Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
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Indicate the correct answer in the spaces below (a, b, c, etc.) as you watch the film. You may want to print out the answer sheet and questions before you watch the film. Relay answers to your teacher by E-Mail, Fax, or Mail using this form. A copy of your answer sheet should also be included in your "Journal" (at the back).
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Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Vingt Mille Lieues sous les Mers) (1870)
15 Questions
Who was Jules Verne (1828-1905)? This French writer produced sixty-five adventure novels that readers still enjoy and which lent themselves to becoming excellent movies, such as Around the World in 80 Days and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Verne, originally from Nantes, made a great deal of money, and he wasn't above lifting ideas (from Poe, for example) in his rush to churn out more and more books. Nonetheless, his stories have a unique flavor. Verne was fascinated with science and technology and invented a sort of science fiction that has a good deal of technical description and detail; the reader is given scientific data, mathematical calculations, and statistics ad nauseam. This was 150 years or so ago, when nobody really thought we'd fly or go to the moon.
At the same time his novels (and the films) are period pieces and his people think and talk like victorians─note the wonderful "victorian" decoration inside Nemo's submarine and compare it with actual submarines, once they came into existence in the following century. Verne got his technical details right, but his people lived in middle-class French rooms. Verne, in spite of being crazy about science, remained a Catholic and never accepted the theory of evolution.
Verne wrote with an eye on the theater, so his stories almost always contain a comic servant who could be played by a popular actor of his day. Nemo proved extremely popular─he derives from the Romantic hero, and Verne revived him in The Mysterious Island (1875). The second book clears up that Nemo is an Indian Prince whose wife and children were killed in the Indian Mutiny and who seeks revenge on the British. There's nothing Indian about him, though.
Verne's appeal has been attributed to his motifs, which have been compared with those of ancient myths/archetypes that stir our imagination at a preconscious level, for example, the cave, the sea voyage, the lonely island, the lonely exile who believes in liberty, etc.
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
1. This story takes place in 1866. Ships have sighted a strange object, very long, moving at great speed. It has rammed several ships. Professor Pierre Arronax narrates─he is a
a) chemist b) biologist c) physicist d) psychologist
2. Arronax has just returned from the U.S., where he's been tracking something like Big Foot, and he ships aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln with his faithful (comic) servant called
a) Constant b) Conseil c) Confrère d) Condorcet
3. He becomes friends with a Canadian harpooner, Ned Land. After some time, they sight the strange object. Land's harpoon can't harm it. Arronax, Land, and Conseil are washed over-board and a) drown b) swim to shore c) get onto the strange craft
d) are picked up in a balloon
4. They realize the strange object is metal plated; it is, in fact, a submarine. Eventually, they are seized and a) thrown into the sea b) lifted to their boat c) taken inside the submarine
d) sent ashore
5. The captain of the submarine is called a) Nolo b) Nogo c) Nemo d) Nomo
6. A tragedy occurred in Nemo's life and he has cut himself off from society. Now he sails the seas with other, like-minded exiles. He is
a) fabulously rich b) very cultured c) a mechanical genius d) all the above
7. On the submarine there is
a) a library b) an organ c) an art collection d) all the above
8. Nemo doesn't wish Arronax, Land, and Conseil to leave because his secret might be betrayed, and Arronnax is delighted to have this opportunity to study marine life. The submarine is called the a) Naufrage b) Nausicaa c) Nautilus d) Nauseous
9. Nemo and Aronnax do some a) deep sea diving b) collecting of specimins
c) studying of statistics d) all the above
10. Among their adventures are a) observing an underwater volcanic eruption
b) a visit to the South Pole c) fights with sharks d) all the above
11. Later, it becomes obvious that Nemo is involved in a) drug traffic b) smuggling
c) some shady business though it isn't clear what d) space travel
12. It appears that Nemo is something of a
a) soldier b) sailor c) revolutionary d) Martian
13. Eventually, Nemo becomes depressed and paranoid, and the three companions decide they'd better try to escape; after they do so a) Nemo's submarine starts to stand up
b) Nemo sails into the heart of a whirlpool c) Nemo is carried off by a hurricane
d) the submarine is swallowed by a giant squid
14. The companions are saved a) in India b) in the Pacific
c) somewhere off the coast of Norway d) somewhere near Japan
15. What has happened to Nemo? a) he has settled in Turkey
b) Professor Aronnax and his readers never find out c) he keeps sailing the seas
d) he is imprisoned in France
What happens to Nemo continues in The Mysterious Island, in which Verne kills him off; unlike Sherlock Holmes and James Bond, Nemo doesn't appear in a whole series of stories. Similar characters with different names, however, do figure in Verne's novels; when he found a successful formula he stuck with it!