Famous Translation with Illustrations - Martin Eden

Author: Jack London (USA)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: Born into poverty, sailor Martin Eden meets the Ruth family by chance. Ruth is exceptionally beautiful, captivating him, and he becomes determined to study hard to become worthy of her in every way. Ruth is also drawn to his strong physique and abundant energy, and she falls for him unconsciously. Martin aspires to become a writer and begins a tough career in writing, but none of his manuscripts are accepted, and his life becomes impoverished. Ruth also cuts off contact with him. When he is disheartened and stops working hard on writing, he unexpectedly gets lucky—his article is published in a major magazine, and other manuscripts that had been rejected countless times also become highly popular. He achieves fame overnight, and Ruth comes to him and throws herself into his arms. However, Martin becomes completely disillusioned with this materialistic society. While sailing at sea, he quietly climbs onto the porthole and throws himself into the embrace of the sea. Of course, the work that most vividly reflects both the positive and negative aspects of his creative philosophy is his masterpiece—Martin Eden, a novel published in 1909. In this autobiographical novel, Jack London poured his heart and soul into it, writing about his struggles in studying and writing under the disdain of the mediocre bourgeoisie, and also extensively elaborating on his social views, which are a mix of Marxist class consciousness, Spencer's Social Darwinism, and Nietzsche's "superman" theory. Martin Eden is a sailor on an ocean-going ship. By chance, he meets the Ruth family and falls deeply in love with the liberal arts student, seeing her as his ideal lover. To match her, he studies diligently, arming himself with cultural knowledge, especially various philosophical ideas. He believes his experiences will interest people, and his views urgently need to be expressed to them, so he seriously studies and practices writing. But his attempts fail one after another, and his life becomes destitute to the point of exhaustion; despite often being starving and even pawning his coat, he still ignores everything to study and write. Although his sister, landlord, and working-class friends like and sympathize with him, they don't understand him, while the upper-class gentlemen and ladies mock and ridicule him, but he presses forward,. In terms of his spirit of hard struggle and self-reliance, this is positive.