The Seasonal Reading Challenge discussion
FALL CHALLENGE 2024
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Group Reads Discussion - Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea
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I really disliked this book. I usually love classics, but I found this one to be so dull and none of the characters were compelling. I just found myself trudging through it trying to get to the end, but I didn't care about any of the "exciting" things that were happening.I think it'll be a while before I pick up another Jules Verne novel.
While there's little unpredictability in the plot, I really enjoyed the immersive feel of this adventure story. Reading this book in 2024, I find myself being nostalgic for the sense of wonder that people must have had once -- or that I used to have as a much younger person -- about the world, about nature all around us, about the vast ocean full of mystique and danger. After all, people are still losing lives in the name of exploration; our society just stopped placing value on this activity. We're all like Ned Land now, absorbed by thoughts of consumption and hellbent on killing creatures to prove his manly might. I find him a funny side character, the closest to a representative of civilization on the Nautilus, and an interesting contrast to the brooding, self-destructive Captain Nemo.
I had to read this in the original French my senior year in high school. It was a solid brick of a book, took forever, didn't hold my interest, and I think qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment.
Fly wrote: "I had to read this in the original French my senior year in high school. It was a solid brick of a book, took forever, didn't hold my interest, and I think qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment."Fly I love this summary
Reading this in 2024 there is not really anything new or exciting about it so it is a bit boring. Imagining reading it in 1869, it was probably incredible.
The well-known adventure story begins as a near-gothic with reports of a mysterious “enormous thing” sighted by maritime vessels under the sea. At the time of our reading we know this “thing” to be a submarine. At the time of Verne’s writing, however, the submarine as a viable underwater vehicle sustainable for long periods of time was a fantasy. So why not write it as a gothic fantasy? I find it humorous that the narrator begins his investigation of the “Submarine monitor” after an extended stay in “the disagreeable territory of Nebraska.” He never says the why as to Nebraska’s disagreeable quality, but the irony of that territory as a landlocked one contrasts to the oceanic world in which he is about to plunge. The ocean is an unknown: “What passes in those remote depths—what beings live, or can live, twelve or fifteen miles beneath the surface of the waters—what is the organisation of these animals, we can scarcely conjecture” (II. Par. 11). The author establishes the initial scientific (and fantastical) thought of the underwater phenomenon as an animal, but a mysterious one full of speculative awe.The adventures of the sea-faring vessel end soon when Ned, the protagonist, is captured by Captain Nemo and pulled on to the submarine Nautilus. Thus begins a rendering of the magnificence of the vessel, a true scientific wonder, that comprises the bulk of the book. The unknown objects of remote depths produce the natural destroyer of the Nautilus, a giant whirlpool the size of which no one has seen since. Verne’s exploration of the unknown may have begun with gothic wonderment, but the obsession with scientific explanation and the wonders of the natural world take over.
Fly, I cannot imagine reading all this pseudo-science in French. "Cruel and unusual punishment" indeed.
Well, I just read it in French and I agree! It felt like 20,000 varieties of flora and fauna. The characters are all stereotypes, with the brainy professor, the strongman Ned, and the devoted Conseil. Surprisingly, there's no sweet woman as a love interest. I could believe in the electric-powered submarine more easily than the incredibly calm and self-sacrificing servant. There is so much class consciousness - the professor gets his own room, while the others share. I assume this book was a thrill for the readers at a time when few of them would see any distant part of the globe. But I got very tired of the travelogue element. It seems after covering all the parts of the world, Verne got tired and just ended the book in a hurry, without even explaining how the survivors were rescued.
It's rather charming that Nemo transported an entire Victorian mansion with library, organ, etc. And the ship has room for the whole invisible crew as well. I have been on a decommissioned US Navy submarine, and it sure wasn't like that!
The requirement for task 20.10: You must participate in the book's discussion thread below with at least one post about the contents of the book or your reaction to the book after you have read the book.