Martin Eden

Summary

Martin Eden, published in 1909, is Jack London's most autobiographical novel, the story of a working-class sailor who teaches himself to become a writer and finds that success brings him no happiness. Martin, a rough young seaman in Oakland, rescues a young man from a fight and is invited to the home of the wealthy, cultured Morse family. There he falls in love with Ruth Morse, a pale, refined university student, who seems to him the embodiment of beauty and culture. To win her, Martin sets out to educate himself. He reads voraciously in libraries, studies grammar, and discovers the philosophy of Herbert Spencer. He decides to become a writer and works with fierce energy, sleeping only a few hours a night, while living in poverty with his sister's family and later in a rented room, pawning his clothes to buy stamps. Editors reject his stories again and again. Ruth loves him but wants him to take a steady job, perhaps in her father's office. Martin's friend Russ Brissenden, a brilliant, dying poet, takes him to a socialist meeting; when a newspaper falsely reports Martin as a socialist speaker, the Morses break the engagement. Brissenden dies by suicide after his great poem is published and ridiculed. Then, suddenly, Martin's work begins to sell, and he becomes famous and rich. The same people who scorned him now invite him to dinner, and Ruth returns to him. Martin, bitter, insists that his work was already done when they rejected him; it was work performed, and nothing in him has changed. He gives money to those who helped him in poverty, but he feels empty and has lost the will to live. Sailing for the South Seas, he slips through a porthole into the ocean and drowns himself. London intended the novel as an attack on individualism, though many readers took it as a celebration of self-made success. Because of its suicide and bleak ending, it suits mature upper-level readers.

Top Lessons

• Self-education

  Martin teaches himself through reading and practice. Students can learn from his discipline.

• Success and meaning

  Martin achieves everything he wanted and finds it empty.

• Class and judgment

  People judge Martin by his class and later by his fame.

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