| 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea |
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''20,000 Leagues Under the Sea'' (or '''''Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea''''') is a classic Science Fiction novel by French writer Jules Verne ( 1828 – 1905 ), published in 1870 under the title ''Vingt mille lieues sous les mers''. The original edition, published by Hetzel , contains a number of illustrations by Alphonse De Neuville and Edouard Riou . The novel is about the fictional Captain Nemo and his Submarine , ''Nautilus'' , as seen by one of his passengers, Professor Pierre Aronnax. SYNOPSIS The story was written before modern sea-going submarines were a reality. It is narrated by Professor Aronnax, a noted Marine Biologist , who is accompanied by his faithful assistant Conseil and by a harpooner named Ned Land. As the story begins, Professor Aronnax finds himself aboard a ship which is hunting for an explanation for various incidents. It is rumored that the incidents are due to a sea monster, or some unknown form of Narwhal . When the ship is damaged by an encounter with the sea creature, the three protagonists are thrown overboard. To their surprise, they find that the sea creature is actually a large metal vehicle. They are quickly captured and brought inside the vehicle. They meet its creator, Captain Nemo, and learn that it is called ''Nautilus''. The remainder of the story follows the adventures of the protagonists in ''Nautilus''. It was built in secrecy and is commanded by the mysterious Captain Nemo ("Nemo" means "no one" in Latin and is a reference to Homer 's '' Odyssey ''). Captain Nemo's motivation is implied to be both a Scientific thirst for knowledge, and a desire for revenge on, and self imposed exile from, Civilization . Captain Nemo explains that the Submarine is Electrical ly powered, and equipped to carry out cutting edge marine biology research; he also tells his new passengers that they can never leave because he is afraid they will betray his existence to the world. Their travels take them to numerous points in the world's oceans, some of them which were known to Jules Verne from real travellers' descriptions and guesses, while others are totally fictional. Thus, the travellers witness the real Corals of the Red Sea , the wrecks of the Battle Of Vigo Bay , the Antarctic ice shelves, and the fictional, submerged Atlantis . Lastly, a group of Giant Squid s attacks the ''Nautilus'', and kills a crew member. An encounter with the Moskstraumen whirlpool off the coast of Norway gives the three prisoners an opportunity to escape. They make it back to land alive, but the fate of Captain Nemo is not revealed. NOTES Some of Verne's ideas about the not-yet-existing submarines which were laid out in this book turned out to be prophetic (such as the high speed and secret conduct of today's nuclear attack submarines), and (with diesel submarines) the necessity to surface frequently for fresh air. Verne borrowed the name "Nautilus" from one of the earliest successful submarines, built in 1800 by Robert Fulton , who later invented the first commercially successful Steamboat . The word itself is after the Chambered Nautilus , a kind of Mollusk . Verne can be also be credited with glimpsing the military possibilities of submarines, and specificially the danger which they possessed for the naval superiority of the British Navy, composed of surface warships. The fictional sinking of a British ship by Nemo's "Nautilus" was to be enacted again and again in reality, in the same waters where Verne predicted it, by German U-boats in both World Wars. No less significant, though more rarely commented on, is the very bold political vision (indeed, revolutionary for its time) represented by the character of Captain Nemo. As revealed in the later Verne book '' Mysterious Island '', Captain Nemo is an Indian, who took to the underwater life after the suppression of the 1857 Indian Mutiny in which his close family members were killed by the British. This change was made on request of Verne's publisher, . No wonder that Professor Pierre Aronnax doesn't suspect Nemo's origins, as these were explained only later, in Verne's next book. What remained in the book from the initial concept is a portrait of Tadeusz Kościuszko (Polish national hero, leader of the uprising against Russia in 1794) with inscription in Latin: "Finis Poloniae!". This, at the very zenith of and proceeding to sink British warships with impunity off the English shore itself. Thus, Captain Nemo could be credited as being a harbinger of the Third World Liberation Movements in general and the modern Indian Independence Movement in particular. It is perhaps unfortunate to note that this important aspect of Verne's book was changed during most movie realizations, and that in nearly all movies following the book he was made into a European. This was, however, corrected in '' The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen ''. RECURRING THEMES IN LATER BOOKS Verne returned to the theme of an outlaw submarine captain in his much later '' Facing The Flag ''. That book's main villain, Ker Karraje, is a completley unscrupulous pirate, acting purely and simply for gain, completley void of all the saving graces which gave Nemo - for all that he, too, was capable of ruthless killings - some nobility of character. Like Nemo, Ker Karraje plays "host" to unwilling French guests - but unlike Nemo, who manages to elude all pursuers, Karraje's career of outlawry is decively ended by the combination of an international task force and the rebellion of his French captives. Though also widely published and translated, it never got anything like the lasting popularity of "Twenty Thousand Leagues". More similar to the original Nemo, though with a less finally worked-out character, is Robur in '' Robur The Conqueror '' - a dark and flamboyant outlaw rebel using an airplane instead of a submarine. TRIVIA
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