The Lost Eden

The Lost Eden

The story of Martin Eden is a dark but interesting one, written by Jack London, an author from early 20th Century California. Martin’s life is difficult, as he decides to defy society and join the upper class, ultimately alienating his own class while realizing the superficiality of the upper class. Through this journey, Martin embodies and evolves through three main personas, mind sets, or personalities. In the beginning, “Martin’s feeling of social inadequacy developed”(Sinclair 145), as he is a man seeking approval of society, trying to become a successful writer and win the love of an upper class woman, Ruth Morse. Then he turns into a man bent against society, or perhaps merely in great disproval, for his futile efforts to become a writer are thwarted and laughed at by everyone, from the editors of the magazines to his beloved Ruth and her family. Once Martin does become famous and rich, “his success snowballs, he is lionized by society” (Labor 118), but Martin “wishes he had never opened the books” (Lundquist 149). Through all of these struggles, Martin truly embodies none other than the author, Jack London, as the entire novel is something of an autobiography. London is “confronting himself in Martin” (Bader 150), although it is very true that Martin Eden is “a novel rather than straight autobiography”, “deliberately introspective” (Lundquist 150).

Martin Eden is first a man who wishes to assimilate with high society, the upper class, as he believes that the upper class possesses an infinite amount of beauty and knowledge. Martin’s first true glimpses of the upper class come when he is invited to the Morse home, after saving Arthur Morse from a “gang of waterfront thugs” (Labor 117). This is ironic because M...

... middle of paper ...

...n. 1909. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1984. Print.

Lundquist, James. Jack London: Adventures, Ideas, and Fiction. New York, New York: The Ungar Publishing Company, 1987. Print.

Magill, Frank N. “Jack London.” Critical Survey of Long Fiction. Vol. 4. Englewood Cliffs: Salem Press, Inc., 1983. 1691-1699. Print.

- - -. “Jack London.” Critical Survey of Short Fiction. Vol. 5. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Salem Press, 1981. 1809-1813. Print.

New American Bible. New York: Catholic Book Publishing, Co., 1991. Print.

O’Conner, Richard. Jack London: A Biography. N.p.: Little, Brown, and Company, 1964. Print.

Sinclair, Andrew. Jack: A Biography of Jack London. New York, NY: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1977. Print.

Verde, Tom. “London, Jack.” Twentieth-Century Writers 1900–1950, American Profiles. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1993. American History Online. Web. 22 Nov. 2011.