Exploration, Imperialism, and Conquest Theme Analysis

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea takes place during the peak of the age of imperialism, at a time when global colonial exploration was drawing to a close and most of the world had been “conquered” by imperial powers. Several characters in the novel—including Nemo and Arronax—want to travel and conquer the world, including the mysterious, unexplored depths of the deep sea. Indeed, in a moment in which most of the land has already been “discovered” and occupied by colonial powers, the deep sea remains one of the few unexplored regions left on Earth, and thus comes to represent the exciting and terrifying possibilities of new territory. Yet while the novel foregrounds the colonial impulses of exploration and conquest, it also makes references to the reality of imperialism as a force of brutality and injustice. The result is a rather confused, contradictory depiction of exploration, imperialism, and conquest that reflects the ambivalence felt by many citizens of colonial powers in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

On one level, the desire animating all the major characters in the novel can be read as a straightforwardly imperial wish to explore and conquer every part of the globe. Captain Nemo spends his time travelling the oceans and discovering regions heretofore unexplored by humans, and Arronax enthusiastically joins this mission, hoping to document, name, and categorize all the plant and animal life that can be found in the deep sea. These activities closely parallel the pursuits of Western imperialists, whose occupation of colonized land not only involved resource extraction but also the imposition of new names and categories on the local environment. Even Ned Land, the Canadian harpooner, can be read as possessing an imperial desire: his determination to overpower marine life is an assertion of human control over the natural landscape, which was one of the defining features of Western colonial ideology.

A colonialist attitude is also evident in Arronax’s bigoted, violent view toward indigenous people, particularly the Papuan people whom he and the others encounter while moored on the Papuan islands. Arronax calls the indigenous Papuan people “savages,” and characterizes them as brutal and animalistic. He frames their aggression toward himself, Conseil, and Ned as unwarranted, despite the fact that the three men are trespassers on Papuan land who hunt the local game without any respect for the inhabitants of the land. Arronax’s fear of the Papuan people—and his dismissive rejection of their invitation to join them, which is courteously extended even after he initially trespassed on their land—represents the mix of unwarranted fear and hostility that tends to characterize the colonial attitude toward indigenous people, alongside the unjustified moves to innocence and victimhood on the part of the colonizers.

Yet while the novel frequently falls back on colonial tropes such as the depiction of indigenous people as “savages,” it also contains criticisms of colonial attitudes and practices. The person most critical of imperialism is Nemo, who toward the end of the novel is revealed to have been personally victimized by an unnamed imperial nation. Indeed, Nemo’s own experiences at the hands of colonizers are so traumatizing that they lead him to renounce all of human society and retreat into the sea. He explicitly aligns himself with the oppressed races of the world, claiming to be “one” with colonized peoples. (Nemo’s ethnic identity remains ambiguous—in early drafts of the novel he was depicted as a Polish nobleman, but Verne subsequently revised this. Some readers and critics have interpreted Nemo as being of Indian origin.)

Depending on one’s perspective, the novel could be interpreted as simply conveying the imperialist attitudes of the time. Far from manifesting in a straightforward manner, these attitudes often took an internally contradictory form, often incorporating criticism of colonial exploitation, injustice, and brutality at the same time as they perpetuated these issues. On the other hand, the novel could also be read as an assault on the straightforward binary between colonizer and colonized. The micro-community formed on the Nautilus is arguably representative of the complex, contradictory systems of power that flourished under colonialism. Nemo, the despotic yet at times compassionate ruler, seizes the freedom of others after having been personally violated by an imperial power. Meanwhile, Arronax—himself a captive—initially collaborates with Nemo and, in doing so, occupies the highest position of power on the submarine after that of Nemo himself. This intricate and conflicting system of power relations can be read as a metaphor for the social systems colonialism imposed on colonized societies.