Captain Nemo
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Captain Nemo is the protagonist of Jules Verne's novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) and also appears in Mysterious Island (1874).
He is prince Dakkar, the son of an Indian rajah and nephew of Tippoo Sahib, having a deep hatred of the British conquest of India. After the Sepoy mutiny, he devotes himself to scientific research and develops an advanced electric submarine, the Nautilus. He and a crew of his loyals cruise the seas, battling injustice, especially slavery. The gold of Spanish ships sunk at the Bay of Vigo provided them with money.
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Appearances
Beside his original appearance in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Mysterious Island, Captain Nemo also appears in numerous other works:
- the comic book The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (and its film adaptation)
- The Japanese anime Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, by Gainax.
- 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.
He is also the subject of numerous songs.
Personifications
- James Mason played Captain Nemo in the Walt Disney film Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1954).
- Herbert Lom played Captain Nemo in Mysterious Island (1961)
- Omar Sharif played Captain Nemo in Jules Verne's Mysterious Island of Captain Nemo (1973)
- John Bach played Captain Nemo in TV-series Mysterious Island (1995)
- In the 2003 film adaptation of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, he was played by Naseeruddin Shah.
Trivia
- In the initial draft, Nemo was a Polish noble revengeful 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. It's in the sequel (Mysterious Island), where Nemo presents himself as a Hindu fighting the British Empire.
- He has also been the subjects of a song by Sarah Brightman and another by the band Ace of Base. The song Nemo by Nightwish is also about him.
- His name is the Latin for "nobody", an allusion to the answer given by Odysseus to Polyphemus in the Odyssey.
- The clownfish character Nemo in the animated movie Finding Nemo by Disney and Pixar is named after him.
- His personal flag is Argent letter "N" on sable field.
External links
- The Mysterious Island: The Secret of the Island: Chapter XVI (http://jv.gilead.org.il/kravitz/3/16.html). A summary of his life. It contains spoilers.
- Literary analysis of the novels of Jules Verne (http://perso.wanadoo.fr/jules-verne/CIEH.htm)
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