 30, but you should submit early. We’re accepting stories as we go, and this publisher has filled each of its anthologies before the closing date. For more details, and to submit your story, click here.

Regarding Captain Nemo, I’ll restrict this analysis to what we know from the 20,000 Leagues novel and disregard information provided later in The Mysterious Island as well as later adaptations.

When readers first encounter Nemo, they learn he appears self-confident, energetic, and courageous. He is tall, of indeterminate age, and has wide-set eyes. He says, “To you, I’m simply Captain Nemo,” adding a rank to the name “no one” by which Odysseus (another sea captain) fooled the Cyclops.

In subsequent chapters, Pierre Aronnax learns Nemo is a highly intelligent scientist and engineer, has divorced entirely from the land and all nations, and is immensely wealthy. Later, Aronnax discovers Nemo cares deeply for a dying crewman and buries him on the seafloor. He assists a stricken pearl diver off the coast of India, saying he “lives in the land of the oppressed, and I am to this day, and will be until my last breath, a native of that same land!”

Nemo provides a huge sum of gold to a Grecian diver, apparently to aid in the uprising of Crete against Ottoman rule. Aronnax sees a set of paintings in Nemo’s cabin, all portraits of historical revolutionaries. Using the Nautilus’ ram, Nemo slaughters a pod of sperm whales to save some baleen whales. He then attacks and sinks a ship whose nationality is unknown to Aronnax. Following this act of destruction, Aronnax spies Nemo kneeling and weeping before a portrait of a woman and two children.

The Captain combines several opposing characteristics and sentiments:

  • He claims to support the downtrodden, yet he designed the Nautilus with a distinct two-class system, and treats Aronnax as an upper-class gentleman, in contrast to the way he treats Conseil, Land, and his own crew.
  • He financially supports freedom-seeking revolutionaries, and his Mobilis in Mobili motto implies a love of freedom, yet all who enter his Nautilus are confined aboard forever.
  • At the outset, Nemo declares, “I’m not what you term a civilized man! I’ve severed all ties with society, for reasons that I alone have the right to appreciate. Therefore I obey none of its regulations…” yet he plants a flag at the South Pole just as any imperialistic conqueror from a land nation might.

It’s well-known that Verne initially gave Nemo a detailed back-story with a former nationality and a traumatic past to explain his motivations, but his publisher urged him to delete all that. We’re left with an unexplained mystery, a Byronic Leonardo da Vinci, a marauding scientist, a sea hermit, a gentleman savage.

Like Captain Ahab, Nemo suffers from a troubled past that leads him on an obsessive oceanic quest, resulting in madness. Unlike Ahab, the cause is not as evident as a bitten-off leg, but resides only in his mind. His motives remain as invisibly submerged as his submarine.  

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading these recent blogposts about the four main figures in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. This one completes the quartet of character analyses by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

January 26, 2020Permalink