One of the more abstract philosophical questions explored in the novel regards the meaning of freedom. By depicting a protagonist and two other central characters who are captured as “prisoners of war” and confined to an underwater submarine totally cut off from society, the novel interrogates the importance of freedom while postulating that in almost all situations, freedom necessarily has limits. One of the central ways in which the tension between freedom and constraint emerges is through the contrasting depictions of the vast openness of the sea and the claustrophobic containment of the Nautilus. Traveling on the vessel allows a person to journey across massive distances and explore far-away areas of the globe, yet being on a submarine is also a condition defined by intense confinement. In this sense, the paradoxical experience of being both free and confined on the Nautilus indicates that the idea of total, unimpeded freedom is perhaps an illusion.
The novel’s presentation of the inextricable interrelation of freedom and constraint is best summarized by the offer Nemo makes to his prisoners shortly after their capture. Nemo has already bestowed a kind of freedom on Arronax, Conseil, and Ned by rescuing them from death after the clash between their ship, the Abraham Lincoln, and the Nautilus. Yet this rescue also involves dramatic confinement: the men find themselves on board a submarine, inside what Arronax calls a “prison cell.” As the narrative progresses it emerges that they are not really inside a cell, but instead are being offered comfortable sleeping quarters inside a submarine. They have been gifted the freedom of continued life, yet find that this freedom has strictly-imposed limits, as they must now live on board the Nautilus.
The depiction of a heavily-restricted freedom continues when Nemo proposes a particular bargain. He offers Arronax, Conseil, and Ned “liberty” in exchange for agreeing to one condition: if he asks them to confine themselves to their cabins, they will do so. Already, this can be read as an immoral imposition of constraint over other people. Yet prompted by Arronax’s questioning, the constraint Nemo is imposing is revealed to be a lot more severe than he initially indicates. He is also planning to never let the three men leave the Nautilus, meaning that they will spend the rest of their lives on a submarine and will never see their family, friends, or the rest of human society again. The fact that Nemo calls this “liberty” seems somewhat laughable, as Arronax and Ned point out. Furthermore, the situation they are in means that they have no choice but to accept Nemo’s offer, as the only other option is death. This is another way in which freedom is inherently limited by constraint. A person might theoretically have the freedom to choose between two options, but if one of these options is death, then can it really be said to be a choice at all?
In a sense, Nemo’s decision to present an offer to the three men and solicit their permission indicates that he is committed to maintaining the illusion of freedom, but that this is indeed little more than a false façade. Putting aside his reasons for doing so, it is obvious that Nemo is not really offering the men freedom, but rather placing severe constraints on them. At the same time, the novel also indicates that—at least at the beginning of the narrative—Nemo truly believes that roaming the seas in a submarine is a better form of freedom than life on ground, governed as it is by laws and norms that he finds reprehensible. Arronax conveys this idea through his observation, “In the strictest sense of the word, [Nemo] was free, because he was outside the reach of the moral code.”
Ultimately, the novel shows that there is no such thing as freedom without constraints. While in the Nautilus the men may be physically constrained as well as constrained by being placed under Nemo’s rule, on land they would be constrained by a different set of physical and social laws. While this does not excuse Nemo’s act of capturing and confining the men, it also encourages the reader to consider which forms of freedom are more desirable: the freedom of shunning conventional life and human society in favor of exploring the open ocean, or the freedom to conduct a “normal” life without the direct imposition of another person’s whims.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Freedom vs. Constraint ThemeTracker
Freedom vs. Constraint Quotes in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
“By the pluck!” he fumed. “Here are people as badly off as the Scotch for hospitality. They are gentle as cannibals. And I shouldn’t be surprised if they were man-eaters. But I’ll be right there when they start to swallow me.”
A flash of anger and contempt kindled in the eyes of the Unknown, and I had a fleeting vision of some terrible past in the life of this man. Not only had he put himself beyond the pale of human laws, but he had made himself independent of them. In the strictest sense of the word, he was free, because he was outside the reach of the moral code.
“Yes, sir, I love it! The sea is everything. It covers seven-tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and life-giving. It is an immense desert place where man is never lonely, for he sense the weaving of Creation on every hand. It is the physical embodiment of a supernatural existence.”
“Why are you so astonished, M. Arronax, at meeting savages when you set foot on a strange land? Where in all the earth are there not savages? And do you for a moment suppose them worse than other men, these fellows that you call savages?”
We were growing fast to our shell like snails, and I swear it must be easy to lead a snail’s existence. Thus, our undersea life began to seem natural to us, and we no longer thought of the days we used to spend on land.
“That Indian, my dear sir, is a member of an oppressed race. And I still am and ever shall be one with all such people.”
“Freedom may come high, but it’s worth paying for […] Who knows but that tomorrow we may be a hundred leagues away? Let chance but favor us, sir, and by ten or eleven o’clock we shall have landed on terra firma, dead or alive.”
It was an unforgettably sad day that I then passed, torn between the desire of regaining my freedom and my dislike of abandoning the marvelous ship and thus leaving my undersea studies incomplete.
I had long guessed that, whatever motive had led him to seek freedom at the bottom of the ocean, it had not been an ignoble one. I had seen that his heart still beat for the sorrows of humanity, and sensed that his immense charity was for oppressed races as well as individuals.
“What a beautiful situation to be in!” I chortled. “To overrun regions where man has never trod, depths to which even dead or inanimate matter may never more descend! Look, Captain, at these magnificent rocks, these uninhabitable grottoes. Here are the lowest known receptacles of the globe, where life is not only impossible unthinkable. What unknown sights are here? Why should we be unable to find and preserve some visible evidence of our journey as a souvenir?”
Around the “Nautilus,” above and below it, was an impenetrable wall of ice. We were prisoners to the Great Ice Barrier.
