Martin Eden-A Naturalist's Modern Version Of American Dream

Jack London (1876-1916) is a prolific American novelist and short story writer, whose works deal romantically with the overwhelming power of nature and the struggle for survival. Between 1900 and 1916 he completed over fifty books. Today, almost countless editions of London's writings are available and some of them have been translated into as many as seventy different languages.Owing to its extraordinary literary merits, London's Martin Eden is listed among the most notable twentieth-century American novels. It tells about a tragic story of a rags-to-riches young man, Martin Eden, who bears an extremely strong resemblance to London himself in dedicating himself into realizing his American Dream—to be self-educated and raise himself out of the poverty into the upper middle class through writing.The novel portrays the contradictions faced by a writer of the early 20th century between adherence to artistic integrity and the demands of the literary marketplace. The novel also presents Martin's development from an ambitious and ill-educated sailor into an internationally acclaimed writer and critic. Jack London endeavors to exploit the philosophical ideas of his time to analyze his life experiences and his understanding of the American Dream in this semi-autobiographical novel. The tragic ending of Martin Eden symbolizes the failure of the Individualism and disenchants the Alger myth of the American Dream. Eventually it implies that material civilization fails to resolve the problems confronted by human beings, such as class conflicts and distinction.Through the introduction of the background of history and literary trend, the philosophical ideas of Jack London's time and the powerful traditional value—American Dream, it will be understood what is reflected in Martin Eden about the writer and the society.The whole thesis is divided into five parts: Introduction, Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, and Conclusion.