Though subtle, Captain Nemo’s name is an allusion to Homer’s The Odyssey. In The Odyssey, Odysseus tells the Cyclops that his name is “Nemo,” an attempt at covering up his true identity (as “nemo” is Latin for “no one”). When Captain Nemo introduces himself at the beginning of the book, it is clear that he is also covering up his true identity:
“By what name ought I to address you?”
“Sir,” replied the commander, “I am nothing to you but Captain Nemo; and you and your companions are nothing to me but the passengers of the Nautilus.”
This moment highlights how Captain Nemo prizes his freedom above all else. Not only has he chosen to live under the sea away from all of civilization but, when the opportunity presents itself for him to get to know one of his intellectual idols (Aronnax), he still refuses connection in favor of anonymity. He also likely does not want to be constrained by a name that reveals his ethnicity or nationality—his family was killed for being from a colonized nation, after all. It is clear that he enjoys the freedom of ambiguity.
In addition to this one indirect reference to The Odyssey, Verne’s novel overall is influenced by the epic. After all, it is the story of a man navigating seemingly countless threats and obstacles as he tries to find a way home.
Verne wrote Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea at the height of imperialism, and includes many allusions to imperialist leaders, such as the British navy captain James Cook, French admiral Louis Antoine de Bougainville and Portuguese commander Pedro Fernandes de Queirós (or, as Verne writes, “Quiros”). Aronnax spends a great deal of time logging the submarine’s location vis-à-vis places that such leaders had “discovered” years before, such as the following:
On the 25th of December the Nautilus sailed into the midst of the New Hebrides, discovered by Quiros in 1606, and that Bougainville explored in 1768, and to which Cook gave its present name in 1773.
That Aronnax is well-versed in the movements and histories of imperialists from various European countries shows that he respects their efforts to locate and colonize foreign lands and sees himself as an extension of them. These allusions add to readers’ sense that Aronnax holds some racist and imperialist views about indigenous people. When he comes into contact with the Papuan people, for example, he refers to them as “savages,” indicating that he believes himself—a European explorer—to be superior to them before ever meeting them. Despite Captain Nemo sharing with Aronnax that he comes from a colonized country—and challenging Aronnax’s use of the word “savages”—Aronnax does not seem to change his perceptions about European superiority.
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea incorporates a number of real historical events into its narrative, including references to famous maritime explorers, such as Matthew Fontaine Maury, Jean-François de Galaup (or “La Perouse”), and Dumont d’Urvill. For example, when the Nautilus reaches the South Pole in Part 2, Chapter 14, Aronnax connects the land they find to Maury’s theories:
The existence of this land seemed to give some colour to Maury’s theory. The ingenious American has remarked that, between the South Pole and the sixtieth parallel, the sea is covered with floating ice of enormous size, which is never met with in the North Atlantic.
Verne includes these allusions in order to show his readers that he knows about what he’s writing—readers feel pulled into the novel because it is obvious that Verne has done his research on sea exploration.
The various allusions to explorers also give Captain Nemo and Aronnax a shared language, bringing them closer despite the fact that one is holding the other captive. This comes across in a conversation the two men have in Part 1, Chapter 22:
“This D’Urville was one of your great sailors,” said the Captain to me, “one of your most intelligent navigators. He is the Captain Cook of you Frenchmen. Unfortunate man of science, after having braved the icebergs of the South Pole, the coral reefs of Oceania, the cannibals of the Pacific, to perish miserably in a railway train!”
Here Nemo speaks passionately of a French explorer, connecting with Aronnax—who is French—in the process. The two men clearly emulate these explorers and are inspired to work together to map the seas like those who came before them.
Though subtle, Verne alludes to different anti-imperialist independence movements throughout the novel. For example, in Part 2, Chapter 6, Aronnax notices Captain Nemo sending an enormous amount of money to Greece, a country that was—in the year the book was set (1868)—in the middle of a movement for independence from Ottoman rule:
Captain Nemo took the ingots one by one, and arranged them methodically in the chest, which he filled entirely. I estimated the contents at more than 4,000 lbs. weight of gold, that is to say, nearly £200,000. The chest was securely fastened, and the Captain wrote an address on the lid, in characters which must have belonged to Modern Greece.
It’s likely that Verne trusted contemporary readers would understand the subtle allusion here and infer that Captain Nemo is using his wealth to support the Greek liberation movement.
A few chapters later, Aronnax confronts Captain Nemo about all of his stolen treasure and Nemo makes it clear that he uses his wealth to support the “oppressed races on this earth” (presumably in Greece and beyond), whom he also calls “victims to avenge”:
“Barren!” he exclaimed, with animation. “Do you think then, sir, that these riches are lost because I gather them? Is it for myself alone, according to your idea, that I take the trouble to collect these treasures? Who told you that I did not make a good use of it? Do you think I am ignorant that there are suffering beings and oppressed races on this earth, miserable creatures to console, victims to avenge? Do you not understand?”
These various moments suggest that, despite living underwater and claiming to have no interest in human affairs, Nemo is deeply committed to supporting independence movements in the ways that he can (primarily by funding said resistance efforts).
Though subtle, Verne alludes to different anti-imperialist independence movements throughout the novel. For example, in Part 2, Chapter 6, Aronnax notices Captain Nemo sending an enormous amount of money to Greece, a country that was—in the year the book was set (1868)—in the middle of a movement for independence from Ottoman rule:
Captain Nemo took the ingots one by one, and arranged them methodically in the chest, which he filled entirely. I estimated the contents at more than 4,000 lbs. weight of gold, that is to say, nearly £200,000. The chest was securely fastened, and the Captain wrote an address on the lid, in characters which must have belonged to Modern Greece.
It’s likely that Verne trusted contemporary readers would understand the subtle allusion here and infer that Captain Nemo is using his wealth to support the Greek liberation movement.
A few chapters later, Aronnax confronts Captain Nemo about all of his stolen treasure and Nemo makes it clear that he uses his wealth to support the “oppressed races on this earth” (presumably in Greece and beyond), whom he also calls “victims to avenge”:
“Barren!” he exclaimed, with animation. “Do you think then, sir, that these riches are lost because I gather them? Is it for myself alone, according to your idea, that I take the trouble to collect these treasures? Who told you that I did not make a good use of it? Do you think I am ignorant that there are suffering beings and oppressed races on this earth, miserable creatures to console, victims to avenge? Do you not understand?”
These various moments suggest that, despite living underwater and claiming to have no interest in human affairs, Nemo is deeply committed to supporting independence movements in the ways that he can (primarily by funding said resistance efforts).
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea incorporates a number of real historical events into its narrative, including references to famous maritime explorers, such as Matthew Fontaine Maury, Jean-François de Galaup (or “La Perouse”), and Dumont d’Urvill. For example, when the Nautilus reaches the South Pole in Part 2, Chapter 14, Aronnax connects the land they find to Maury’s theories:
The existence of this land seemed to give some colour to Maury’s theory. The ingenious American has remarked that, between the South Pole and the sixtieth parallel, the sea is covered with floating ice of enormous size, which is never met with in the North Atlantic.
Verne includes these allusions in order to show his readers that he knows about what he’s writing—readers feel pulled into the novel because it is obvious that Verne has done his research on sea exploration.
The various allusions to explorers also give Captain Nemo and Aronnax a shared language, bringing them closer despite the fact that one is holding the other captive. This comes across in a conversation the two men have in Part 1, Chapter 22:
“This D’Urville was one of your great sailors,” said the Captain to me, “one of your most intelligent navigators. He is the Captain Cook of you Frenchmen. Unfortunate man of science, after having braved the icebergs of the South Pole, the coral reefs of Oceania, the cannibals of the Pacific, to perish miserably in a railway train!”
Here Nemo speaks passionately of a French explorer, connecting with Aronnax—who is French—in the process. The two men clearly emulate these explorers and are inspired to work together to map the seas like those who came before them.
After the brutal battle with giant squids—in which one member of the Nautilus crew is killed—Aronnax makes an allusion to Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo (referring to it as “Toilers of the Deep”), a novel that came out just a few years before Twenty Thousand Leagues:
This terrible scene of the 20th of April none of us can ever forget. I have written it under the influence of violent emotion. Since then I have revised the recital; I have read it to Conseil and to the Canadian. They found it exact as to facts, but insufficient as to effect. To paint such pictures, one must have the pen of the most illustrious of our poets, the author of “The Toilers of the Deep.”
In having Aronnax bemoan how his writing does not compare to Victor Hugo (“the most illustrious of our poets”), Verne is subtly humbling himself, while also acknowledging—in a somewhat roundabout way—that Toilers of the Sea deeply influenced Twenty Thousand Leagues. Both books are adventure novels centered on man’s relationship to the sea, including stolen money and fights with sea creatures (an octopus in Toilers of the Sea and giant squid in Twenty Thousand Leagues).
It is notable that, at the end of Toilers of the Sea, the main character drowns, showing how nature resists human control. This is echoed in the disappearance of Captain Nemo at the end of Twenty Thousand Leagues.
