Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne

Main Characters Description

• Professor Pierre Aronnax is the story's narrator and a Professor of Marine Biology who lectures around Europe. When the story begins, he believes the “creature” damaging ships around Europe is a giant narwhal. (He cites the holes it creates in the sides and bottoms of ships as evidence.) He presents himself as someone of immense knowledge (playing into his last name, which is intentionally similar to the word “arrogance”).

• Captain Nemo is the mysterious captain of the Nautilus submarine. He built the ship in secret in order to, as he tells the captured Aronnax, Ned Land, and Conseil, to get away from land and the people on it. Throughout, it remains unclear exactly who Captain Nemo is. His nationality, age, and real name are unknown. He chose to exile himself, he implies, but why is a mystery that Aronnax is obsessed with.

• Ned Land is one of the three captured members of the crew of Abraham Lincoln who ends up both saved and imprisoned by Captain Nemo on the Nautilus. He's middle-aged and a skilled harpooner. This means that he is enlisted on various ships in order to hunt and kill large game, like whales. He is French-Canadian, something that Aronnax implies links the two and also separates them as Aronnax is purely French.

Movie Adaptation: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a 1954 American Technicolor science fiction-adventure film and one of the first features shot in CinemaScope. It was personally produced by Walt Disney through Walt Disney Productions, directed by Richard Fleischer, and stars Kirk Douglas, James Mason, Paul Lukas, and Peter Lorre. It was also the first feature-length Disney film to be distributed by Buena Vista Distribution. The film is adapted from Jules Verne's 1870 novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas.

The film was a critical and commercial success, being especially remembered for the fight with a giant squid, and Mason's definitive performance as the charismatic anti-hero Captain Nemo. It won two Academy Awards for Best Art Direction and Best Special Effects. It is considered an early precursor of the steampunk genre. Walt Disney first expressed interest in an adaptation of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea after seeing marine footage and storyboards made by Harper Goff during the production of True-Life Adventures.

Jules Verne: More About the Author of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Jules Gabriel Verne was a French novelist, poet, and playwright. Jules Verne was a prolific writer. He is often referred to as the “father of science fiction.” Verne became famous for his Voyages Extraordinaires, a series of 54 novels that were originally published by the French publisher and author Pierre-Jules Hetzel.

His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages extraordinaires, a series of bestselling adventure novels including Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1872). His novels, always well documented, are generally set in the second half of the 19th century, taking into account the technological advances of the time.

In addition to his novels, he wrote numerous plays, short stories, autobiographical accounts, poetry, songs and scientific, artistic and literary studies. His work has been adapted for film and television since the beginning of cinema, as well as for comic books, theater, opera, music and video games.

Other Famous Books by Jules Verne

• Journey to the Centre of the Earth
• Around the World in 80 Days
• The Mysterious Island
• Five Weeks in a Balloon
• Around the Moon

Built with ❤ by Elisa Amaral