"Martin Eden" by Jack London

One of London’s most famous works, Martin Eden, represents a young American writer who’s trying to find his own way through realizing the difficulties of being a wealthy writer at the beginning of the 20th century. The novel is based on London’s life and contains some specific autobiographical references from his life. Martin and Jack London have lots of common ground: they both committed suicide, they both suffered from the bourgeois world, and they were stuck between the upper class and the lower class. In addition, Ruth is based on the first love of London’s life and both Eden and London lived in Oakland.

The novel has a tragic narrative, but it differs from the “actual” tragedy notion of the theatre. At first, Martin is not famous and powerful; he is powerless, and there is a period when he becomes wealthy, but then he loses control and commits suicide. That’s why the ending includes the tragic figure. The American Dream, which Martin always inspired, frustrated him as regards being an accomplished and rich writer. Despite this, Martin is very determined, ambitious, and passionate about being a writer. Even when he reaches his dreams, he can’t experience the happiness and satisfaction that he desires for a long time.

The tragic life of Martin ends when he returns to “the sea,” which is the place he belongs as a sailor, and he comes from there and terminates his life in the depths of the ocean. From a metaphorical perspective, the duality of the sea and Martin generates the common notion of a human being who eventually returns to the place where she comes from. If one believes in the afterlife and God or any kind of creator, the parallel that is centred around this notion becomes more comprehendible.

I would like to quote some meaningful excerpts from the novel that have already touched my heart:

1. “You see I have not changed, though my sudden apparent appreciation in value compels me constantly to reassure myself on that point. I’ve got the same flesh on my bones, the same ten fingers and toes. I am the same. I have not developed any new strength or virtue. My brain is the same old brain. I haven’t made even one new generalization on literature or philosophy. I am personally of the same value that I was when nobody wanted me. And what is puzzling me is why they want me now. Surely they don’t want me for myself, for myself is the same old self they did not want. Then they must want me for something else, for something that is outside of me, for something that is not I! Shall I tell you what that something is? It is for the recognition I have received. That recognition is not I. It resides in the minds of others. Then again for the money I have earned and am earning. But that money is not I. It resides in banks and in the pockets of Tom, Dick, and Harry. And is it for that, for the recognition and the money, that you now want me?” (London, 391-392)

2. “You would have destroyed my writing and my career. Realism is imperative to my nature, and the bourgeois spirit hates realism. The bourgeoisie is cowardly. It is afraid of life. And all your effort was to make me afraid of life. You would have formalized me. You would have compressed me into a two-by-four pigeonhole of life, where all life’s values are unreal, and false, and vulgar.” (London, 394)

3. “He knew, now, that he had not really loved her. It was an idealized Ruth he had loved, an ethereal creature of his own creating, the bright and luminous spirit of his love poems. The real bourgeois Ruth, with all the bourgeois failings and with the hopeless cramp of the bourgeois psychology in her mind, he had never loved.” (London, 395)