Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)

Characters Discussed

Captain Nemo (NEE-moh), a mysterious man who designs and builds the submarine Nautilus on a desert island. It provides its own electricity and oxygen, and the sea supplies food for its crew. Nemo hates society but uses gold recovered from sunken ships to benefit the unfortunate.

Professor Pierre Aronnax (pyehr ah-roh- NAKS), of the Paris Museum of Natural History, who heads an expedition aboard the American frigate Abraham Lincoln to track down a mysterious sea creature that has attacked and sunk ships all over the world.

Ned Land, a harpooner taken along on the theory that the killer is a gigantic narwhal. An explosion aboard the Abraham Lincoln tosses him, along with Aronnax and Conseil, aboard the Nautilus, where he and Nemo save each other’s lives.

Conseil (koh[n]-SEHY), the servant of Aronnax, who shares their adventures aboard the Nautilus in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Polar Oceans. After a maelstrom overcomes the submarine in Norwegian waters, Aronnax, Land, and Conseil recover consciousness on an island, in ignorance of the fate of Captain Nemo and the Nautilus.

Bibliography:

Allotte de la Fuÿe, Marguerite. Jules Verne. Translated by Erik de Mauny. London: Staples Press, 1954. A biography of Verne by a member of his family which includes a commentary on his works, including the chapter “Nemo, Genius of the Seas.”

Butor, Michel. “The Golden Age in Jules Verne.” In Inventory. London: Cape, 1970. An excellent essay which discusses the symbolic significance of Nemo and his vessel in the context of Verne’s oeuvre.

Costello, Peter. Jules Verne: Inventor of Science Fiction. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1978. Chapter 8 of this critical biography deals with Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

Miller, Walter James. The Annotated Jules Verne: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. New York: Crowell, 1976. The first full translation of the text, elaborately annotated.

Verne, Jules. The Complete Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea: A New Translation of Jules Verne’s Science Fiction Classic. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. Eman-uel J. Mickel’s introduction offers a comprehensive study of the novel’s background and a survey of critical analyses of Verne’s work.