Captain Nemo

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Captain Nemo is a fictional character featured in Jules Verne's novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) and The Mysterious Island (1874). "Nemo" is Latin for "no one".

Nemo, one of the most famous anti-heroes in fiction, is a mysterious figure, about whom all we know is that he identifies with the oppressed, and that he has apparently lost his wife and children. He is a scientific genius who roams the depths of the sea in his submarine, the Nautilus, which he built on a deserted island. In Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea he states that the laws of the world on the surface do not apply to him any longer, and that he has fled to the sea to escape the barbarism of the human race, with its wars and oppression. He claims to have no interest in the affairs of the world above, but occasionally intervenes to aid the oppressed, giving salvaged treasure to Cretans resisting a Turkish invasion, by saving (both physically and financially) a pearl hunter who was the unfortunate victim of a diving accident or by sinking warships or by saving the castaways from drowning in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and covertly watching over the castaways in The Mysterious Island.

Nemo goes out of his way to accommodate Professor Aronnax and his companions, and also, during a diving expedition, he risks his life to save a pearl diver from a shark attack. Nemo tries to project a stern, controlled confidence, but he is driven by a thirst for vengeance, and wracked by remorse over the deaths of his crewmembers and even by the deaths of enemy sailors. In The Mysterious Island, a still mysterious but gentler Nemo secretly helps the castaways off the island and in the end warns them that the island will perish in a volcanic eruption. Nemo dies of a mysterious illness just before the eruption and is buried in his ship that is then sunk.

In the initial draft of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Nemo was a Polish noble vengeful because of the murder of his family during the Russian repression of the Polish insurrection of 1863-1864. Verne's editor Pierre-Jules Hetzel feared a book ban in the Russian market and offending a French ally, the Russian Empire. He made Verne obscure Nemo's motivation in the first book. In the second book, Nemo reveals his Indian ancestry in a scene where he saves a South Indian fisherman while on a scuba dive.

It is in the sequel that Nemo presents himself as Prince Dakkar, the Hindu son of the Rajah of Bundelkund and nephew of Tippu Sultan, having a deep hatred against the British Raj that ruled over India. After the Indian Rebellion of 1857, he devotes himself to scientific research and develops an advanced electric submarine, the Nautilus. He and a crew of his followers cruise the seas, battling injustice, especially slavery. The gold of Spanish ships sunk at the Bay of Vigo provided them with money. For an in-depth biography, see Part 3, Chapter 16 of The Mysterious Island.

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was written between 1869 and 1870 and records the voyages of the Nautilus between 1867 and 1868. The Mysterious Island was written in 1874 but plays immediately after the American Civil War, from 1865 to 1867. This would mean that the Captain Nemo appearing in The Mysterious Island dies before the Captain Nemo in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea sets out on his undersea voyages. Also, when Captain Nemo is finally met in The Mysterious Island, he mentions having met Aronnax 16 years previously.

[edit] Captain Nemo in popular culture

Besides his original appearance in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island, Captain Nemo also appears in numerous other works though none written by Jules Verne, and all works were created decades after the original books:

• Nemo from the Disney movie Finding Nemo is named after him.
• The comic book The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (and its film adaptation), which suggests that Nemo actually faked his death in 1867.
• The Japanese anime Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, by Gainax.
• The villain in the Mighty Max episode "Around the World in Eighty Arms"
• In the Philip José Farmer novel The Other Log of Phileas Fogg, Nemo is depicted as being rather more sinister and self-serving. In addition, he is said to be an agent of the Capellans, one of two extraterrestrial factions (and, in the context of the novel, the less ethical) vying for control of the Earth and of all surviving examples of offworld technology. (As suggested by the title, Phileas Fogg is an agent of the other faction, the Eridaneans.) As well, there was allegedly more than one Captain Nemo, one of whom was James Moriarty, the nemesis of Sherlock Holmes.
• The novel Captain Nemo: The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius by K.J. Anderson.
• The novel Valhalla Rising by Clive Cussler
• The graphic novel trilogy Robur (based on Verne's Robur the Conqueror) by Jean-Marc Lofficier
• The series "Der Hexer von Salem" by German author Wolfgang Hohlbein, which is based on H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos
• The manga Captain Nemo by Jason DeAngeles and Aldin Viray.
• The developer working for Three Rings Design, mainly on Puzzle Pirates.

[edit] Portrayals

• Allen Holubar played Captain Nemo in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916)
• Lionel Barrymore played 'Count Andre Dakkar' in Mysterious Island (1929)
• Leonard Penn played Captain Nemo in the Columbia movie serial Mysterious Island (1951)
• James Mason played Captain Nemo in the Walt Disney film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954). His is the most famous portrayal.
• Herbert Lom played Captain Nemo in Mysterious Island (1961)
• Robert Ryan played Captain Nemo in Captain Nemo and the Underwater City (1969)
• Omar Sharif played Captain Nemo in La Isla misteriosa y el capitán Nemo (1973)
• Len Carlson played Captain Nemo in the very loosely connected animated series The Undersea Adventures of Captain Nemo in the mid-1970s.
• José Ferrer played Captain Nemo in the TV movie and short lived TV-series The Return of Captain Nemo (1978)
• John Bach played Captain Nemo in the TV series Mysterious Island (1995)
• Michael Caine played Captain Nemo in the ABC-TV miniseries 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1997)
• Ben Cross played Captain Nemo in the NBC-TV movie 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1997)
• Naseeruddin Shah played Captain Nemo (unmistakably as a Sikh) in the film adaptation of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)
• Patrick Stewart played Captain Nemo in the TV movie Mysterious Island (2005)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• The Mysterious Island: The Secret of the Island: Chapter XVI. A summary of his life.
• Literary analysis of the novels of Jules Verne
• The origin of Captain Nemo: at Captnemo's Home

• nemo.cl

[edit] Images

cs:Kapitán Nemo es:Capitán Nemo fr:Capitaine Nemo it:Capitano Nemo he:קפטן נמו ja:ネモ船長 pl:Kapitan Nemo pt:Capitão Nemo ru:Капитан Немо fi:Kapteeni Nemo sv:Kapten Nemo