Plot:
A father-son underwater adventure featuring Nemo, a boy clownfish, stolen from his coral reef home. His timid father must then travel to Sydney, and search Sydney Harbour find Nemo.
Captain Nemo is a fictional character featured in Jules Verne's novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) and The Mysterious Island (1874). "Nemo" is Latin for "no one", and also Greek for "give what is due" (see Nemesis (mythology)).
Nemo, one of the most famous anti-heroes in fiction, is a mysterious figure. He is a scientific genius who roams the depths of the sea in his submarine, the Nautilus, which he built on a deserted island. Nemo tries to project a stern, controlled confidence, but he is driven by a thirst for vengeance, and wracked by remorse over the deaths of his crewmembers and even by the deaths of enemy sailors. In The Mysterious Island, a still mysterious but gentler Nemo secretly helps the castaways off the island and in the end warns them that the island will perish in a volcanic eruption. Nemo dies of a mysterious illness just before the eruption and is buried in his ship that is then sunk.
The best account of the Captain's character may be had from the observations of Professor Arronax, a character in, and narrator of, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, who is stated to have embarked upon that curious voyage with the captain when the latter was about forty years of age. He is described as a reticent man throughout the account; tall and swarthy in appearance, he had a high nose and eyes set on the far sides of his face, an attribute that gave him an exceptional range of vision. In the later account given in "The Mysterious Island", the aged Captain Nemo is said to sport a long white beard.
He eschews dry land having forsworn all ties with it, and when he does step on it, does so only when the land is uninhabited, such as with Antarctica and desert islands such as Lincoln Island, of The Mysterious Island. He, is quite enamoured by the sea and holds that true freedom exists only beneath the waves. In keeping with his detestation for the nations of the surface he uses no products that are not marine in nature, be it food, clothing, furnishing or even, tobacco.
Little is revealed about his political opinions except that he has an almost maniacal hatred of oppression, with which he identifies all the imperialistic nations of the world and does not hesitate to identify himself with those oppressed, be they Cretans rising against the Turks ruling them or poor Ceylonese pearl-divers eking out a living or even grey whales being attacked by cachalots. In Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, when Professor Arronax insinuates that he was violating maritime and international law, by sinking war-ships, he states that he was merely defending himself from his attackers and that the laws of the world on the surface did not apply to him any longer.
Captain Nemo standing over the crew of the Nautilus as they observe an underwater funeral
He is devoted to his crew, and can barely contain his grief when one of them happens to be killed, as is portrayed in the aftermath of the giant-squid attack in the Bahamas and the mysterious midnight encounter with a surface ship. He also appears to retain loving memories of his family, for Professor Arronax witnesses him weeping over the portrait of a young lady and two children, apparently his family. He betrays the same compassion in his treatment of the castaways in The Mysterious Island.
Though short-tempered, he maintains very great control over himself, giving vent to his anger but rarely. He was also a man of immense courage, in the forefront of every activity, releasing the Nautilus from the Antarctic ice in which she gets trapped, and in fighting off the squids at the Bahamas. Professor Arronax states that he was a man of superhuman stamina working consecutive eight-hour shifts without a break, with little oxygen, to free the Nautilus from the ice. He is also an intrepid explorer, having discovered Atlantis, according to Jules Verne, a glimpse of which is had by Professor Arronax.
An extraordinary engineer, he designed and built the Nautilus, besides inventing most of her outstanding features, such as her electric propulsion and navigation systems. He has an exceptional mastery of under-sea navigation, taking upon himself the most difficult passages of the voyage described in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, such as those under the Isthmus of Suez and that under the Antarctic ice-sheet.
He had an immense knowledge of marine biology, and it was his respect for Professor Arronax's expertise in that field which led to his befriending the professor when the latter was cast upon the Nautilus by chance. Further he is said to have read and annotated all the tomes he possessed in the Nautilus's vast library. In addition to these indubitable indications of an exceptional intellect, he repeatedly demonstrates his ability to create innovative solutions.
He had very fine taste in art, possessing several masterpieces of both painting and sculpture, from ancient and modern European masters, all of which were housed in the Grand Salon of the Nautilus, along with his inestimably valuable collecion of pearls, corals and such other marine products, which he had gathered with his own hands. In the opinion of Professor Arronax, the collection of the Grand Salon far outstripped that of the Louvre. However, the Captain regarded them as little more than the remainder of a past life, a life he chose to forget, but yet retain some memories of, for according to him, these were but a part of his original collection.
Despite the opulence that is visible all through the Nautilus, he is a man of spartan habits, retaining for his own use the barest minimum. In Professor Arronax's opinion, the Captain's cabin resembled a monk's cellar, furnished with little besides a bed and the navigation instruments so integral to the Nautilus.
The Captain tells Professor Arronax that his intention was to have the story of his life, which he was even then in the process of writing when the Professor and his companions were cast upon the Nautilus, would be sealed in an unsinkable casket and thrown overboard by the last survivor of the Nautilus's crew, in the hope that it would be washed up somewhere.
He appears to have some sort of hatred, fear or remorse, never revealed to the reader, for the last words heard from him by Professor Arronax, before abandoning the Nautilus, were "Almighty God, enough! Enough!".
