Who is Nemo?

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne






The book is written before 1900 and it is going to talk about a submarine boat and over the big fear from the monsters of the ocean. This topic has bothered the human societys since decades. From the old Greeks like Homer and his book “Odyssee” till today.


The editon i´m going to review is a German translation of the french original “vingt mille lieues sous les mers” (1869/71) from Günter Jürgensmeier. The title of the book makes no rating but it already tells where the main location of the book is going to be, 20.000 miles under the sea. It sounds very futuristic thinking of the time when the book was written, where the open sea was an almost unknown place.

On the cover of the book there is also written: known and unknown places - travel adventure. What already lets us know, that it is not only going to be deep, as well it will be a long trip around the world.

Further there are a lot of drawings on the cover. On the middle of the top you can see the sun surounded from stars and some planets. Underneath is an exploting vulcano, a old vessel with the inscription of the autor´s name: Jules Verne, in front of it is a small ship.

At the right part you can see floating icebergs, in betweeen there seem to be whales and fishes. Further down on the right part you can see three Natives with spears, in the middle is a seal and in the left part the submarine boat with some lightning. The color is red ocre and the drawings are golden and black. The cover promises a great adventure where we are gonna be the spectactors. On the third page the illustrators of the 111 drawings and the 2 maps are named, they are from Alphonse de Neuville and Riou.

The table of content is seperated in two parts, the first part has 24. chapters, and the second 23. In total the book has 487 pages. It seems very well structured, but its not clear why it is seperated in two parts. The first capter ends with the coral empire and the second chapter starts with the Indian Ocean.

The audience of the book should be people wich love the ocean but also people who like adventures, travelling, different cultures and science fiction. Because like already pointed the book was written in a time where the open sea was almost unknown.

The preface has a big picture of a coast scene were a big crowd is listening to a man who points with his arm on the sea, where the plot will take action.

The story starts in 1866 in which the people of the coast, seamans, patrons, captains in Europe and in the United States were frightened from an unknown monster in the sea. They said it was faster and bigger than a whale, was fluorensce and was so strong that it could sank the big ships. So to make the shipping save the Marine of the United States send the captain Farragut on a Expedition with the ship called “Abraham Lincoln” to find out more about the terrofying rumor.

The “Abraham Lincoln” was searching a long time for the monster but had no success. Already on the way back home they suddendly saw the “monster” and followed it. They got attacked so badly that the ship sank. Only three of the crew could rescue theirselfes, suprisingly it was on the top of a submarine boat. It was Pierre Arronax, a French proffesor of natural history, the narrator of the strory, his servant Conseil and the harpoonist Ned Land.

A few days after beeing on board of the submarine boat Captain Nemo appears and explains Arronax, Conseil and Ned Land that they wont be free again. Because they entered in a big secret, Captain Nemo never wanted the public to know about the submarine boat “the Nautilus”and about his existence.

So every one of them got a own room, clothes made out fibers of mussels and they were treated very nicely with food of the ocean. He shows them the luxurios interior of the submarine boat, the art pieces, the orgal piano and the library where all important writers were present and gives them the liberty to read and to use them for their studies.




Arronax and Consiel get satisfied very fast with being guests or more prisoners on the Nautilus. They have enough to eat, to sleep and to study. Only the Canadian Ned Land is always in a bad mood and wants to escape from the Nautilus. Captain Nemo is very pleasant to them, explaining them the electricity wich in this time also wasn´t really common.

The book is an amazing trip around the world, it starts in the Caribean Sea, goes through the Pacific Ocean, passes by Hawai, Tahiti, Papuasia, what is today Papua New Guinea, where he discribes the man eaters very detailed. They keep on to the Indian Ocean, passing the end of the Red Sea through an “futuristic” tunnel, what reminds to a space ship under the Suez Channal to the Mediterranean Sea all around the world to the South Pole and further.

On the way they have impressive adventures like visiting the ocean as a scuba diver, visiting coral banks and watch how they where collecting pearls in those times. Only with a string and a stone without any oxygen. They rescue the life of one of the pearl collecters defending him from a shark. Further they get attacked from a huge octupus in the mediteranean sea and loose one of their companions in the big dark ocean. A highlight is the visit of Platons Atlantis.

In contrast to Arronax, Ned Lend is suffering of beeing locked in the Nautilus and always tries to make out possibilities to escape. Captain Nemo´s facade is hiding big misteries who nobody can look behind. He seems beeing a genius, a cultivated ingenier and a master in natural sciences.

On the 1. June of 1868 Captain Nemo drives to a ship wreck, its the “Venguer” a French war vessel which lost in a fight against the English, where hundreds of man died gloriously in place of getting prisoners.

After comming back up to the surface area they get attacked from a unknown vessel. Ned Lend shows a white tissue, doing this he gets overthrown from Captain Nemo and he obligues him to get down into the submarine boat. He swears to sink the ship, but not next to the Venguer, so the two ships wont get mixed up. He lets his Nautilus be followed far away from the other sank vessel until he starts his terrific attack and watches the vessel sink from the inside of the Nautilus.

As Arronax tries to stop him to sink the vessel, Captain Nemo shouts that he is right and doing justice.That he lost everything because of them. His home, his wife, his kids and everything. He hates them.

The 3 prisoners want to get away but have no chance after 2-3 weeks of driving further they don´t see anybody of the crew nor captain Nemo. So they start to plan their escape. Ned Land organises a key to open the port and want them to meet on top where there is a small boat.

Before Arronax escapes he sees a last time captain Nemo who is playing on the organ and passes by. On top of the Nautilus, already inside of the small boat they suddendly recognize that they got into the Malstrom, a big strudel close to the Lofoton Islands and the Faroer Islands. Maybe Captain Nemo choose this place on purpose. The Nautilus gets drawn from the strudel, like a wonder the smal boat can escape but Arronax looses his consciousness and gets it back when he lands on a fishing hut. What happened to the Natilus proffesor Arronax doesnt know.

Hopefully one day the manuscript of Captain Nemo will appear with his storyline and all his researches of the big ocean and will tell us who he was!

In the water you aren´t hold anymore in firm constructions of the society but rather freed up like an artist with his fully feeling of happyness like the scientist Arronax who was aprupt in his “perfect world of studying” an enourmes library with the biggest writers, the ocean to study in live, day by day. Or in deep depression like the Canadian who had no interest in natural studies so really felt enchanged. So is the Nautilus a piece of art out of all mixed Elements of different parts of the world, scrambled like William Burough would do and to give the things a new meaning or is it sciense would Nietzsche ask ?

When you once start reading you wont be able to take of again. It takes you to an under watertrip and lets you visualize everything perfectly and wants you to go yourself on a trip with the Nautilus. Sure some information /dates are overaged but this is normal, looking at the publishing year: 1871.

Also its fascinating how exact he describes technical progress which havent been common in this time. Even today the technic on the submarine boats are not free from defects. The “ARA San Juan” a submarine boat from the Argentinian marine seemed to have electricity problems and is missed until today. The ship was build in 1983 in Emden, Germany and rebuilt in 2007 and 2014. The captain was the 35 year old woman Eliana Krawczyk.

Further the book it is very informative, for example Consiel classifies fishes, the sharks and rays belong to the same category, this catogeries can also be seen in Cascais in the Museu do Mar, where all fishes are exposed as sculptures and catigorized.

The promise what makes the autor in the preface does not get dissolved because you know what makes the vessels sink, obviously its he submarine boat, the Nautilus. But you never know the reason what made Captain Nemo so full of hate and wants him so badly take revanche.

The book got filmed several times. The first one was “20.000 leagues under the sea” from 1916 an amazing piece from the regisseur Stuart Paton. It a silent movie wich has the first underwater images made for a film ever. A further classic one is from Richard Fleischer, 1954 with Kirk Douglas, James Mason, Paul Lucas and Peter Lorre under the same name but two hours long.

The book is is a master piece of modern literature, what combines biologic, technic science and a great adventure novel.









Sources:
William Burrough, The Electronic Revolution, (Expanded Media Editions, 1970) 10-16
Friedrich Nietzsche - On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense
Museu do Mar Rei D. Carlos, Cascais, Portugal
AFP, “44-köpfige Besatzung seit Tagen vermisst”, 18. November 2017
https://www.stuttgarter-nachrichten.de/inhalt.u-boot-verschwunden-44-koepfige-besatzung-seit-tagen-vermisst.cb6c34ec-0c6f-44f4-bfbb-d86482c83bf4.html