As much as the story of Captain Nemo sounds set in the past the story is in itself a type of Leonardo Da Vinci masterful look into the technology of the future. The knowledge of the components necessary or assumed into replicating what Verne saw as he gazed into the mystic waters of the future created the Nautilus. It was then peopled by a cast of characters very French and very familiar to those who have read The Count of Monte Cristo. What is of more importance to my observation is the capabilities of men like da Vinci and Verne to look into the future and to bring back from their mental breakthrough a significant part of the future, an astounding invention, a proof that they had crossed beyond the walls seemingly of time.
As always with masters of either religious or lay inspiration, their stories of necessity and to scare casual steppers into the arcane were filled with dire consequences and as the myth of Pandora a slight glimpse that there might yet be hope depending on how we believe, of course.
The futuristic tale of the Nautilus for that is what the story is about, a fabulous craft, is set in 1866. The narrator is a French professor of natural history. The plot is to discover the spouts not of this earth as they knew it and what they deemed to be a floating island. The conflict is between the master who could look into the future and re create or duplicate its wonders and yet who was incapable of protecting his own family. The conflict is between the master and his own deep human emotions. His foil is the narrator.
The narrator then is agent to the master's play and his vain, human need for revenge. Once that revenge has been gotten, the master ends his play with a climactic, anti-climax.
The narrator is free to go about his business and just as cavalierly handle what happened to him without really internalizing it, as he was only the ends to Captain Nemo's means.
