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Re: Hatteras and Les Foreceurs de blocus

From: <Rfbagby~at~aol.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2005 10:57:01 -0400
To: jvf~at~gilead.org.il (Jules Verne Forum)

In a message dated 7/25/2005 8:58:36 PM Eastern Daylight Time, "thomas mccormick" <tom_amity~at~hotmail.com> writes:

>Indeed, Verne is following a tradition here. In many nineteenth-century sea
>stories, there is a mysteriious crew member, and sometimes the captain
>himself is a mystery. This is true of some of Fenimore Cooper's sea-stories;
>for example, The Red Rover has a mysterious captain pursued by a disguised
>British Navy agent, thus making two "doppelganger" mystery men! And of course Captain Nemo remains a mystery for
>the entire novel in which he first appears!
REPLY: Another example in Cooper is the never fully identified title figure in THE PILOT (though the reader soon realizes he's meant to be John Paul Jones.)
And another case in Verne is the Chinese stowaway in SCHOOL FOR CRUSOES, whose solitary survival on the same island vindicates the Crusoe idea (while also establishing him as Other to the astounded whites in never seeking company -- an even more extreme Ayrton, in effect.) Interestingly, Juan Piquer Simon in his film adaption of this MYSTERY OF MONSTER ISLAND can't accept this, and so has the Chinese prove another part of the grand hoax (in charge of the fireworks which have made the island seem to have an "active volcano"!)
Ross
Received on Tue 26 Jul 2005 - 17:57:12 IDT

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