Martin Eden’s Pursuing Process and Spirit

Abstract

Martin Eden is a novel with a property of autobiography written by American realistic writer Jack London. Its main characteristic is the exposure of American society’s hypocrisy and decay. The essay mainly discusses the struggling process of Martin Eden, and is divided into three parts: love, knowledge and the world, and the hero himself to display the hero’s pursuing spirit and his self—improvement. The latter part describes the hero’s disintegration in “mind” and the success on the “surface” at the same time, reveals the contradiction between the main part of the society’s hypocrisy and the hero’s pure pursuing mind, thus deepens the precious quality of the hero’s active pursuing spirit in the complex, uncertain society.