Where chaos stops and more chaos ensues. Where Filia plays the electric keyboard.
Where anything goes.
-//o_O\\7 *Home of the Awful, Mediocre and Pathetic* -//u_u\\7
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Where chaos stops and more chaos ensues. Where Filia plays the electric keyboard. Where anything goes. -//o_O\\7 *Home of the Awful, Mediocre and Pathetic* -//u_u\\7 |
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Sunday, April 25, 2004 Book review time! Yay! The lucky customer? Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, by that wonderful French fellow Jules Verne. And that's 'under the seas', mind you, because if you tried to go 20,000 leagues under the sea you'd probably end up on the other side of the planet ... and continue off into space like misguided exhaust. The furthest depth actually mentioned in the story, but not actually reached, is three leagues, about double Mount Everest, and if you didn't realise that is already incredibly deep, a league being, according to my dictionary, approximately 5km/3mil. League being a French term (hence the metric figures). The introduction mentions about how despite the fact that Jules Verne, his works and his characters are all household names, nobody really knows much about them and thus constantly misjudge and misinterpret them, leading to many misconceptions arising about him, such that he wrote science fiction, or that he wrote for children, or whatever. I certainly agree with that statement, because I knew about characters such as Passerpartout (not Phileas T. Fogg, unfortunately) and Captain Nemo long before I actually read the books ... probably around the time that I even knew who Jules Verne was in the first place. And thus, most understandably, I am extremely miffed at the choice of the name 'Nemo' for a rather frail and helpless clownfish by that miserable organisation Disney. I've also held that misconception about Jules Verne being a science-fiction author (that should go to H.G. Wells, actually), an illusion promptly shattered by my reading of Around the World in Eighty Days which dwells not on the fantastical and the imaginary but on rationality and realism. But 20,000 Leagues (etc.) does have fictional elements about it, for starters the submarine Nautilus itself. Submersible craft had existed, though obviously none that were so complex had been constructed, for the models of that time could barely accommodate several individuals and served only observation purposes, not as weapons. Captain Nemo is another, the enigmatic man who has chosen to renounce humanity or, more accurately, life above the waves, and to dwell underwater in his submarine with his chosen assistants, and his captives, forever. Though, despite the admiration for such willpower and resourcefulness, Verne is indisputably discouraging of such hermitic behaviour, certainly doing him no favours with the Utopian thinkers and artists that emerged later on that century. It has taken a century for science to prove that it is actually possible to live underwater, isolated from society, and sustained only by technology, and it will probably take longer still to prove that people with such adventurous desires actually exist. Submarine crews have high pay for a reason, you know. Unfortunately, I found the plot regarding Nemo's antisocial behaviour to be rather thin, as while it was constantly referred to throughout the book, it emerged only as ponderous musings by Pierre Arronax, the professor whom, exploring the new scourge of the seas, winds up as its captive along with his manservant Conseil and a hot-blooded French Canadian Ned Land. There are also several hints about Socialist tendencies in this man (no surprise, since Verne was a supporter of the Paris Commune against the Second Empire), where he funds rebel causes and his bedroom is decorated with portraits of revolutionary leaders. However, it all isn't developed enough, as Arronax only gets the occasional glimpse or hint about the motivations behind this man before the captain completely loses his patience and probably his sanity as well. In the end, Nemo remains what he started off as, a total enigma, and nobody knows how he had come, nor whither he had gone. A good trait for a supporting character, perhaps, but certainly not for one who constantly leaps between antagonist and protagonist, the anti-hero, in the absence of the narrator the main character, in any text seeking a proper conclusion. In this light, the book reads better as a series of events and incidents ("An incident?" "No, an accident."), very similar to some Japanese anime where there's a new plot every episode but the characters, and their attitudes and their motivations, remain the same. The events do not point to any particular conclusion, for, while the reader understands that the collision is inevitable between Arronax's desire to remain on board to learn more about the ocean depths in a manner no oceanologist has ever done before, and his colleagues' desire to escape the increasingly deranged captain, there are no clues that point to the manner in which the entire debacle ends and, like in Journey to the Centre of the Earth, the ending comes too suddenly and too abruptly for comfort. One would argue that that is the way most real-life adventures end, without any prior warning ... but still, being the author, he could have at least written it in a more readable form. About the other characters then? Pierre Arronax sounds too real to be believed, in fact, he is actually Jules Verne himself as a photograph of the author was actually published as the illustration of the illustrious professor. What I disliked in particular about Arronax was that, as the narrator, he seemed far too empowered, as compared to, say, Axel from Journey to the Centre of the Earth. He seems to know everything, his fellow captives defer to him, and he is the only one to whom Nemo will speak on amicable terms. Respect for academia, perhaps, but self-empowerment is the easy way out of all plotlines. His only difficulty, it seems, would be juggling the various motives of his fellows, Nemo, and himself, and judging which one to prioritise, and he only fully agrees to escape (and the escape is subsequently carried out) when he learns of Nemo's decision to throw all of the captain's research into the sea in a bottle, basically dooming the professor's hopes of conveying his research to civilisation. Nope, sorry, I believe in flawed protagonists that have a limited strength, not all-compassing colossi. However, I certainly hold the depiction of his manservant Conseil and the whaler Ned Land in much higher regard. Most appealing are their unique traits, as all supporting characters should have, Conseil's of classifying every single organism he sees according to Linnaeus' geneology, and constantly calling his master 'monsieur' in the third person, Ned Land's of shooting his mouth off at the slightest provocation, with the cravings and appetite of a monster, and of trying to harpoon every large creature in sight. Now that's energy ... *shudder*. They make a powerful tag-team, as do the two sidekicks in each of Verne's three most popular novels, with their contrasts and their synergy, and in this aspect I favour 20,000 Leagues. Conseil, despite being his master's servant, remains aloof throughout the plot to his master's goals and aims (but also remains steadfastly obedient), unlike Passerpartout and Axel who gradually began to adopt their leaders' belief and enthusiasm, eventually becoming an even more powerful exponent of the 'cause' than the original leaders themselves. Ned Land, on the other hand, is my favourite out of the 'antagonistic' member of the trio of heroes, as he is certainly by far more energetic and outspoken than Hans (who rarely speaks a word, and does no more than he is told), and while he doesn't add as much intrigue to the plot as Detective Fix does, Verne shot himself in the foot by throwing in a final mention of how an impassive Phileas Fogg comes to some reconciliation with the driven, now helplessly guilty Fix (and no, not by punching him). Ned never actually comes to terms with Arronax's cause either, his sole objective from the beginning has been to escape, and to harpoon a few helpless marine animals while he was at that. Despite my persistent focus on the negative ("Oh, so-and-so was good." What did that tell you?) I would assure any reader that 20,000 Leagues is the best out of that most excellent trio of novels by Jules Verne. While it is also the thickest, at about the length of the other two combined, it has more than its fair share of events, twists, and rambling of scientific and historical fact that is so common in Jules Verne. Hey, you might find it boring or monotous, but I like those! It heightens my respect for him ever the more. It's a bit difficult to get started, the first few chapters being terribly disconnected from the rest, but once you get into the swing of it you can breeze through the story (due to the ineffectiveness of the social subplot) like a good piece of fiction. You like imaginative travel fiction with scientific and historical descriptions and unexpected but undisturbing twists in the plot? Then this is another book for you. Read it. Heh. Why would I review a book that I wouldn't encourage others to read? To slam it as hard as I could? That defeats the purpose, since we're always tempted by discouragement. Anyway, if I really hated a book, I probably wouldn't finish reading it or even get past the first few pages unless I was forced to ... thinks Mary Ann "Ann You Thought T.S. Was Bad!" Evans. But I got my A in Literature despite it, so I don't think I shall deign to dig up that unwanted piece of history. P.S. Hey! I just checked it up in the dictionary. To 'deign' to do something doesn't actually mean that you refuse to do it, it's just that you consider it so demeaning that it is only with great difficulty that you descend to doing it. In other words, it's a rather stiff-lipped form of sarcasm. Good stuff, eh? posted by Charlotte | 4:26 pm
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Disclaimer : The Slayers and Filia Ul Copt and all images thereof are the property of Hajime Kanzaka and Rui Araizumi. I don't own any of them, although if I had a choice I would want Filia ... ~//n_n\\7 |
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