On Jack London’s Semi-Autobiographic Masterpiece on ART, ‘Martin Eden’

Abstract

The article aims at focusing on some elements of Jack London’s life as a naturalistic writer as reflected in ‘Martin Eden’. The
article, in a different way from other research work, will start with the elaboration of the background to the novel’s setting as related to
Jack London’s own experiences and make a connection of that with Martin Eden. It was written in 1909 and mythologizes Jack London’s
rise from obscurity to his early death at forty, a prophesies. When London wrote Martin Eden he was at the age of 33, he had already
achieved international acclaim with ‘The call of the wild’, ‘The sea-wolf ‘and ‘White Fang’. However, London quickly became disillusioned
with his fame and set sail to write his next masterpiece. The second part of this article will make a distinction between the two modes of
fiction reflected in Martin Eden, that of the novel of success as well as the novel of education. Further it will elaborate on issues as
idealism, socialism and realism and Jack London’s stand. The article will continue with literary criticism about how this novel was
received. Finally, as developed in preceding parts of this article, it will be concluded that it is not difficult to see that Martin Eden was the
victim of the two pairs of conflicts , his (Jack London’s) personal tragedy was also that of his society and his time. Hence, no individual
can isolate himself from the society in which he was born and brought up, and so did Jack London.