Essay Questions

This is a novel with many layers. What genre would you say it fits into the best?

Jules Verne is known as a science fiction author, an avant-garde author, and as a children's adventure author. Each of those genres can definitely claim him as their own. This novel fits well into the genre of science fiction because of the nature of the adventure that the men have, and also because of the futuristic submarine and the equipment that is used on board. For example, the breathing equipment that the men are able to utilize offers eight hours of oxygen worn back-pack style by each diver. This is very advanced and futuristic stuff for its time. The Nautilus is also very futuristic, as it can conduct its own research whilst under the sea.

The avant-garde layer of the novel is perhaps the least recognized, because on the face of it, it does not seem to be like a political statement at all. However, Verne gives Nemo many of his own political beliefs, specifically those that recognize that some progress is an oppression of the masses, and also his view that colonial Britain was an oppressive regime. His tendency is to root for the uprising, the rebel, the underdog, and in Nemo he creates a hero who shares his viewpoint.

Finally, Verne is renowned as a children's author because of the spectacular nature of the adventures that he pens in this novel. Although only a movie can be in technicolor, the novel also seems to be in technicolor because of its larger-than-life travels through a mysterious undersea environment that is fantastical and beautiful, and innately exciting.

What is it about Nemo that makes Land immediately suspicious?

Land is immediately wary of Nemo, and although his fellow adventurers share his trepidation about the man only Land seems to ave such an immediate reaction to him. He is not a marine biologist and so there is little about Nemo's research or findings that can interest him, or take his mind off their predicament. Instead, he is well aware that they are prisoners; their prison might well have windows onto a beautiful undersea world, but it is still a prison, and the men are unable to leave. Land also seems to suffer from claustrophobia as he is panicky from the moment they set foot on the Nautilus.

Land seems suspicious of any man who literally disappears from the face of the earth and chooses to live a life under the sea where he doesn't really exist anywhere. In his view it gives Nemo the ability to act in an unlawful way because he does not have to follow any laws or rules at all. He is impressed with the vessel, but from the moment they are captured by Nemo, the only thing that he is able to think about is escape.