Martin Eden Jack London\'s Book

Martin Eden

Jack London's book Martin Eden is the semiautobiographical story of a young man born into poverty who desperately wants to become financially secure and middle-class. Partly this desire is driven by his love for a young woman, Ruth Morse. Ruth has high social status and has actually graduated from college. Martin idolizes this young woman and thinks she possesses all the fine qualities a woman should possess, and that she epitomizes what he wants out of life.

He has to find a way to support himself until he meets his goal of earning a good living from his writing, and becomes a seaman to earn his way in the world. He is accused of being a socialist, which causes multiple problems for him: Ruth ends their engagement, and magazines do not want to publish stories written by socialists. No one seems to see any value to his writing except his friend Russ Brissenden, who eventually commits suicide. Eventually Martin gains the fame and success he desired but finds that he doesn't fit in with middle class life. He has lost his past and feels alienated in the present, and returns to the sea, where despair overcomes him. He jumps overboard and drowns. Throughout the book, the sea serves as an allegory for the ebb and flow of Eden's life.

The sea is an important element throughout the book as a powerful symbol of Eden's chaotic life. The sea, churning and unpredictable, is much like Eden's existence. When he goes to see, he rapidly loses sight of where he has been, and looking forward cannot tell him where he is going. This is much the way Eden's life unfolds. He leaves his past, with its poverty behind, and moves into uncharted territory -- engagement to an upper class girl who lives in a world he doesn't completely understand. Just as ships of the time had to adjust to ever-changing conditions and always be wary for signs of trouble on the horizon, Eden has to feel his way through life. He is so driven by his quest to improve himself that he loses sight of who he really is.

He demonstrates this early in his novel. As he fantasizes a better life for himself, he imagines being free and unfettered in several ways, including some connected to the sea: "The known and the unknown were commingled in the dream-pageant that thronged his vision... The scent of the spice islands was in his nostrils as he had known it on warm, breathless nights at sea... He lay on a coral beach where the cocoanuts grew down to the mellow-sounding surf...." (Chapter 2, pp. 4-5). In that quote he shows his longing to return to the sea and to leave his past behind. He knows the ocean is unpredictable, and balances his tropical fantasy with memories of rowing through ice-clogged waters as he remembers "pulling an oar on a freezing ocean where great ice islands towered and glistened in the sun" (Chapter 2, p. 5). As he entertains people with his story-telling ability, he ties his experiences at sea with all his literary and personal desires, because he has just met Ruth, who is intrigued with this contradictory man.

In Chapter 7, London again vividly ties the turmoil in Eden's life to the sea. He wants to call on Ruth Morse again, but socially is sailing uncharted waters. He has no idea of the proper way to reintroduce himself to her and is worried about looking socially inept. He knows no one who can help him. He has sailed away from his lower class roots. They are out of sight and could not guide him now anyway, and he knows no one who can guide him. He is also adrift intellectually, examining books randomly he does not yet have the background to read and understand, intimidated by Ruth's superior education. London says about Eden at this time, "it seemed that the room was lifting, heeling, and plunging like a ship upon the sea" (Chapter 7, p. 1). Frustrated, he is like a sailor caught in a storm before he has learned how to sail. He knows he is smart enough to understand the books he has chosen but that his education has great gaps in it. Thus his quest for a middle class life is intellectual as well as social, financial and professional. He is at the mercy of the elements around him just as surely as if he had been caught in a storm at sea.

By Chapter 11, Eden has embarked on his journey of self-improvement and has enrolled in classes. He also plans to use the stories he is writing to demonstrate to Ruth that he is serious about writing, so she will take him seriously. Even in his physics class, Eden is drawn to the sea, where he sees order in chaos: "He had accepted the world as the world, but now he was comprehending the organization of it, the play and interplay of force and matter... Levers and purchases fascinated him, and his mind roved backward to hand-spikes and blocks and tackles at sea. The theory of navigation, which enabled the ships to travel unerringly their courses over the pathless ocean, was made clear to him. The mysteries of storm, and rain, and tide were revealed" Chapter 11, pp. 2-3. Unfortunately for Eden, life does not follow the laws of physics, and the sea is only predictable when calm. This incident also foreshadows how the sea, and his tumultuous life, is going to disappoint him. Eden has idealized his memories of the sea, imagining tropical islands with scant attention to cold and forbidding waters, and now he imagines that the sea can be mastered, just as he thinks he can happily re-invent himself as a middle class young man.