海底两万里 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea 导读 Day 10

Day 10 阅读范围 (Part 1: Chapter 19 & Chapter 20)

问题

1.    When did Nautilus reach the New Hebrides that were “discovered” by Pedro Fernández de Queirós?

2. Who was La Pérouse?

翻译

1. I had wished to visit the reef, 360 leagues long, against which the sea, always rough, broke with great violence, with a noise like thunder.

2. In a few minutes we were within musket-shot of the coast. The soil was almost entirely madreporical, but certain beds of dried-up torrents strewn with debris of granite showed that this island was of the primary formation.

要求:

1.尽量回答上面问题 

2.思考:

Further reading to help you develop your understanding of these two chapters:

Captain Nemo’s anti-humanism could be read as rather advanced, a prefiguring of strains of thought that are becoming increasingly common in reaction to the modern issue of climate change. Like certain ecological thinkers and activists today, Nemo seems to believe that the earth would be better off without humanity (or at least this destructive version of humanity).

The descriptions of indigenous people in the novel are, by and large, aligned with the highly offensive, inaccurate, and propagandistic ideas common at the time the novel was written. The word “savages” indicates the extent to which indigenous people were dehumanized by the accounts of colonizers.

Arronax’s experience aboard the “Nautilus” is contradictory. On one hand, the situation is bleak: he is a captive forced into exile who has been told that he will die in the “prison” of the vessel. At the same time, living on the submarine is also a kind of all-expenses-paid research trip with the best technology and opportunities on Earth freely available to him. In this sense, the novel takes an ambiguous stance toward freedom versus constraint—even if one is physically confined against their will, it seems that they can still retain freedom in other ways.