Nemo captain

Presentation

Erudite character, genious engineer, the Nemo captain is a dark and mysterious man, who hiding place his true identity behind an allusion to the episode of Ulysses and Polyphème in the Odyssée. Haunted by a traumatic past, it gave up the company of the men and scum the seas in a spirit of scientific research and technique (multiple explorations to which the Nautilus is delivered), of justice (its assistance with the Greek revolutionists) and of revenge (its relentless extermination of the ships beating “a certain house” not specified in Twenty thousand miles under the seas ).

Its history is revealed in the mysterious Island : it is actually about a prince, wire of a Indian Râja and nephew of Tipû Sâhib (real character). Enthusiast of science and Occidental culture while keeping its Indian identity, it dedicates a wild hatred with the Great Britain since the setting in slavery of its people and the murder of his wife and her children. After the Revolt of Cipayes, it is solved to put at execution the plans of the Nautilus , at the origin envisaged like vessel of exploration, in the greatest secrecy, on a deserted island. It is consequently put to foam the seas with a devoted crew all, of all nations.

It finds its end, with the Nautilus , in the destruction of the “Lincoln Island” at the end of the mysterious Island .

Nevertheless, the Nemo captain is evoked with nostalgia in a note appearing in the Sphinx of the ices in order to remember that the members of the crew of the Halbrane were not the first to be unloaded with the South pole:

“ Twenty-eight years later, which Mr. Jeorling had not been able to even foresee, another had seen it, another had taken foot on this point of the sphere, on March 21st, 1868. The season was advanced seven weeks, and the print of the southern winter was engraved already on these sorry areas that six months of darkness were going soon to cover. But that imported little with the extraordinary navigator of which we point out the memory. With its marvellous underwater apparatus, it could face the cold and the storms. After having crossed the ice-barrier, passed under the frozen carapace of the Antarctic Ocean, it had been able to rise until the 90e degree. There, its boat deposited it on a volcanic ground, strewn with basalt remains, slags, ashes, lava, rocks noirâtres. On the surface of this littoral the amphibians, the seals, the Morses pullulated. Above flew of the innumerable bands of waders, the chionis, alcyons them, the gigantic petrels, while the penguins lined up in motionless lines. Then, through the falls of the moraines and the stones pounces, this mysterious character climbs the stiff slopes of a peak, half porphyry, half basalt, with the point of the south pole. And, at the moment when the horizon, just to north, cut in two equal parts the solar disk, it took possession of this continent in its personal name and deployed a house with the embroidered cheesecloth of a gold NR. With broad floated an underwater boat which was called Nautilus and whose captain was called the Nemo captain. ”

Nemo forms also part of the characters brought together by Alan Moore in the Cartoon the League of the extraordinary gentlemen (and its film adaptation).

Adaptation

A film of Richard Fleischer turned in 1954, taking some minor freedoms with the work of Jules Verne, presented a spectacular version of Nautilus. Its general pace in this film marked the realizers of what one names today the Steampunk.

Resources

Twenty thousand miles under the seas: an ecological metaphor. Novel analyzes, of Lionel Dupuy.
geography of Twenty thousand miles under the seas.
the death of the Nemo captain.
Mobilis in Mobile - Nemos the Nemo captain through the multiple adaptations of the novels.

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