Captain Nemo, Nataulius And the Search for the Good and the Transcended

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Google doodle of a few weeks ago reminded me of Jules Verne's birthday. I began reminiscing about my experience reading him. I read Jules Verne's "20 Thousand Leagues Under The Sea" and "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" during my teens. I liked the former better. The appeal to "20 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" is Captain Nemo and the indestructible "Nautalius". Captain Nemo is the Robin Hood of the seas. Nautalius is his submarine that becomes his instrument of mercy and justice.

When I was reading "20 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea", during my more impressionable years, I couldn't help but believe that Captain Nemo and Nautalius were actually real. I thought and earnestly hoped that they existed somewhere deep in the world of the unknown.

I think there are two reasons for my incredulity. One, I saw the story as a validation of a strong urge to believe that there was more to the world than meets the eye. Two, a brave man using his brilliance and industry to outwit tyrants and help the poor was too good a story to not want it to be true.

At one level, the story is about escapism from reality above the surface of earth. At a deeper level, it is a story of transcendence beyond the mundane reductionism of life above the surface. When much of modernism is reductionistic in its outlook, believing only that which can be touched and seen to be real, Nataulius gives  hope for man to enlarge his vision to give credence to 'fantasy' - the unseen as part of his reality of life. In essence, my teen fascination with Captain Nemo belied a deep need for that which is good and that which has an element of transcendence beyond the qutodian.

But then, the naive admiration for Captain Nemo turned to horror when I came to the part of the story where Captain Nemo cold-heartedly tropedos a cruise ship belonging to the tyrant Nation he hates. Jules Verne describes in revitting language different states of animated drowning of the innocent passengers of that ship. Then I realized that Captain Nemo was really a tyrant in his own right and my fascination turned to disappointment and sorrow. Captain Nemo was too good to be true that he couldn't be true.

The very reason why we have the phrase 'too good to be true' is because there is none who is truly good. Even good people have, deep in them, evil urges which surfaces at some point. At that point the dreams get shattered. After all, we live in a FALLEN world. History is replete with such shattered dreams, from the Enlightenment driven French Revolution becoming a blood bath to Van Gogh committing suicide because he was too sensitive to tolerate the materialistic world around him. 

Disappointments not withstanding, man still has the deep urge to pursue that which is good and that which gives him a taste of transcendence. C.S.Lewis says, "that I am hungry probably means that there is some real thing called food." That we deeply hunger and thirst for goodness and transcendence in life probably means that there is some real Thing that is Good and Transcended.

My fascination and hope that Captain Nemo and the Natualius were real, was really my yearning for the Real Good and the Truly Transcended - God. Ultimately it is in the fascination, adoration and worship of God that man's need for the really Good and truly Transcended satisfied.