To what extent Captain Nemo can live up to his ideals

Nemo means nobody in Latin, which reveals that the author thinks subjectively that no one can be Captain Nemo. This seems to presage Nemo’s tragic fate from the very beginning, and the author’s belief that his ideal will never come true.

In the second part of Verne’s trilogy, 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, Captain Nemo finally chose to blow up the island because of the enemy’s invasion and piloted the Nautilus to dive into the sea. Tragically, Nemo himself dies of his wounds.

However, does his death mark a defeat for anti-colonialism and freedom? When Nemo was near death, his breast was swelling with sobs and he whispered to himself, “Almighty God! enough! enough!” (Verne, 1994, part II, chapter XXII). This indicates his physical death, but at the end of the story, Professor Arronax, Conseil and Ned Land escape from the Nautilus and spread the word of what they had seen and heard on board. The story of the Nautilus may inspire readers to yearn for peace and resist aggression. Hence, to a certain extent, ideal of Nemo did not fail.

Through the story of “Mysterious Island”, we can know that Nemo is an Indian prince, he found a Spanish shipwreck containing a large amount of gold treasure at the bottom of the sea, and secretly used the treasure to support the struggle for national independence. But it did not do much to change the course of the bloody war.

Thus, Nemo tried to build a kind of self-sufficient cosmogony, which has its own rules, its own time, space, fulfilment, and even existential principle in the ship (Barthes, 2010, p.102). In this enclosed space, Nemo temporarily managed to keep everyone on board fed, clothed, and free from war, although this was in exchange for freedom. Nevertheless, from my perspective, this seemingly happy moments did not represent that Nemo had achieved his dream. The balance on the ship is fragile, and when Nemo choose to live in seclusion, they give up the right to communicate with the rest of the world, passively observing the views of others rather than exporting their own. So, in the best of circumstances, only the people on board would live in peace, and it would be very difficult for outsiders to join in.  Hence, he could hardly keep most people away from national oppression and colonialism.

Besides, there is no mention of the ship’s economic system in the book, whether they were distributed according to work or according to need. Why does the captain Nemo have the ultimate power and get the best food and room? All these signs suggested that the Nautilus was probably Nemo’s utopia, not all the crew’s. Then such a closed culture can possibly become totalitarian in the end.

Reference

Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues under the Sea Electronic Edition, 1994, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/164/164-h/164-h.htm#chap0222

Roland Barthes. “Nautilus et Bateau ivre.” Mythologies. Édition illustrée, Jacqueline Guittard, Editor (Paris: Seuil, 2010), 102.