A friend said something, his classmate married a rich woman, the car and the house were all bought by her. One day he took a woman, or sat in the co-pilot, probably left some clues, the rich woman found out that after not saying much, immediately changed the car, said "dirty", since then his classmates "between the tail to be a person." Friends sighed that marriage is a shortcut to class jump, but the price is also quite large.
There are many ways to jump up class, and writing is one of them, and Jack London is the typical representative. He was a pioneer of Critical Realist literature in the United States, advocating adventure and extremely rich in life experience.
Published in 1909, Martin Eden is considered a semi-autobiographical novel by Jack London and a mature work at the height of his work.
The novel recreates his history of struggle, reflecting his early self-taught and persistent writing process. Jack London arranged a suicide ending for the protagonist, and he himself died prematurely due to an overdose of morphine, at the age of 40, which is lamentable.
In this novel, I saw the sadness of the disillusionment of "cross-class love", saw the arduous process of trying to climb up, saw the ashes of all thoughts after fame and fortune, and saw the tragic end of self-destruction.
Jack London (1876-1916)
The encounter between Martin Eden and Rose Moss was dramatic.
Arthur (Rose's brother) clashes with a drunken rogue on the ferry, and Martin Eden rushes to his rescue, where he fights and gets injured. In gratitude for his righteous deeds, Arthur invited him to his home. So, 21-year-old Martin Eden, a rude sailor, set foot in a high-society family for the first time and opened up a new world.
He fell in love with Rose at first sight.
"She was a pale, light person, with big, unworldly blue eyes and thick blond hair... She is an elf, a celestial being, a goddess, such an otherworldly beauty, where can you find it in the world! ”
At the same time, Rose was also attracted to Martin Eden. Muscular and athletic, his body full of scars and dirt; he spoke in defiance of grammar, recounting his life as a sailor, spewing out strength and exuberance like a volcano.
Before, he was a happy and free sailor, drinking, fighting, and finding girls; now, he fell in love with Rose, and he was determined to climb up, "must gain beauty, intelligence, and love."
Rose was in college, and Martin Eden asked her how to get started. Back and forth, they came and went closer. Rose has no experience in love, and the savage martin Eden makes her feel an unconscious tame impulse, not to mention that he is fast-moving, understanding, and gives her a sense of strength.
Rose's parents did not object to their comings and goings, believing that Rose would not take a fancy to him. When Rose and Martin Eden were privately engaged for life, her parents did not agree and did not announce their engagement. Parents think that their daughters are exposed to too few men, so they will be emotional. Therefore, they frequently held banquets and invited young talents to attend.
Martin Eden Film Stills (2019)
Rose wanted Martin Eden to join his father's firm as a lawyer or a newspaper as a journalist and find a "career," but Martin Eden refused. He decided on the direction of writing, hoping that Rose would wait two years and let him make a result.
"The reason for her disappointment is that the man she set out to portray is unwilling to listen to people."
When Martin Eden was slandered by a young journalist as the leader of the Radical Socialist Party, and he rebelled against him, Rose wrote a letter to break up with him and personally admitted that he had left him voluntarily.
When Martin Eden came to run, became a popular writer, all kinds of people came to squander, and Rose, who had broken up, asked for a reunion.
Martin Eden said that he was exactly the same as before, and that his work had long been written, but no one liked it at that time, and they all advised him to find a job and let him "change from evil to righteousness." Now that something has been published, fame and money have been gained, the essence of Rose's love has changed.
He now realized that he had never really loved her. What he had always loved was an idealized Rose, a celestial being he had created with one hand, the radiant goddess in his own love poems. The real bourgeois lady, Rose, who possessed all the weaknesses of the bourgeoisie, and who had the irredeemable narrowness of the bourgeoisie, had never loved him. ”
Martin Eden Movie Poster (2019)
Martin Eden, with his parents dead and siblings running from behind, has been taking care of himself since his mother died at the age of 11. After meeting Rose, love became Martin Eden's motivation. He began to pay attention to cleaning, tidying up, learning etiquette, trying to quit smoking and alcohol, and read a lot of books, such as hunger and thirst.
He went to sea for eight months, read the complete works of Shakespeare on the ship, and suddenly wanted to tell Rose and even the public about the beauty of going to sea, so he had the idea of writing and believed that he could do anything.
It must be said that Martin Eden devoted himself to writing, aspired to fame, and aspired to rise to Rose's class for love, not for the pursuit of materialism and status.
He wrote day and night and experienced the joy of creation. Article after article flowed out from under his pen one after another, and after throwing it out, one after another was returned. As time passed, he had less and less money and didn't make any money.
"He struggled in the dark, no one pointed him out, no one encouraged him, and everywhere he encountered things that discouraged people."
When he ran out of food, Martin Eden went to the job agency to look for a job, and when Joey Dowson was looking for a washer, he agreed to the job. The two of them worked tirelessly for more than ten hours a day in the hotel's small laundry workshop. Every Sunday, Joey would go to the bar and drink.
"I worked as a cow and a horse for a whole week, and I had to drink a full drink. If I didn't drink it, I was afraid I would cut my own throat or put a fire in the house. ”
The heavy, mechanized work drained them of all their energy, and Martin Eden was weary, uninterested in nothing, and incapable of reading books and newspapers.
On the weekend of the third month, Martin Eden followed Joey for a drink for the third time, drunk enough to forget everything. When he woke up, he realized that it was not the relationship of drinking, but the relationship of doing this kind of work. To climb up, you can't turn yourself into a cow and a horse.
Martin Eden quit his job as a washer and became more determined in the direction of writing. He moved out of his sister Gotlu's house, rented a small room from the Portuguese widow Maria Silva, and lived a hermitial life, strict self-discipline, completing the workload of the average person for three days a day.
He memorized the vocabulary list, read the works of famous writers, and carefully found the tricks of his work's success: the tricks of narrative, commentary, style, opinion, contrast, aphorism, etc., and listed these into tables to study. He explores effective and attractive expressions and collects good words and sentences.
He does not rely on luck and genius, cannot tolerate the effects of coincidence, and his nature is "only after understanding can he begin to work". He does not work blindly, he wants to understand the various truths and how to do it.
He learned that some newspapers and periodicals rarely consider using unsolicited foreign manuscripts, and most of the things they published were special manuscripts written by expert authorities.
Forced to write works that could be sold for money, "like a short story made with a machine." After the publication of the manuscript, new problems were brought about: arrears or unusually low fees, and the published works were changed beyond recognition.
He can't make ends meet, no one looks favorably on him, and everyone thinks that he is not doing his job and has whimsy. He went to take the civil service exam at the post office and unexpectedly took the first place, but he was determined not to work at the post office.
He made a close friend, Blissnden, and accompanied him to a socialist party rally, where his speeches reverberated strongly. Small journalists took pictures of him, portrayed him as the leader of the Socialist Party, and incited anarchism. After this out-of-the-box report came out, he rebelled and Rose broke up with him. Soon, his best friend Blissnden died of illness, and Martin Eden lost love and confidant one after another and fell into the darkness of life.
He was disappointed in the press and his readers, believing that they did not know the goods and no longer wanted to write anything. The old works sent out were published one after another, and some books caused a sensation, and he inexplicably became a new star in the literary world, with fame and fortune.
Martin Eden strives to become a writer, but after giving up, he realizes his dream, and life makes him a huge joke and lays the groundwork for his tragic ending.
Martin Eden's history of struggle is a portrayal of the "American Dream", which has achieved soaring through personal efforts. He strives to be strong from the bottom of society, but after realizing his self-worth, he suddenly commits suicide, which makes the novel have a strong tragic color and critical spirit.
Money is pouring in and fame is getting louder. Publishers were asking who was Martin Eden, and he was overwhelmed by the editor's letter, and the editor asked him to make a condition, and he complied, taking the ready-made work out and refusing to write anything new. Some of the special writers came from far and wide, and he was embarrassed to refuse not to see them. Moreover, he was discouraged, no longer buried in writing and reading, and had a lot of time, so he was interviewed and invited to a banquet.
"The man who bought his books and poured money into his pockets was the bourgeoisie, and how could they possibly appreciate or understand what he wrote, based on his little knowledge of the bourgeoisie. The beauty and power inherent in his work mean nothing to the thousands of people who praise him and buy his books. ”
When he was hungry, no one invited him to dinner; now that he can afford to eat and his appetite is getting worse and worse, invitations are coming. Rose's father, who had despised his brother-in-law for inviting him to dinner and borrowing money from him, also invited him to dinner, who had forbidden him to come to his door and dissolved their marriage.
Martin Eden attended the banquet as a VIP, saw many celebrities, and celebrities said that they had already seen his potential. He asked himself sadly, what does it have to do with works that have been completed long ago?
"The famous writer Martin Eden is nothing more than an illusion that arises in the minds of the masses, and the illusion of the masses stuffs it into the flesh of the rogue and sailor Martin Eden. But this could not deceive him, he was not a god of the sun, and he needed the public to worship and offer food, and he knew that this was not the case. ”
Rose's request for a reunion made him even more upset. When his work could not be sold, she encouraged him to find a job, as if his writing was not a job; he read all his works to her, and she said that he wasting his time. The Rose family welcomed him not by himself or by his works, but by his fame and money, and he despised this way of measuring people.
He found that the object of his former admiration was no longer noble, but bore him; he found that many of the upper class people were shallow and ignorant and opinionated; he found that the highly educated were not academically proficient, well-dressed, intellectually superior, aesthetically pleasing, they were afraid of life, afraid of reality.
Martin Eden, who was famous and advantageous, soon grew tired of sociability, lost all values, and felt that nothing mattered.
He booked a ticket for the Maliposa to go to sea and sat in first class for the first time. He used to envy the first-class passengers so much that "the circle of their activities and lives is simply a paradise paradise"; now he wants to return to the sailor's cabin to find the lost paradise paradise.
He couldn't find the new ones, and he couldn't find the old ones. He felt the pain of his life and committed suicide by throwing himself into the sea.
In this era of increasingly serious class solidification, without background and resources, how to change the status quo, achieve success, and ultimately achieve a class jump? This is the anxiety of many people, and it is also the reason why "success learning" is popular.
We are keen to think about the way to achieve a class leap, but rarely think about what kind of mentality and beliefs are needed after achieving it; we are more likely to get a better material life, but what about the spiritual life?
Martin Eden relies on writing to achieve self-worth, but loses his sense of belonging in the process of self-actualization. On the one hand he considered it incomprehensible and unacceptable to the bourgeoisie, and on the other hand he considered himself incompatible with the previous class, and he fell into a state of complete solitude and eventually embarked on the road of self-destruction.
He had longed to be a member of the bourgeoisie of high society, but found the hypocrisy of high society and hated the measures of the bourgeoisie.
He once longed for love, in order to be worthy of Rose, he tried to teach himself, sleep and forget to create, but finally found Rose's shallow ignorance, it turned out that he idealized love.
He had longed to write and become famous, but at the peak of his career he did not have any fun, and he did not want to write anything with a pen.
His self-destruction reveals the dangers of self-actualization being incompatible with the environment, and reveals the consequences of the lack of inner faith.
The author Jack London said: "One of my purposes in writing Martin Eden was to attack individualism. I must have failed, because not a single book critic saw that. "Maybe he was intent on using Martin Eden's ending to sound the alarm for himself, wary of the corrosive corruption of strong individualism, but unfortunately he could not escape the fate of ending his own life with his own hands."
9-year-old Jack London and his little friend Rollo
Jack London, an illegitimate child, grew up poor and began working as a child laborer at the age of 10, and his rich experience provided him with valuable writing material. At the age of 8, he discovered the "real hobby of a lifetime": reading. He worked part-time to attend high school with amazing perseverance, and was forced to drop out of college after a semester of college because his father was seriously ill. He had no formal college education, he kept writing, submitting, full of confidence in his talents, and finally fame and fortune, with personal efforts to change his destiny.
Jack London's personal experience and creative ideas are quite complex, on the one hand, he came from a low class, tasted bitterness, and had a deep affection for the exploited and insulted lower classes; on the other hand, he understood that only by trying to climb up could he get rid of the fate of being slaughtered, he accepted "survival of the fittest, survival of the fittest" and "white superiority", and his works also reflected this basic contradiction: asking for the life of the weak, beautifying and praising the strong.
Jack London, like his Martin Eden, advocated individualism, believed in Nietzsche's "superman philosophy", and transformed from a poor boy with nothing to a famous writer, who was strong, "superman".
How ironic it is to work hard, become a "superman", and leap to the next level, but after success, you can't find your own sense of belonging.
They are constantly seeking and exploring in the world, determined, good at learning, brave pursuit, they have gained a lot, but after seeing the "true face of the world", they prefer to escape, or even self-destruct. Their tragic end is the result of the collapse of individualism and the disillusionment of idealism.
In the final analysis, matter cannot be exchanged for inner peace and happiness, and the lack of faith makes life go to nothingness.
(The picture in this article comes from the Internet, and the copyright belongs to the original author)