Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Scientific Discovery and Technological Innovation
Freedom vs. Constraint
Human Intelligence and its Limits
Exploration, Imperialism, and Conquest
Nature vs. Civilization
Summary
Analysis
Arronax remains confused about where the submarine is heading. Nemo has been speaking less and less, and Arronax senses that Nemo has a “suppressed anger” within him. Arronax believes that keeping the three men captive is having a terrible impact on Nemo. On March 14, Ned enters Arronax’s room and asks how many people he believes are aboard the Nautilus. He insists on calculating the maximum number of people the submarine can hold, although Arronax isn’t sure why he wants to know this information. Nonetheless, Arronax roughly calculates how many men the submarine could contain while underwater before running out of oxygen.
Arronax’s observation that holding three people captive might be having a negative impact on Nemo is significant. By taking away the freedom of others, Nemo erodes his own humanity. While theoretically having more people on board the ship for companionship might be a positive thing, the reality is that Nemo is troubled by enacting exactly the kind of oppressive behavior that he claims to oppose.
Themes
Conseil comments that Ned is swept up in memories of his former life, and the impossible desire to return. Arronax curtly responds that he doesn’t feel especially sympathetic, however Conseil persuades him to be more understanding. They are sitting on the vessel’s platform, and spot a school of whales. Ned exclaims that it’s torture not to be able to harpoon them. Conseil suggests that Ned asks for Nemo’s permission to hunt them, and Ned immediately goes off to do so. Yet Nemo doesn’t grant it, claiming that there would be no purpose to Ned’s killing the whales except “the sheer joy of destruction.” He advises Ned to leave them alone.
On one level, Nemo’s reasoning that it is bad to kill anything unless there is a purpose to it seems legitimate, and an important facet of existing in harmony with the natural landscape. Yet it is also clear how Ned could view such a stance as arbitrary (particularly considering how many animals have already been hunted during the Nautilus’s journey thus far).
Themes
However, Nemo then points out another mass in the ocean, arguing that these are “cachalots” (sperm whales), which are “cruel, marauding creatures.” Yet rather than handing the job over to Ned, Nemo says that the Nautilus will attack the animals with its steel spur. The cachalots approach the submarine, aiming for the school of whales Ned initially pointed out. A battle takes place between the two groups of animals, which Arronax describes as a “grewsome, gorgeous fight.” After it is over, the water around them is strewn with the wounded, mutilated corpses of the creatures. Ned and Nemo exchange tense words, and Arronax worries that Ned’s resentment of Nemo is going to escalate to dangerous proportions.
While Nemo’s statements in the previous passage may have been fairly reasonable, his hatred of sperm whales appears highly arbitrary. Having developed such extensive expertise about the ocean, he imposes his opinions and rules as if they were fact. Yet as the conversations between Arronax and Ned show, there are multiple ways of knowing the ocean. As a harpooner, Ned has a different kind of expertise that is still valuable.
Themes
