20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Motifs

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Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

Technology

The world of the novel is full of scientific discoveries and technological innovations, and Nemo is its master, far ahead of his time, unsurpassed in his inventiveness. The primary example is the Nautilus itself, so advanced that the ship feels like another main character. However, Verne suggests that such technological advances can be used for either good or malfeasance. Although scientific inquiry is presented in a positive light, machines and technology can be used either way. Consequently, the novel is generally ambivalent about innovation. Electricity, for example, is presented as a miraculous source of energy that can be sustainably generated from minerals in the sea water, but the electric guns can be used for aggression, and electricity is used to stun the Papuans who attempt to board the vessel. Aronnax calls the Nautilus “an intelligent boat,” hinting at the blur between the natural world and human-made technology. Verne might not have used the term artificial intelligence, but he certainly suggests the concept.

Confinement

When Aronnax, Conseil, and Land are first shown their cabins on board the Abraham Lincoln, Conseil remarks that they will be as well off “as a hermit crab in the shell of a whelk,” a somewhat humorous and fitting comparison to their eventual confinement aboard the Nautilus. Nemo later tells the men, “You are my prisoners of war,” and he does control their fates for many months. Ironically, when Nemo is in the Mediterranean Sea, Aronnax observes that Nemo is “cramped between the close shores of Africa and Europe” and “had no longer that independence and that liberty of gait” that he had in the open seas. Ironically, the iron walls of the Nautilus represent Nemo’s freedom from society, for here he is free from his mysterious past. Of all the characters, Ned Land suffers the pains of confinement the most. He is the one who plans their escape. He is the one who yearns for liberty, a liberty that Nemo denies. Land’s spirit is the most entrapped by the Nautilus. He even resists putting on the diving suit at first because he does not trust that it works. When Nemo is trapped by the iceberg, he experiences confinement, and nature almost wins. Throughout the novel, confinement means security and safety on one hand and a torturous denial of freedom on the other. In terms of Nemo and Ned Land, one character’s freedom may be another’s character’s jail.

Mysteries of the Deep

Readers can turn to nearly any page of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and read about an amazing variety of natural phenomena, physical, animal, and vegetable. Beginning with Nemo’s vast array of ocean specimens in Part I, Chapter X, Aronnax is continuously astounded by what he sees. He learns about undersea channels, mollusks, squid, whales, anemones, rays, sea spiders, otters, albatross, seals, oysters, turtles, coral, phosphorescence, sharks, seaweed, dugongs, algae, shells, and too many species of fish to name. In Part I, Chapter XIII, when the panels of the Nautilus slide open to reveal the life outside, Aronnax feels overwhelmed, and he never tires of seeing new species all around the globe. “I was in ecstasies with the vivacity of their movements and the beauty of their forms,” Aronnax exclaims, a response that does not diminish throughout the narrative. The seafloor excursions offer even more intimate encounters with these mysteries, and each one gives Aronnax enough stimulation to write pages and pages describing shapes, contours, and colors in detail. Sea life, in its infinite variety, is more than a motif. It is the medium in which most of the novel happens. It always surrounds the characters and action. As Nemo exclaims in Part I, Chapter X, “The sea is everything!”