20000 Leagues Under the Sea

Jules Verne

Outline

• Introduction• Part I. Jules Verne• Part II. 20000 Leagues• Part III. Adaptations• Conclusion• References

Introduction

• Jules Verne is considered to be the pioneer of the science-fiction genre; wrote about space, air, and underwater travel long before it became a reality•Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is a classic science fiction published in 1870 under the title Vingt mille lieues sous les mers•The story begins when the United States government assembles an expedition to track down and destroy a sea monster•The monster is in fact a revolutionary boat, a submarine commanded by captain Nemo•The book was very successful and adapted to the silver screen as early as 1907

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Part I. Jules Verne

• Jules Verne was born in Nantes, France, to Pierre Verne, an attorney •He met and courted Honorine de Viane Morel, a widow with two daughters. They were wed in 1857•With her encouragement, he continued to write and actively try to find a publisher•Verne met Pierre-Jules Hetzel, who published Victor Hugo; Hetzel's advice improved Verne's writings, which until then had been rejected repeatedly by other publishers •In 1870, he was appointed as "Chevalier" (Knight) of the Légion d'honneur•In 1905, while ill with diabetes, Verne died at his home, 44 Boulevard Longueville, (now Boulevard Jules-Verne)

Part I. Jules Verne

• Hetzel published two volumes of Vernes' work every year, continuing this trend after Vernes' death•The most successful of these include: Voyage au centre de la terre (Journey to the Center of the Earth, 1864);•De la terre à la lune (From the Earth to the Moon, 1865); Vingt Mille Lieues sous les mers (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, 1869); and Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (Around the World in Eighty Days), which first appeared in Le Temps in 1872•This series is collectively known as "Les voyages extraordinaires" ("Extraordinary voyages")

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With the success of these

novels, Verne was able to make a living by writing. Most of his wealth came from the stage adaptations of Le tour du monde en 80 jours and Michel Str

ogoff

Part II. 20000 Leagues

•The story is narrated by Professor Aronnax, a noted marine biologist, who is accompanied by his faithful assistant Conseil and by a harpooner named Ned Land •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•The monster is in fact a boat called the Nautilus. The 3 men are captured and become prisoners of the boat’s captain, Nemo•Nemo's motivation is implied to be both ascientific thirst for knowledge, and adesire for revenge and selfimposed exile from civilization

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Nemo and Professor Aronnax, a noted

marine biologistCaptain Nemo explains that the submarine is electrically powered, and equipped to carry out cutting edge marine biology

research

Part II. 20000 LeaguesCaptain Nemo•In the initial draft of the book, Nemo was a Polish noble vengeful because of the murder of his family during the Russian repression of the Polish insurrection of 1863-1864•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 •He appears in Jules Verne's 1870 novels 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Mysterious Island and Journey Through the Impossible•His name is the Latin for "nobody" or "no one", an allusion to the answer given by Odysseus to Polyphemus in the Odyssey •He is a scientific genius who roams the depths of the sea in his submarine, the Nautilus

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Captain NemoIn nearly all picture-based works following the book, he was made into a European. This was, however, corrected in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Part II. 20000 Leagues

The Nautilus

•Verne conceived of an Indian, a "native" from a downtrodden British colony, beating the British at their own game: constructing a vessel far in advance of anything possessed by the Royal Navy

•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

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The Nautilus in the first live-action film of Walt Disney Pictures

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Fighting a squid on the Nautilus

Part III. Adaptations

•The first motion picture based on the book was made in 1907 in France by Georges Méliès

•The first American version was produced in 1916 and starred Allen Holubar as Capt. Nemo

•Walt Disney released in 1954 a movie with Kirk Douglas and James Mason

•A version of Captain Nemo and the Nautilus appeared in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)

Part III. Adaptations

•Television versions were also produced like the one with Michael Caine as Nemo (1997)•The central character in the animated movie Finding Nemo by Disney and Pixar is named after him •One of the Magic Kingdom's inaugural rides was called 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea: Submarine Voyage and was based on the novel •A ride attraction named 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is featured at the Tokyo Disney Sea in Japan opened in 2001

Finding Nemo2003

Conclusion

• 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

•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

References•http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0046672/•http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0311429/•http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0266543/•http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Verne•http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/v#a60•http://www.sil.si.edu/OnDisplay/JulesVerne100/index.htm•http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/12/derbyshire.htm•http://www.coloriages-enfants.net/nemo.htm