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[t00thpasteface]

your 20,000 leagues posting prompted me to finally read the book to completion, so thanks for that. couldn't focus much on the dynamics between the characters as i was so engrossed in the pages long fish identifications

it's such a good book because it's like. to any other protagonist this would be a nightmare from front to back. to NED LAND this is a nightmare... but the NARRATORis a sheltered, entitled professor who thinks himself very capable of field work but has NO sense of scope for what the real world is like for other people.

that's why i think the 50s movie dropped the ball so hard. ned land got a lot more focus as someone we should allegedly be rooting for, but what he excels at is having this semi-antagonistic role where he defends and protects aronnax, the narrator, while also striving to drive a wedge between protagonist (aronnax) and deuteragonist (nemo). the book deals with such HUGE concepts like The Entire Ocean and The Entire British Empire and Several Entire Species, that it's important for ned to be essentially neutered and reactive (and punished by nemo for being active) at every turn, especially at the end... even when he finally gets his much-hyped escape chance, it's not even clear if they really are sneaking out and whether nemo is allowing it to happen.

the threats and conflicts are so far beyond real, full comphrension by the individual— by ANY individual. even nemo's very personal, humanizing grief is for something so much larger than just his family, and it drives him mad because his body crumples under the weight of the world's suffering like a failed imitation of atlas. ERGO... i think it's very fun and fitting that the narrator just. doesn't even have the ability to grasp the vague suggestions of all these conflicts. he doesn't even really fully see them until they're all colliding into each other in the third act. it's so eerie. men are dying around him, he's living inside a literal killing machine, and yet he treats it more like an exotic vacation than anything else. it makes you wonder, if it took aronnax that much to open his eyes, what hope does any other sheltered academic have, back on land where these struggles may as well be unbelievable fiction to them?

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