Tag Archives: jules-verne

8th Grade Literature: Just the Facts

by Dave Mathwin

As the story continues and the characters spend more time in the Nautilus, students noted that many of the chapters contain boring lists of different plants and fish they see under the waves. This may surprise those who remember certain iconic moments in the story, such as the attack of the squid and the Nautilus’ attacks of other ships. But many chapters do contain lists of fish and other technical details of undersea life and life at sea.

These portions of the story do not resonate with me very much, and I have sympathy with the student’s reactions. But such portions of the story also give us an opportunity to gain insights into the mind of the author and the times in which he wrote.

We can first note that the story was originally published in installments in a bi-monthly periodical. It is possible that Verne includes such detail merely to lengthen his story and get paid more for publishing more. But the story was a smash hit when it debuted in 1870, and we should surmise that while financial gain may have played a part in this narrative choice, it cannot entirely explain it.

When we get incrongruity between our time and the past, this gives us an opportunity to notice how cultures change over time and what that reveals not just about them, but us as well.

Verne published his book at a time when people generally had

  • Faith that the future would be better than the past, and
  • Trust that science, and the increase of knowledge that science would bring, would be the main cause of that progress.

Captain Nemo is a bit of a superior type, and frequently in the story we see him correcting various views held by the enlightened and gentlemanly Prof. Arronax. Nemo’s travels and knowledge give him “the truth” about various historical and especially naval events. The reading public likely heavily bought into the common cutural narrative about the connections between knowledge, power, and progress. The facts obtained by the Professor about the nature of undersea life would likely have been viewed in 1870 not as random data points but priceless treasures that could help mankind advance.

The fact that these sections of the book fall on deaf ears in our day says much about us as well. The 20th century revealed that the power that comes with science has revealed itself as a double-edged sword. The knowledge that can heal us can just as easily be used to destroy us. The cataclysmic conflicts of WW I and WW II taught us this, as did Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But we also no longer trust science as a discipline. Our trust in institutions in general has eroded, which has led to many over the last several years calling into question various things that science was supposed to have settled for us. On the other side of the 20th century, science has lost its charm and its persuasive hold on the culture at large.

One might say that Verne wrote at the “high noon” of the West’s trust in science. At the beginning, trust in science might have needed explained. At the end of an era, science would need defended. Here, in our story, the trust placed in science by all characters is implicit. They are fish who do not know they swim in water.

The embedding of the story in a sea of facts perhaps helps us focus more intently on the main character of the story, the mysterious Captain Nemo.

The other main characters are somewhat stock. They do not change and the character is easily defined.

  • The Professor wants to learn and discover new things
  • Conseil (the Professor’s servant) wants to obey his master and classify the Professor’s observations
  • Ned wants to hunt and eat. At different times in the story, he also wants his freedom.

Captain Nemo is more complex, but Verne also wrote his most famous character after a type, the “Byronic Hero,” named after Lord Byron. Byronic heroes have the following characteristics:

  • They are socially isolated by their own choice
  • They have suffered some great, unkown tragedy that has marked them for life
  • They are intelligent and arrogant
  • They are highly emotional, and given to violent outbursts of temper
  • He has significant personality flaws and knows it, making him a “tortured soul.”

The story makes no attempt to explain Captain Nemo’s origin. We can reasonably surmise it involves the death of his family, but otherwise we have only scattered hints. Verne did well to leave Nemo as a sketch instead of a finished portrait. It is the mystery of Nemo, and the questions we have about his actions, that make the story compelling. It says something of our age at least, and perhaps of humanity in general, that we prefer mystery to fact.

Have a great weekend,

Dave

8th Grade Literature: Mobilis in Mobili

by Dave Mathwin

We continued with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea this week and got our first introduction to Captain Nemo.

I hope that the students in the class will not only understand the events of the stories we read, but also understand the meaning of events within the story. That is, the students will hopefully learn to see how literature can entertain them but also challenge them to potentially think and see the world differently. This means learning how to read, in the sense of learning how to discern authorial intent within the text.

So, for example, the characters of Professor Arronax, Ned Land, anmd Conseil assert that the crew of the Nautilus are “pirates” multiple times after entering the vessel. Clearly, Verne means to ask the question as to whether or not Nemo should be considered among likes of Blackbeard. The story may reject this notion, but Verne introduces it to us for a reason. He wants us to entertain the possibility.

No one questions that Captain Nemo is the most important and enigmatic character of the story. The fact that Nemo has lived on in our cultural parlance, and that his character has been adopted into other stories, shows that Verne hit the mark with his creation. Before the characters formally meet Nemo, they are introduced to his motto, another clue to its importance in unlocking the meaning of the story. Around the ship the characters see the letter “N” surrounded by the words

Mobilis in Mobili

The phrase can be translated literally as “Moving in a Moving Thing,” but is better captured more colloquially as “moving within motion,” or some also suggest, “changing within change.”

Verne could be described as a writer of popular fiction, but there is a lot to unpack in this phrase as it relates to the story.

Not coincidentally, the phrase is associated with a submarine and a crew that never touches land. They are always within water, which is continuously fluid and changing its shape. So, from a metaphysical point of view, the Nautilus and her crew must always “change within change,” but this continuous flux becomes in itself a new stasis. Land represents stability, and without land, they will need to continuously adapt. This continuous adaptation still produces recognizable patterns.

This lends insight into Nemo’s later assertion that he is bound by no law other than his own. Without the stability of land, there can be no fixed law of conduct. Yet, this continuos change does produce something resembling stability within Nemo’s personality. His law resembles that of civilization, but it still stands slightly askew, and hopefully the students will see this.

The fact that Nemo’s super submarine is called the Nautilus also reveals much. The word choice has several levels of meaning:

  • In Greek, the word nautilus means simply, “sailor.”
  • The nautilus is a sea creature within a shell. It is the sole living creature whose bony structure is in fact a shell. The submarine becomes the skin of the crew, an extension of themselves.
  • Metaphorically, the grooves of the shell spiral downward continuously, a foreshadowing of the end of the book, as well as a metaphor for Nemo’s life. Under the sea, enclosed in the sub, there would be no natural way to measure the passage of time. Without the ability to mark time, one will be in danger of not being able to discern meaning from experience.

The Nautilus offers a kind of luxury and temporary interest for the scholar, Professor Arronax. But for the more normal Ned Land, the sub is nothing more than a prison. Here again Verne wants us to consider not only if meaning requires time, but also if meaning requires stability. Is the world Nemo built enough to sustain him psychologically and morally, or will it leave Nemo only to the whims of his moods?

We will continue to explore these questions as we get into the meat of the story in the following weeks.

Dave

8th Grade Literature: Introduction to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

by Dave Mathwin

Next week we will start our next book for the year, Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Verne’s stories captivated the people of his time. Many of his books have been made into movies, which is one measure of cultural resonance. His stories had straightforward plots and generally stock characters, which aided their serialization into the popular magazines of the day. So on one level, I hope that the students enjoy the story as an adventure tale.

But like any great author, a particular worldview informs the work, and the story raises interesting questions for us to consider.

The Relationship Between Technology and Freedom

Verne wrote in the mid-late 19th century, a time of enormous technological change, perhaps a shift greater than what we have experienced the last twenty years or so. The Industrial Revolution not only remade the economy, it shifted how we worked and lived as a society. This period saw the spread of democratic ideals throughout Europe and America as well, and the casting off of traditional institutions and ideas. Elites across the western world lost a great deal of status, which culminated in World War I. So one the one hand, the growth of political freedom and technology went hand in hand.

Yet in our day, we see that the relationship between technology and freedom is not so straightforward. Our phones give us immediate access to information everywhere, but they also track us and have a way of fixating our attention. Computers allow us to be more creative and productive at work but this also means that work can follow us anywhere at anytime. Cars allow us to roam with more speed and flexibility than at any previous time in history but they break down frequently and require us to work long hours to maintain them.

This paradox is not confined to our day. For example, most saw the obvious benefits of the Industrial Revolution in the abundance of goods at cheaper prices for a great mass of people. In very real ways, the standard of living went up. To achieve this, millions of people had to work menial, robotically repetitive jobs in factories for 12-14 hours a day.

In Verne’s story, Captain Nemo consciously sought to free himself from the constraints of civilization’s laws and mores, and takes to the sea . . . where he spends his life confined in a metal shell. The Nautilus gives and takes away from Nemo and his crew in equal measure. We shall explore this relationship as we read.

The Relationship Between Man and Society

We often define freedom as the absence of constraints, i.e., no one tells me what to eat for lunch, or what movie to see, or who to vote for. In this respect Nemo and his crew are “free.” But as already noted, this form of freedom comes with a price. Philosophers and theologians outline another view of freedom, one where the constraints put upon us actually aid us in achieving our proper ends as men and women. For example, a train is certainly constrained by the tracks on which it moves. Yet those very constraints help the train be what it what it was created to be. Without tracks, a train cannot fulfill its proper “end,” or (to use Aristotle’s phrase) “telos.” A train sitting in the woods has no freedom to be a train.

So too, our families, communities, and our country certainly put constraints upon us. Children and adults alike resent them at times. We might rather play the video game than do our homework. We might rather finish our movie than clean the kitchen or change the diaper of a crying child. On a societal level, our politicians can annoy and disappoint us, and we may pine for other lands where the grass seems greener. Captain Nemo is the classic “tortured soul” that our culture has trained us to admire. We can certainly appreciate Nemo’s courage, intelligence, and devotion to his crew. But we need to see how Nemo’s separation from civilization has also warped his sensibilities. Our connections to those around us shape who we are, and without them, we are left with the freedom of the void.

Many business leaders, politicians, and the like, reflect that it is “lonely at the top.” I remember my pastor in college confiding to me that most all of his truly good friends were other pastors. They shared a common bond that others cannot quite relate to. So too, a ship’s captain will likely find the highest level of kinship with other captains. But because Nemo has severed ties with the world, he cut himself off from the possibility of that kinship. He has his ship, his books, and his studies, to comfort him.