(Re) Finding (Captain) Nemo
As is sometimes the case, I found myself out of things to read. I located a few Barnes & Nobles classics around the house and picked up Mysterious Island by Jules Verne. But I also had 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. How much did I actually remember of that book, I wondered? After all, Mysterious Island is a direct sequel. So I decided to re-read Leagues, instead. Because once I started thinking about it, I realized I couldn’t have been older than ten when I first read it. This is not a book for ten-year-olds. I doubt I absorbed much of it, at the time.
It was also of interest to me as I have long since written
an homage of sorts, Hurricane Regina, as an intersection between Verne, Clive Cussler,
and Robert Heinlein. His classic was the most murky in my mind as I did so, and
I was curious as to what similarities existed beyond the most obvious.
I’m glad I re-read it. I had my first ‘duh’ moment before I
had finished with the biography included before the actual story. He wrote it
in French! This seems wildly obvious, but I had never considered that until
just a few weeks ago. This affects nothing, and everything. How odd that such a
basic fact can evade knowledge. Consequently, I realized I had a lot to learn.
Never underestimate the value of a, now maligned in some circles,
classical education. Mr. Verne piles on scads of oceanography, geography,
history, engineering, Greek and Roman mythology, marine biology, and so much
more, to the point of near exhaustion, at times, that you cannot help but walk
away from this novel more informed than you were before you read it. I don’t know many college graduates in this
day and age with his breadth of knowledge.
Granted, it’s a bit heavy-handed, at times. The descriptions
of marine life by genus and species sometimes feels like cataloging. This is often
counterbalanced by very poetic prose. It’s a curious mix. Of course, this is
all in perfect harmony with the lead character, himself both a scholar and
enthusiast. His conveyance of location, direction, time, speed of travel, and depth
is similarly detailed in its ultra-realism, and contributes greatly to the
overall immersion you receive. Although Verne’s travels abroad were all above
sea level, Leagues gives the impression that he himself had indeed spent a
considerable amount of time exploring the ocean’s depths in person.
Verne also manages to establish himself as an early
proponent of ecology. Numerous passages exist lamenting overfishing and the
despoiling of the ocean ecosystems by man. At the same time, the crew of the
Nautilus gleefully kill and eat almost every creature they encounter in
abundance. It’s a convergence of theory and practice that I’m not sure he was
aware of as he wrote it. Teary paragraphs decrying the destruction of ocean
life are met with scenes of hauling in great nets of wildlife to stock their
seemingly infinitely accommodating larders. Not even birds and quadrupeds are
safe from their lust for dietary variety. Of course, their hauls are but a drop
in literal oceans, in terms of scale.
His characterizations are not the most fleshed out
personalities in literature, to be sure. Robert Louis Stevenson basically
called them all Mary Sues. For the most part, they seem to exhibit bravery and
apprehension, and little else. They do tend to have slightly more depth than I
am giving them credit for, but not by much. This is simply not that sort of
literature. The protagonist is primarily wonderous, his sidekick servile and
loyal, their Canadian compatriot angry and dissatisfied.
Captain Nemo himself proves to be the most enigmatic of the
characters, driven by events that are merely alluded to, and is alternatingly
gruff, expansive, mysterious, and vindictive. He is a true anarchist, albeit
not of the most principled sort. Sometimes motivated by self-preservation, he’s
also at times suicidal. He’s also a bit of a pirate, although the riches he
plunders are the possessions of others only in theory. I get the impression
that he was perhaps the inspiration for Ayn Rand’s character Ragnar Danneskjold.
Nemo is easily the most complex
character, taking center stage while at the same time remaining in the
background for much of the novel. Nowhere is the dichotomy of his nature more
apparent than in the scene whereby this champion of the ocean slaughters a huge
pod of sperm whales because he thinks they’re assholes.
In terms of pacing and suspense, Verne is spot on. He
manages to convey the feeling of being confined and losing your sense of time
quite well, and also shows how if affects the characters involved. There are
numerous events that break up the monotony, compelling you forward with genuine
concern for the outcome of each.
As an early work of speculative science fiction, Verne is
amazingly on the mark. There are very few things he got wrong in any real
sense. The workings of the sub are complex but almost entirely accurate. His
understanding of the value of electricity is impressive. It doesn’t matter that
his view of battery storage was unworkable when he wrote the novel, in terms of
size and output. They did become feasible. He speaks of the possibility of a
land mass in Antarctica, which was at the time only a theory, although actually
planting a flag at the exact location of the pole would have been unworkable in
terms of geography without a lengthy and perilous trek on foot. Most fascinatingly,
he talks about the few existing undersea telegraph cables connecting the U.S.
to Europe, able to transmit information with a delay of .32 seconds.
Even as a study of etymology, this novel has value, with
words that have changed meaning or spelling over time, primarily with things
like ingulfed/engulfed, and to-day/to-tomorrow. As scholar Victoria Blake, who wrote the
forward of this edition notes, it is not without error. The relative density of
steel to water is off by a degree of magnitude. She attributes this to a likely
translation issue, but as a researcher/literary historian, I would expect her
to clear this matter up fully. Most distressingly, the very last page refers to
“Captain Nero”, and I’m pretty sure that is not intentional. Come on, B &
N. Do better.
Another extremely interesting detail I leaned when reading
this again for the first time, the word squid is never used, except as a
footnote included by Blake. The Nautilus and crew are in fact attacked by what
is called a giant cuttlefish.
If I may be so bold and pretentious as to level an actual
criticism at this work, it would be the ending. I haven’t read such a
slapped-together deus ex machina device since Tom Sawyer wanders into the end
of Huckleberry Finn. There is great peril as the protagonists seek to make
their escape, gripping suspense, and then boom… it’s over. They’re safe. Mr. Aronnax
himself, the principal character, doesn’t know what happened, or how. I realize
writing an epic novel like this one is a labor, and I can definitely relate to
wanting to wrap something up when you are near the end. But surely a work of
this scope merits more than a half-page conclusion. Verne’s editors, instead of
making him remove crucial pieces of Nemo’s backstory, should have demanded a
more fleshed-out ending.
So, how does my own oceanic novel relate to this classic
tale?
I won’t even pretend it’s in the same, erm, league, of course.
I made no attempt at hard science. My own mysterious captain and his impossible
sub are definitely tributes. Both are driven by unknown motivations. The crews of the two subs are similar in that
mine are clones, and Nemo’s are almost entirely without personality or
dialogue. And there are giant squid in both. And that’s basically it. It’s an homage of
sorts, but I’d like to think the story itself is my own. Without the
groundbreaking work of Mr. Jules Verne, it is unlikely that my own novella
would even exist.
Onward to The Mysterious Island I go…
Preview the audiobook of Hurricane Regina, read by Kenneth Lee.
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