Guadalupe

Guadalupe appears only as a fleeting landmark in the Nautilus's Atlantic crossing, yet its brief mention carries significant narrative weight. On April 16, the Nautilus raised Martinique and Guadalupe from a distance of about thirty miles, and for one instant Professor Aronnax could see their lofty peaks. This sighting occurs during a period when Captain Nemo is deliberately keeping the submersible away from the American coast, avoiding the waves of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, waterways strewn with islands and plowed by steamers that did not agree with him. The glimpse of Guadalupe thus confirms that the Nautilus is passing through heavily trafficked colonial waters, a fact that intensifies the desperation of Ned Land, who had counted on putting his escape plans into execution in the gulf, either by reaching shore or by pulling alongside one of the many boats plying a coastal trade from one island to another. An escape attempt would have been quite feasible, assuming Ned Land managed to seize the skiff without the captain's knowledge, but in midocean it was unthinkable. Guadalupe, therefore, functions not as a setting for action but as a tantalizing symbol of the freedom that remains just out of reach, a fixed point of civilization glimpsed from the mobile prison of the Nautilus, and its appearance deepens the tension between the captives' longing for liberation and Captain Nemo's determination to keep them aboard.