giant squid
The giant squid, referred to throughout the novel as "devilfish" and linked to the legendary kraken, is the most physically overwhelming non-human adversary the Nautilus faces. Its attack in the Caribbean Sea, near the Bahamas, is the only battle in the book that results in the on-screen death of a crewman, and it exposes a vulnerability in Captain Nemo's otherwise invincible vessel. The encounter is the novel's most sustained and gruesome action set-piece, and it leaves Nemo visibly shattered, weeping for the first and only time in the narrative.
Identity and Scientific Context
The giant squid is a cephalopod of the class Cephalopoda, a mollusk with a bird-like beak, a triple heart, and eight arms lined with suckers. Professor Aronnax, drawing on the 1861 encounter between the French gunboat Alecto and a giant squid near Tenerife, provides the scientific framework for the creature. In that real-world event, Commander Bouguer's crew harpooned and shot the animal, but its flesh was so soft that the weapons passed through it like jelly; they managed to slip a noose around its body, but when they tried to haul it aboard, the squid parted company with its tail and escaped. Aronnax notes that the creature was subsequently named "Bouguer's Squid" and that its existence is now an indisputable fact. The squid that attacks the Nautilus is fully eight meters long, with enormous staring sea-green eyes, a mouth shaped like a parrot's beak that opens and closes vertically, and a tongue armed with several rows of sharp teeth. Its unstable color shifts from bluish gray to reddish brown as it grows irritated. Conseil, ever the classifier, identifies it as at least a close relative of Bouguer's Squid.
The Attack and the Death of a Crewman
The encounter begins when the Nautilus's propeller becomes jammed, apparently entangled in the horn-covered mandibles of one of the squid. Captain Nemo decides to rise to the surface and slaughter the creatures with axes, since electric bullets are ineffective against their soft flesh. As the hatch is unbolted, it is torn open by the suckers of a devilfish's arm, and a long tentacle glides like a snake into the opening. Nemo chops it off with a sweep of his ax, but as the crew rushes onto the platform, two more arms lash the air, seize a seaman stationed in front of Nemo, and carry him away with irresistible violence. The man, who speaks French, cries out "Help! Help!" — a revelation that stuns Aronnax, who realizes he has a fellow countryman on board. The poor fellow is swung in the air, glued to the suckers, and despite Nemo's furious assault with the ax, the squid shoots off a spout of blackish liquid from a pouch in its abdomen, blinding the crew. When the cloud disperses, both the squid and the victim are gone. The man is the second companion Nemo has lost since Aronnax came aboard, and his death is far more gruesome than the first: smashed, strangled, and crushed by the fearsome arms, ground between iron mandibles, he will never rest with his companions in the placid waters of the coral cemetery.
The Battle and Ned Land's Rescue
The fight escalates into a wholesale slaughter. Ten or twelve devilfish overrun the Nautilus's platform and sides, and the crew piles into the thick of them, wielding axes amid waves of blood and sepia ink. Ned Land, armed with a harpoon, plunges it into a squid's sea-green eye and bursts it, but he is suddenly toppled by the tentacles of a monster he cannot avoid. The squid's fearsome beak opens wide over him, and he is about to be cut in half when Captain Nemo gets there first, his ax disappearing between the two enormous mandibles. Ned Land is miraculously saved, and he stands and plunges his harpoon all the way into the devilfish's triple heart. Nemo tells him, "Tit for tat," recalling the Canadian's rescue of Nemo from the shark at the Ceylon pearl fisheries. The struggle lasts a quarter of an hour. Defeated, mutilated, battered to death, the monsters finally yield and disappear beneath the waves.
Aftermath and Thematic Significance
After the battle, Captain Nemo stands motionless by the beacon, red with blood, staring at the sea that has swallowed one of his companions. Large tears stream from his eyes — a rare and devastating display of emotion from a man who has otherwise maintained an icy composure throughout the voyage. The death of the French crewman, and the despairing yell in his mother tongue, haunts Aronnax and deepens the mystery of the Nautilus's crew. The giant squid thus serves as more than a physical threat; it is the agent that breaks through Nemo's emotional armor, revealing the grief and vulnerability beneath the mask of the implacable avenger. The creature also marks a turning point in the narrative: after this battle, the Nautilus's course becomes erratic, Nemo withdraws further, and the atmosphere on board grows increasingly tense, leading directly to the final crisis and the crew's desperate escape attempt.
