Cephalopod size the original tissue samples—together with those of other similar carcasses—showed conclusively that they were all masses of the collagenous matrix of whale blubber (Pierce "et al.", 1995; 2004). Cephalopods of enormous size have featured prominently in fiction (see Garcin & Raynal, 2011; Barrère, 2017). Some of the best known examples include the giant squid from Jules Verne's 1870 novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" and its various film adaptations; the giant octopus from the 1955 monster movie "It Came from Beneath the Sea"; and the giant squid from Peter Benchley's 1991 novel "Beast" and the TV film adaptation of
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea the Sea"." "The Toilers of the Sea" also contains an episode where a worker fights a giant octopus, wherein the octopus symbolizes the Industrial Revolution. It is probable that Verne borrowed the symbol, but used it to allude to the Revolutions of 1848 as well, in that the first man to stand against the "monster" and the first to be defeated by it is a Frenchman. In several parts of the book, Captain Nemo is depicted as a champion of the world's underdogs and downtrodden. In one passage, Captain Nemo is mentioned as providing some help to Greeks rebelling against