Chapter I. Jack London’s life and works

The structure of the work. The significance and actuality of the theme, the aim and tasks, the theoretical and practical importance of the paper is outlined in introduction. The results of the research are generalized in the concluding part of the qualification paper. The first chapter considers Jack London’s life and works. The second chapter deals with detailed analysis of Critical Realism and Martin Edin.

plan 1.1

John "Jack" Griffith Chaney was born on 12 January 1876 in San Francisco, California to Flora Wellman (1843-1922) and astrologer William Henry Chaney (1821-1903). Virginia "Jenny" Prentiss (1832-1922), an ex-slave was Jack's wet nurse and would prove to have a great and positive influence on her young charge's life. After Chaney left Flora (they had never married) she wed John London (1828-1897) in 1876. Jack was given his last name and he now had two step-sisters Eliza and Ida. The London lived in various places in the Bay area, and while young Jack attended school, there was also pressure on him to help contribute to the family income. At the age of ten he was selling newspapers and learning some hard lessons in life. “I was born in the working-class. Early I discovered enthusiasm, ambition, and ideals; and to satisfy these became the problem of my child-life. My environment was crude and rough and raw. I had no outlook, but an up look rather. My place in society was at the bottom. Here life offered nothing but sordidness and wretchedness, both of the flesh and the spirit; for here flesh and spirit were alike starved and ormented.-"What Life Means To Me" from Revolution and Other Essays (1910). London worked many jobs of menial and unskilled labor at places such as a cannery and a jute mill, and also worked as a window-washer, watchman, and longshoreman. But the drudgery of these occupations did not dampen his enterprising spirit or intellectual enthusiasm for reading and writing. While living in Oakland he discovered the public library and immersed himself in literature. Having taught himself to sail at a very early age, in the 1890s, with money borrowed from Prentiss, London bought the sloop Razzle Dazzle and worked as an "oyster pirate" in the Bay. "Alas for visions! When I was sixteen I had already earned the title of "prince." But this title was given me by a gang of cut-throats and thieves, by whom I was called "The Prince of the Oyster Pirates." (ibid.)

After Londons' own sloop was pirated, stripped of her ropes and anchors, he decided he had had enough of capitalist enterprise and in 1894 set out to experience the life of a tramp "begging my way from door to door, wandering over the United States and sweating bloody sweats in slums and prisons." (ibid.) Nothing could have given him greater insight into the human condition and the class system of haves and have-nots. Upon returning to California and realizing that he wanted a better life for himself than merely toiling away physically, London decided to become a "brain merchant" and set about in the "frantic pursuit of knowledge." In 1895 he attended Oakland High School and later the University of California at Berkeley but had to leave before finishing the year due to lack of funds and the need to support himself financially. While London had already been writing for some time, his first story being "Typhoon Off The Coast Of Japan" (1893) which he wrote after a stint on the sloop Sophia Sutherland off the coasts of Siberia and Japan, he earnestly put pen to paper now and embarked on what would be his successful career as writer of essays, short stories, news items, and novels. In 1896 he joined the Socialist Labour Party.

It is quite fair to say that I became a Socialist in a fashion somewhat similar to the way in which the Teutonic pagans became Christians--it was hammered into me. Not only was I not looking for Socialism at the time of my conversion, but I was fighting it. I was very young and callow, did not know much of anything, and though I had never even heard of a school called "Individualism," I sang the paean of the strong with all my heart from his essay "How I Became A Socialist" (1905)

The Iron Heel (1908) also reflects his socialist views. In 1897 London was among the first hordes to leave for the Klondike during the Gold Rush. It was a perilous time; he found no gold and suffered scurvy, living out the winter in his now-famous Klondike cabin. It was there that he wrote the ominous "To Build A Fire"; he also gained invaluable experience for future writings. And they were now appearing in such magazines as the Overland Monthly and The Atlantic Monthly.

Back in Oakland, London met Anna Strunsky (1879-1968) who would become a life-long friend, and with whom he would co-author The Kempton-Wace Letters (1903). On 7 April 1900 London married Bess Maddern (1876-1947) with whom he would have two daughters: Joan (1901-1971) and Bess (1902-1992). They divorced in 1904. The same year he was married, London's first book was published, The Son of the Wolf (1900). It was followed by The God of His Fathers (1901), A Daughter of the Snows (1902), The Children of the Frost (1902), and The Cruise of the Dazzler (1902). While living in the East End of London, England he wrote The People of the Abyss (1903). London served several stints as journalist; during the Russo-Japanese war in 1904 London was war correspondent for the San Francisco Examiner, for Collier's in 1906 reported on the earthquake in San Francisco, and 1914 travelled to Mexico to report on the revolution. While he had travelled much in his life, London was also looking to put down roots. He loved horseback riding and life on the ranch that he knew so well from his childhood. In 1905 he purchased land in Glen Ellen in the Sonoma County Valley of California which would eventually be part of his fourteen-hundred acre "Beauty Ranch". His sister Eliza would become his ranch superintendent. The Faith of Men (1904) was followed by The Sea Wolf (1904) which inspired the first feature-length film to be produced in the United States.

On 19 November 1905 London married Charmian Kittredge (1871-1955) with whom he would have a daughter, Joy, who died in infancy. London continued his prodigious output of novels and stories; The Game (1905) was followed by War of the Classes (1905), Tales of the Fish-Patrol (1905), Moon Face and Other Stories (1906), Scorn of Women (1906), Before Adam (1907), Love of Life and Other Stories (1907), and The Road (1907).

London had been planning his next trip for some time, and on his schooner Snark left for Hawaii in 1907. He and Charmian travelled to the Marquesas Islands, Tahiti, Samoa, Fiji, Solomon Islands, and Australia. Back home in 1909, London continued to add to his ranch, buying land and starting construction of "Wolf House" (which was destroyed by fire in 1913). His semi-autobiographical Martin Eden was published in 1909. Numerous works followed including Lost Face (1910), Revolution and Other Essays (1910), Burning Daylight (1910), Theft: A Play in Four Acts (1910), When God Laughs and Other Stories (1911), Adventure (1911), The Cruise of the Snark (1911), and South Sea Tales (1911). It was in 1912 that the Londons set sail again on the Dirigo bound for Cape Horn. The same year The Strength of the Strong (1914) and The Mutiny of the Elsinore (1914) were published, Jack and Charmian made their last trip to Hawaii. At the age of forty, Jack London died at his ranch cottage on 22 November 1916. Charmian continued to live at the ranch, and devoted herself to its preservation. She managed Jacks' estate including the publication of several more of his works, and wrote several of her own books including The Book of Jack London (1921). Her ashes are buried with Jacks' at the ranch, part of which is now the Jack London State Historical Park.

But he is not always alone. When the long winter nights come on and the wolves follow their meat into the lower valleys, he may be seen running at the head of the pack through the pale moonlight or glimmering borealis, leaping gigantic above his fellows, his great throat a-bellow as he sings a song of the younger world, which is the song of the pack-Ch. 7, Call of the Wild

Jack London fought his way up out of the factories and waterfront dives of West Oakland to become the highest paid, most popular novelist and short story writer of his day. He wrote passionately and prolifically about the great questions of life and death, the struggle to survive with dignity and integrity, and he wove these elemental ideas into stories of high adventure based on his own firsthand experiences at sea, or in Alaska, or in the fields and factories of California. Along with his books and stories, however, Jack London was widely known for his personal exploits. He was a celebrity, a colorful and controversial personality who was often in the news. Generally fun-loving and playful, he could also be combative, and was quick to side with the underdog against injustice or oppression of any kind. He was a fiery and eloquent public speaker, and much sought after as a lecturer on socialism and other economic and political topics. Despite his avowed socialism, most people considered him a living symbol of rugged individualism, a man whose fabulous success was due not to special favor of any kind, mental ability and immense vitality.
Strikingly handsome, full of laughter, restless and courageous to a fault, always eager for adventure on land or sea.
Jack London ascribed his literary success largely to hard work - to "dig," as he put it. He tried never to miss his early morning 1,000-word writing stint, and between 1900 and 1916 he completed over fifty books, including both fiction and non-fiction, hundreds of short stories, and numerous articles on a wide range of topics. Several of the books and many of the short stories are classics of their kind, well thought of in critical terms and still popular around the world. Today, almost countless editions of London's writings are available and some of them have been translated into as many as seventy different languages.
In addition to his daily writing stint and his commitments as a lecturer, London also carried on voluminous correspondence (he received some 10,000 letters per year), read proofs of his work as it went to press, negotiated with his various agents and publishers, and conducted other business such as overseeing construction of his custom-built sailing ship, the Snark (1906 - 1907), construction of Wolf House (1910 - 1913), and the operation of his beloved Beauty Ranch, which became a primary preoccupation after about 1911. Along with all this, he had to continually generate new ideas for books and stories and do the research so necessary to his writing. Somehow, he managed to do all these things and still find time to go swimming, horseback riding, or sailing on San Francisco Bay. He also spent 27 months cruising the South Pacific in the Snark, put in two tours of duty as an overseas war correspondent, traveled widely for pleasure, entertained a continual stream of guests whenever he was at home in Glen Ellen, and did his fair share of barroom socializing and debating. In order to fit all this living into the narrow confines of one lifetime, he often tried to make do with no more than four or five hours of sleep at night.
London was first attracted to the Sonoma Valley by its magnificent natural landscape, a unique combination of high hills, fields and streams, and a beautiful mixed forest of oaks, madrones, California buckeyes, Douglas Fir, and redwood trees. "When I first came here, tired of cities and people, I settled down on a little farm ... 130 acres of the most beautiful, primitive land to be found in California." He didn't care that the farm was badly run-down. Instead, he reveled in its deep canyons and forests, its year-round springs and streams. "All I wanted," he said later, "was a quiet place in the country to write and loaf in and get out of Nature that something which we all need, only the most of us don't know it." Soon, however, he was busy buying farm equipment and livestock for his "mountain ranch." He also began work on a new barn and started planning a fine new house. "This is to be no summer-residence proposition," he wrote to his publisher in June 1905, "but a home all the year round. I am anchoring good and solid, and anchoring for keeps ..."
Born January 12, 1876, he was only 29, but he was already internationally famous for Call of the Wild (1903), The Sea Wolf (1904), and other literary and journalistic accomplishments. He was divorced from Bessie (Maddern), his first wife and the mother of his two daughters, 
Living and owning land near Glen Ellen was a way of escaping from Oakland - from the city way of life he called the "man-trap." But excited as he was about his plans for the ranch, London was still too restless, too eager for foreign travel and adventure, to settle down and spend all his time there. While his barn and other ranch improvements were still under construction he decided to build a ship and go sailing around the world - exploring, writing, adventuring - enjoying the "big moments of living" that he craved and that would give him still more material to Jack London (1876-1916), iconic American author wrote Call of the Wild (1903);

Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil, and furry coats to protect them from the frost.

With Buck the dog as protagonist, London exposes the fine line between civility and the violence of nature, and the at-times harsh and cruel world created by men in their greed for fame and fortune. Cleverly portraying the animals' point of view White Fang (1906) follows similar themes. As the two most popular novels of London's based on his own life experiences in the Yukon, they have inspired numerous authors' works, and adaptations for television and film. During his short lifetime of forty years, London developed great passions for sailing, travelling, ranching, and the wilderness, and his works encompass the myriad interests he embraced to the full.
Plan 1.2

Other works by Jack London include;

The House of Pride and Other Tales of Hawaii (1912),

Smoke Bellew (1912),

A Son of the Son (1912),

The Night-Born and Other Stories (1913),

The Abysmal Brute (1913),

John Barleycorn (1913),

The Valley of the Moon (1913),

The Scarlet Plague (1915),

The Star Rover (1915),

The Acorn Planter: A California Forest Play (1916),

The Little Lady of the Big House (1916), and

The Turtles of Tasman (1916).and take Jack and Charmian around the world. In fact it lasted 27 months and took them "only" as far as the South Pacific and Australia. Discouraged by a variety of health problems, and heartbroken about having to abandon the trip and sell the Snark, London returned to Glen Ellen.

In 1909, '10 and '11 he bought more land, and in 1911 moved from Glen Ellen to a small ranch house in the middle of his holdings. He rode horseback throughout the countryside, exploring every canyon, glen and hill top. And he threw himself into farming - scientific agriculture - as one of the few justifiable, basic, and idealistic ways of making a living. A significant portion of his later writing - Burning Daylight (1910), Valley of the Moon (1913), Little Lady of the Big House (1916) - had to do with the simple pleasures of country life, the satisfaction of making a living directly and honestly from the land. Jack and Charmian London's dream house began to take definite shape early in 1911 as Albert Farr, a well-known San Francisco architect, put their ideas on paper in the form of drawings and sketches, and then supervised the early stages of construction. It was to be a grand house - one that would remain standing for a thousand years. By August 1913, London had spent approximately $80,000 (in pre-World War I dollars), and the project was nearly complete. On August 22 final cleanup got underway and plans were laid for moving the Londons' specially designed, custom-built furniture and other personal belongings into the mansion. That night - at 2 a. m. - word came that the house was burning. By the time the Londons arrived on the scene the house was ablaze in every corner, the roof had collapsed,
London looked on philosophically, but inside he was seriously wounded, for the loss was a crushing financial blow and the wreck of a long-cherished dream. Worse yet, he also had to face the probability that the fire had been deliberately set - perhaps by someone close to him. To this day, the mystery remains unsolved, but there are strong indications that the fire started by spontaneous combustion of oily rags which had been left in the building on that hot August night. London planned to rebuild Wolf House eventually, but at the time of his death in 1916 the house remained as it stands today, the stark but eloquent vestige of a unique dream.
The destruction of the Wolf House left London terribly depressed, but after a few days he forced himself to go back to work. Using a $2,000 advance from Cosmopolitan Magazine, he added a new study to the little wood-frame ranch house in which he had been living since 1911.
From the time he went east to meet with his publishers in New York, or to San Francisco or Los Angeles on other business. He also spent a considerable amount of time living and working aboard his 30-foot yawl, the Roamer, which he loved to sail around San Francisco Bay and throughout the nearby Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. In 1914 he went to Mexico as a war correspondent covering the role of U.S. troops and Navy ships in the Villa-Carranza revolt.
In 1915 and again in 1916 Charmian persuaded him to spend several months in Hawaii, where he seemed better able to relax and more willing to take care of himself. His greatest satisfaction, however, came from his ranch activities and from his ever more ambitious plans for expanding the ranch and increasing its productivity. These plans kept him perpetually in debt and under intense pressure to keep on writing as fast as he could, even though it might mean sacrificing quality in quantity. His doctors urged him to ease up, to change his work habits and his diet, to stop all use of alcohol, and to get more exercise. But he refused to change his way of life, and plunged on with his writing and his ranch, generously supporting friends and relations through it all. If anything, the press of his financial commitments and his increasingly severe health problems only made him expand his ambitions, dream even larger dreams, and work still harder and faster.
On November 22, 1916, Jack London died of gastrointestinal uremic poisoning. He was 40 years of age and had been suffering from a variety of ailments, including a kidney condition that was extraordinarily painful at times. Nevertheless, right up to the last day of his life he was full of bold plans and boundless enthusiasm for the future.
"No writer, unless it were Mark Twain, ever had a more romantic life than Jack London. The untimely death of this most popular of American Fictionists as profoundly shocked a world that expected him to live and work for many years longer." (Ernest J. Hopkins in the San Francisco Bulletin, December 2, 1916).
"He will be missed around here, all right," said one of the workmen on the ranch, "for he was mighty good to us, and there never was a man who came here hungry."
"No matter what he said or did, his ever present kindness held you. He could say the rashest and brashest things, hurt your feelings and make you like it ... because there was no personal sting. He was one of the most lovable characters of his age."
"His greatness will surge triumphantly above race and time," said his old friend George Sterling. His genius was "so flaming, so passionate, and so sincere" that it would overwhelm the limits of "prejudice and nationality."

conclusion.

1 bob

Jack London, his full name is John Griffith "Jack" London, born on January 12, 1876 - November 22, 1916. American writer and journalist. London is one of the most widely translated American writers of other languages. Some of Jack Londonn's most famous works are White Fang (1906) and The Call of the Wild (1903). London is well-known to Uzbek readers with its Martin Eden novel (cited by Martin Iden) (1908–1909). Jack London the works of romanticism and wrote about the difficulties of ordinary life. London was one of the first writers worldwide to earn a living by writing a single piece.

As a young Londoner, he was engaged in many professions. For the first time in 1893, he was an ordinary sailor on a sea voyage to Japan. He joined the unemployed emigration to Washington in 1894, was imprisoned for life-style, and joined the political movement. In 1895, the US Labor Party became a member of the Socialist Party in 1901. He then enrolled at the University of California and soon dropped out. Jack London's literary activity dates back to 1893. Numerous collections of novels, a number of novels and novels are written in the North ("The Wolf of the Wolf," 1900; The Children of the Poet, 1902). "Snow Maiden" (1902), "Spark of Life" (1907), "North Odyssey" (1910), "Confidence in man" (1914), "Ancient sailors" (1917), "Man of Scarp" (1900) The author of “Adventure” (1905) and other adventures. In the "Far Country" (1899), "Woman's Courage" (1900), "Burning Fire" (1910), "The Winter's Tale" (1904), he described the life of labor-intensive indies. The works of "The Call of the Wild" (1903) and "White Sauce" (1906) are about animal life. The Wolf of the Sea (1904), Martin Eden (1909), The Three Hearts (1920) are famous. The works of London are influenced by the philosophical teachings of Herbert Spencer and Friedrich Nietzsche. Martin Eden's novel-biography illustrates his "desire to live" even when the protagonist's paycheck is complete. In his novel Influenced by Individualism, the Western theory of "perfect human", that is, "superman", is also promoted.

2.1 plan

.Realism

Broadly defined as "the faithful representation of reality" or "verisimilitude," realism is a literary technique practiced by many schools of writing. Although

strictly speaking, realism is a technique, it also denotes a particular kind of subject matter, especially the representation of middle-class life. A reaction against romanticism, an interest in scientific method, the systematizing of the study of documentary history, and the influence of rational philosophy all affected the rise of realism. According to William Harmon and Hugh Holman, "Where romanticists transcend the immediate to find the ideal, and naturalists plumb the actual or superficial to find the scientific laws that control its actions, realists center their attention to a remarkable degree on the immediate, the here and now, the specific action, and the verifiable consequence"

.Naturalism

A modified definition appears in Donald Pizer's Realism and Naturalism in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction, Revised Edition (1984):

The naturalistic novel usually contains two tensions or contradictions, and . . . the two in conjunction comprise both an interpretation of experience and a particular aesthetic recreation of experience. In other words, the two constitute the theme and form of the naturalistic novel. The first tension is that between the subject matter of the naturalistic novel and the concept of man which emerges from this subject matter. The naturalist populates his novel primarily from the lower middle class or the lower class. . . . His fictional world is that of the commonplace and unheroic in which life would seem to be chiefly the dull round of daily existence, as we ourselves usually conceive of our lives. But the naturalist discovers in this world those qualities of man usually associated with the heroic or adventurous, such as acts of violence and passion which involve sexual adventure or bodily strength and which culminate in desperate moments and violent death. A naturalistic novel is thus an extension of realism only in the sense that both modes often deal with the local and contemporary. The naturalist, however, discovers in this material the extraordinary and excessive in human nature.

In this book Jack London is hard to balance between realism and naturalism. Sometimes it seems more like realism but sometimes it looks just like naturalism.

. Individualism

Jack London's original intention is that he writes this book to attacks the individualism, but the majority critics all think him really for the individualism defense, but quite many readers accept this book as "individual struggle" the model.

Critical realism is a series of philosophical positions on a range of matters including ontology, causation, structure, persons, and forms of explanation. Emerging in the context of the post-positivist crises in the natural and social sciences in the 1970s and 1980s, critical realism represents a broad alliance of social theorists and researchers trying to develop a properly post-positivist social science. Critical realism situates itself as an alternative paradigm both to scientistic forms of positivism concerned with regularities, regression-based variables models, and the quest for law-like forms; and also to the strong interpretivist or postmodern turn which denied explanation in favor of interpretation, with a focus on hermeneutics and description at the cost of causation.

​Defining critical realism is not an easy task. While there is a pool of scholars that critical realists often draw upon (e.g. Archer 1982, 1995; Bhaskar 1975, 1979; Elder-Vass 2010; Gorski 2008, 2013a; Lawson 1997; Little 2016; Porpora 2015; Sayer 2000; Steinmetz 1998, 2003, 2014; Vandenberghe 2015) there is not one unitary framework, set of beliefs, methodology, or dogma that unites critical realists as a whole. Instead, critical realism is much more like a series of family resemblances in which there are various commonalities that exist between the members of a family, but these commonalities overlap and crisscross in different ways. There is not one common feature that defines a family, instead, it is a heterogeneous assemblage of elements drawn from a relatively common “genetic” pool. Critical realism is a philosophical well from which Marxists, Bourdieusians, Habermasians, Latourians, and even poststructuralists have drawn. The reason for this is simple. Critical realism is not an empirical program; it is not a methodology; it is not even truly a theory, because it explains nothing. It is, rather, a meta-theoretical position: a reflexive philosophical stance concerned with providing a philosophically informed account of science and social science which can in turn inform our empirical investigations. We might think of this in terms of three layers: our empirical data, the theories that we draw upon to explain our empirical data, and our metatheories.
While critical realism may be a heterogeneous series of positions, there is one loose genetic feature which unites it as a metatheory: a commitment to formulating a properly post-positivist philosophy. This commitment is often cast in the terms of a normative agenda for science and social science: ontological realism, epistemic relativism, judgmental rationality, and a cautious ethical naturalism.

At the heart of critical realism is realism about ontology—an inquiry into the nature of things. Ontological realism asserts that much of reality exists and operates independently of our awareness or knowledge of it. Reality does not wholly answer to empirical surveying or hermeneutical examination. Historically, social science, rightly seeking to ground itself in empirical investigations, has paid attention to epistemology at the expense of ontology—that is to say, sociology has focused on how we know what we know, while questions about the nature of the known are largely treated as an afterthought. The result has been a focus on methods and forms of explanation, with insufficient (or naïve and misguided) attention to questions about what kind of entities actually exist in the social world and what are they like. This has often left sociology with what amounts to be an implicit realism when it comes to empirical data, an unexamined relativism when it comes to forms of explanation, and a certain skittishness to any claims about the nature of the world.

However, ontology is not easily thrust aside. Sociology (and the practice of sociology) relies on certain broad beliefs about the nature of the social world which inform our investigations. Sociologists operate with certain beliefs about the nature of order, structures, processes, persons, and causes. These beliefs are not reducible to our empirical data, and are often taken for granted when we construct our theories. Many of the determinate and important features of the world are not empirically verifiable or quantifiable, and may in fact resist articulation into theory, language, numbers, models, or empirical scrutiny. In such cases, these things can only be reconstructed through retroductive or abductive inferences; arguments which move from a social phenomena to a theory which is able to account for that phenomena. To do this, we require a toolbox stocked with conceptual resources that are appropriate and sensitive to the particular nature of things in the social world. Because of this, critical realists often concern themselves with relatively abstract or philosophical questions that arise from, and undergird, our empirical investigations.

Critical realists are concerned with mapping the ontological character of social reality: those realities which produce the facts and events that we experience and empirically examine. In saying this, critical realists do not reject either interpretivism or statistical modeling wholesale. Instead, combining explanation and interpretation, the aim is an historical inquiry into artifacts, culture, social structures, persons, and what affects human action and interaction. However, critical realists approach causation critically, using the partial regularities, facts, and events we encounter in the social world as a springboard or gateway to understand the complex, layered, and contingent processes or structures which cause those regularities, facts, and events. This must be done without reducing causation to constant conjunction forms in which event A is always followed by event B; but in order to do this, we require a thick and robust account of causation, structures, and processes which is able to do justice to the complexity and heterogeneity of the social world. In other words, we require a good account of the nature of the social world which does not naïvely import causal models from natural sciences.

Ontological realism is committed to the relatively autonomous existence of social reality and our investigations into the nature of reality; however, our knowledge about that reality is always historically, socially, and culturally situated. Knowledge is articulated from various standpoints according to various influences and interests, and is transformed by human activity—in other words, our knowledge is context-, concept-, and activity-dependent. Critical realists believe we cannot be naïve about this, and must embrace a form of epistemic relativism. Realism is not a high handed way of trumping interpretation or agents’ understanding of the world, or claiming a privileged access to reality. There is no way of knowing the world except under particular, more or less historically transient descriptions. Our accounts are fallible, and while realism entails a commitment to truth, there are no truth values or criteria of rationality that exist outside of historical time. Because of this, all of our representations and our particular perspectives, have limitations. Science is fallible and scientific knowledge is always formulated in terms of conceptual frameworks which are themselves not unique ways of parsing the empirical world. We are only ever able to get at the reality of things in different ways. Depth of insight generally comes at the cost of breadth of scope and vice versa.
This does not imply that knowledge is hopeless or the possibility of realism is a futile quest; it simply means that our representations of the world are always historical, perspectival, and fallible, entailing, among other things, the necessity of methodological pluralism. As such, ontological realism does not entail the “reality” of any of our constructions, putting a big stamp of approval on our accounts; neither does it justify a “derogation of the lay actor” (Porpora 2015). Rather, for critical realists, ontology must simply be understood as having a relative degree of autonomy from epistemology and interpretation.

2.2

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. Index Terms—Martin Eden, pursuit, love, self—improvement, disintegration I. INTRODUCTION Written by Jack London in 1909, Martin Eden, with a property of autobiography, is seen as a famous novel which represents the author’s achievements in art and his writing style. Martin was a young sailor about twenty-one years old; by chance he went to the hall of a high class family, knowing Ruth for the first time. The entire atmosphere in the room and the beauty of her made him excited and thrilled. And in order to match himself with Ruth and win her, he started the process of pursuing: love, beauty, knowledge and the world, and set himself as a writer. Indeed Ruth was attracted by Martin’s enthusiasm and strength and fell in love with him. But the process of Martin’s success was so long that before his success, during a time of hardness, all people around him including Ruth, did not understand him. Even worse, Ruth left him due to her family’s class discrimination and the pressure of her environment. However, after his success, all things were changed. People of the upper class began to respect him and invited him to dinner. And Ruth came back to show her love. So Martin was puzzled. When he realized the reason of people’s changed attitude were his fame and money, he felt disappointed and even despaired. At last he committed suicide in the sea. On a whole the novel criticized the upper class’s hypocritical quality through Martin’s success and suicide. But a large part of the novel described the process of Martin’s pursuit. His strong desire was love at first, accompanied by more understanding of beauty and the world. Despite of his last tragic end, in the process of pursuing, Martin was like a lovely cobble with strong power, conceiving a big dream and struggle for it. Even though the cobble disappeared before it has changed to jade, it displayed beautiful color, for it did try and struggle for its dream. II. THE PROCESS OF PURSUING Life can always be seen as a process of pursuing. For Martin Eden, this process started from the moment he saw Ruth to the moment of his success. Though his first twenty years can also be seen a process of pursuing, for example, pursuing a short-time work on the sea, or pursuing a happy time in the drinking place. But it’s not the pursuit in the real meaning. What happened was just because of his nature, not from his heart. Inspired by Ruth’s beauty, he gradually awakened himself to another world, a world in which he knew what he wanted, “he knew at last, clearly and definitely, that it was beauty, and intellect, and love that he must have.”[1] A. The Pursuit of Love Love plays an important part in Martin’s life. It was out of love for the beautiful girl that he started the process of struggle, and the beauty property in his mind sustained him to insist on his dream. It can be said that all he did was just because of love, because of his desire to win the beauty in his heart. And in the process of pursuing, his love matured as well as his view on love. He enjoyed the beauty of love. 1. The Beginning and the development of Love For Martin Eden, the abstract word “love” became concrete in the existence of a beautiful girl Ruth. He himself was sensitive toward beauty and love. For “he had starved for love all his life. His nature craved love.”[1].At the first sight of Ruth, he likened her to a pale gold flower upon a slender stem, and looked at her as a spirit, a goddess. He thought of her laughter as tinkling silver bells, the girl was so different for him, because in her eyes he saw immortal soul, and at the thought of her, he wanted to be better to catch her, win her, and conquer her. He sticked to love resolutely. “The best that was in him was pouring out in splendid flood. The very thought of her ennobled and purified him, made him better” [1] Ruth’s cleanness and purity reacted on him, so that he underwent a moral resolution. He got rid of the bad habits and began to wash his teeth and scrub his hands, even drank no more. “He dared not go near Ruth’s neighborhood in the daytime, but night found him lurking like a thief around the Morse home.”[1] Peeping secretly at the windows and looking at the very walls that sheltered her made him feel that his blood turned to wine and sang through his veins. ISSN 1799-2591 Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 281-286, February 2014 © 2014 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland. doi:10.4304/tpls.4.2.281-286 © 2014 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Martin’s mind on love is pure and firm. He settled on the idea of “God’s own mad lover dying on a kiss”, and did all things for the win of love. Facing the problem of love, the beautiful girl, he was worried and self-abased. So he did not know what was the proper time for him to visit her for the second time. So only standing under the tree near her house to look at her window was so much a happy thing for him. And the night he rejected Lizzie Connolly and looked up at Ruth’s window and murmured “that date was with you, Ruth, I kept it for you [1]showing the innocent heart of a young lover. With much more time of meeting Ruth, and with a process of his self-improvement, Martin’s view on love developed into a clear mind. Although he went to the field of knowledge, and was attracted by it, he always knew that he was a lover first and would always so. All other things he pursued were subordinated to love. The love for Ruth was the reason for his pursuit, and was also the reason for him to sustain his pursuit. In the discussion with Olney, he realized the shortcoming of Ruth’s logic mind. But he thought it did not matter, and he formed a new love concept, which was “Reason had nothing to do with love. It mattered not whether the woman he loved reasoned correctly or incorrectly. Love was above reason.”[1] His view of love was in a hasty speed of development. 2. The maturity of love Attracted by Martin’s outside strength and inside power, Ruth fell in love with Martin. Unfortunately, this kind of “maturity of love” was not referring to their happy ending, but Martin’s attitude toward love. Before Martin and Ruth’s part, Martin’s love toward Ruth was the fresh air of a young first-lover’s heart. There was not so much reason in it. But when Ruth came back to show her love after Martin’s success, he realized that the part of illusion in his past love was more than the part of reality. His love toward Ruth was much more of the image in his mind than Ruth herself; he did not understand Ruth fully. At this time he knew that the reason of Ruth’s coming back were his fame and money, and it contradicted with his love principle that “All things may go astray in this world, but not love.” He realized that his feeling then toward Ruth was not love at that moment, and he saw clearly the hypocrisy of the upper class, to which Ruth belonged, so he rejected her. Martin’s mature view on love can also be shown at his attitude toward Lizzie, a girl who loved him deeply all the time. When they met again Lizzie expressed her love heart, but Martin did not accept it, for he knew that he was different from the man he was, and he could not accept a lover easily as past. And he must be responsible for it. Also he could not bring his past time back, nor could he go back to the class he had belonged to, but Lizzie just belonged to it. So in this condition Martin analyzed their positions in a clear love mind. He rejected Lizzie, just because he was still faithful to love, from soul, and it could not be the one with a simple love heart and a little blind mind. B. The Pursuit of Knowledge and the World For the hero Martin Eden, love was the first and the most important reason of his pursuit. But all the things he did under this reason displayed his pursuit of knowledge and the world. This pursuit is the addition of the pursuit of love, but the role of his pursuing knowledge was so important that it influenced his view on love, even his view on the concept of value. 1. A field which frightened the hero Martin had little education, and things that he knew came from his experience. So when it comes to books, grammar, and knowledge, he seemed so ignorant and self-abased. At first, the field of knowledge frightened him, but also stimulated him at the same time. He did not know what trigonometry was, even math, he did not know what the meaning of English major was, and in the library, he was appalled at the vast edifice of etiquette, thinking that it would take all of a man’s time to be polite. In addition, due to his lack of basic knowledge, it was not easy for him to read even simple works, let alone works on philosophy, physics, ecomomics, and so on. So what he could do was reading the dictionary to resolve the new words for him, and look up the phrases he had never seen. This process was hard for him. 2. A field can be conquered Martin Eden grew from a young sailor to a famous writer who knew more about the world and a clear form of life philosophy. An important reason was that he was a man loving knowledge himself. If Ruth was the person who led him get into the gate of knowledge, the whole process of his pursuit in that field ascribed a lot to himself. He told Ruth that he took study kindly, like a duck to water. And for the pursuit of knowledge, he did a lot which was not easy for others. In the writing field, which he loved, he wrote prolifically and intensely, from morning till night, and he was occupied by a desire of creation. Besides, his reading dealt with different fields, from physics to chemistry, from algebra to economics. With so much time he devoted to study, and with so many fields he devoted to read, his curiosity toward the world increased. When reading Spencer’s works, he conceived a mood of wondering. It attracted him a lot. And after reading it, he comprehended the organization of the world, the play and interplay of force and matter. This kind of understanding excited him. In the process of pursuing knowledge, he had been mastered by curiosity all his days. He wanted to know. In the novel, the author thus described Martin’s ability: “he did not dream that such persons who were given to probing the depths and to thinking ultimate thoughts were as lonely eagles sailing solitary in the azure sky far above the earth and its swarming freight of gregarious life.”[1] And indeed Martin found something in the field of knowledge. Facts proved this point. In chapter XIII, in the conversation between Martin, Ruth and Olney, who was Ruth’s classmate and also belonged to the upper class, pointed out Martin’s ability. He pointed clearly to Ruth that Martin knew what’s best for himself, and Martin knew more about the world, and life, and man’s place, and all the rest, than Arthur, or Norman, or Ruth, or himself. This was the first time 282 THEORY AND PRACTICE IN LANGUAGE STUDIES © 2014 ACADEMY PUBLISHER of challenging Ruth’s “teacher position” toward Martin, because Martin surpassed her in the field of knowledge, although Martin and Ruth both didn’t realize it. There were two other examples of Martin’s achievement in the ocean of knowledge. At Ruth’s family party, in the conversation with professor Caldwell, who taught at California University, Martin contaminated the professor with his own earnestness, challenging him to speak his mind. And indeed he achieved his goal. Then the conversation went on, while Martin found out the shortcoming of the knowledge of that college professor, that was, he lacked the knowledge of biology. And professor Caldwell was surprised to acknowledge that what Martin said was right. It showed that the knowledge Martin mastered had provided him the ability to stand in a clear position to look at the world around him, including the college, which was like a paradise for him in the past. Another example was Martin’s acquaintance with Brisssenden, who was a socialist, owning a deep background of knowledge and talent, saw clearly the upper class’s hypocrisy and emptiness. Such a person appreciated Martin’s writing talent and his concept of value, and took him to a crowd of people who conceived their own view on different fields of philosophy one night. That night was a glimpse of fairyland according to Martin. At last after Martin’s success, when he met one person of that crowd again, he said: “That night was the only one night for me, I was in paradise.” From things above, it can be seen that in the process of pursuit, Martin walked on the road of knowledge, and gradually enriched himself. No matter what was the end of him, his pursuit proved that the field of knowledge could be conquered by him. C. The Pursuit of Himself The knowledge Martin gained was the accessory of his pursuit of love, so was his pursuit of himself. He did not pursue the real one of himself on purpose. It’s just from the whole process of pursuing that he knew himself better, and always improved himself from all possible ways. 1. The fighting spirit Besides the role of love that played on Martin Eden’s success, an important factor was his fighting spirit. In the process of pursuing himself, he always showed it. Whether it was in the fight of his childhood, or in the hard time of writing, he never gave up, and his fighting spirit grew as well as himself. The novel describes an unforgettable fighting that lasts more than ten years between Martin and a boy. “It reminded him of his first fight, when he was six years old, when he punched away with the tears running down his cheeks while other boys, two years his elder, had beaten and pounded him into exhaustion. He saw the ring of boys howling like barbarians as he went down at last, writhing in the throes of nausea, the blood streaming from his nose and the tears from his bruised eyes ... But he felt strengthened by the memory of that. He had always stayed and taken his medicine. Cheese-Face had been a little friend at fighting, and had never once shown mercy to him. But he had stayed! He had stayed with it[1]” When Martin was eleven, they had a fight which was indeterminate. But he never had such a mind of stopping fight to allow Cheese-Face to whip him. The last fight was when Martin was seventeen years old. Though Martin was beaten black and blue, he continued fighting. It was impossible for him to quit. Finally, Martin won the fight. From this fighting, we can see that Martin was a brave and indomitable fighter when he was young. While studying magazines, Martin took notice of the stories, articles and poems that editors see fit to publish. He drew up lists of effective and fetching mannerisms that included the tricks of narration, exposition, style, point of view, contrast and epigrams. He sought thoughts and collected lists of strong phrases, the phrases of living language, phrases that hit acid and scorched. “His was deliberate, creative genius, and, before he began a story or poem, the thing itself was already alive in his brain, with the end in his conscious possession.”[1] He found that the writing was the culminating act of a long mental process that drew together scattered threads of thought and finally generalized upon all the data with which his mind was burdened. Writing is full of hardship. You can not make achievements until you have experienced difficulties and conquered them. Martin made full use of time to write and study by cutting his sleep to five hours, writing creatively, intensively and industriously from morning till night. He was so amazed at writing that he had to give up his working as a sailor. Life was real and cruel. He ran out of money, and publisher’s checks were far away as ever. At this time, he was living on credit. The owners of the fruit shop stopped his credit, even his landlord urged him to move away. Martin encountered the difficulty that at any time he would be forced to leave home and wander about. He had to pawn all his valuable things to pay for his rent and food. The rejection slips accumulated and the money dwindled until Martin had nothing but potatoes to eat, three times a day. Even if he was at the elbows, he firmly sticked to his great ideal of becoming a writer, refusing to get a fixed job to work at Ruth’s father’s law office. London depicts how difficult it is for a young writer to find success in writing. The people around Martin were indifferent, cold and hostile to him when he concentrated on writing instead of finding a job and fought against starvation. Even under such serious environment, Martin sticked to his writing. 2. The improvement of appearances Martin was a sailor at the beginning, and all the atmosphere and culture of the working class people influenced him, and reflected on him. For example, he felt uncomfortable of wearing the suit’s collar for the first time. And before meeting Ruth, he had never washed his teeth. Ruth’s cleanness and purity made him feel in himself a desire to be clean. So he washed his teeth, and began to use nail-brush and toilet-tool, and so on. All this may be tiny for anyone who belonged to the upper class, but it was unusual for Martin Eden, a person who was used to a sailor’s life. This kind of action showed that Martin wanted himself to be better. Even though it was in the appearances, it reflected Martin’s THEORY AND PRACTICE IN LANGUAGE STUDIES 283 © 2014 ACADEMY PUBLISHER process of pursuing himself from a profiling point. 3. The improvement of the inner mind The appearance of Ruth awakened Martin’s mind of beauty to a certain extent, more properly speaking awakened Martin himself. From the process of pursuing, Martin grew gradually from a kind of a bleak mind to a mature and clear mind. He slowly found what he wanted, and what was suitable for him. Martin had a habit of self-asking. In the evening after meeting Ruth, he conceived that his childhood and youth had been troubled by a vague unrest, and he had never known what he wanted. It was Ruth that made him realize that it was beauty, intellect, and love that he must have. That was a clear and definite hope for him then. Martin’s awareness of writing plays an important part in his self-pursuit. He compared himself to a dog sleeping under the sun, for he saw noble and beautiful visions, but he could not express them to Ruth. So he decided to stand up with open eyes, and he would struggle and toil and learn until he could share his versioned wealth with Ruth. The way to realize it was writing. So he started his writing career for this simple and pure reason. In the process of his self-pursuit in writing, there was an inevitable doubt about himself. He asked himself when he gazed at the looking-glass curiously: “Who are you, Martin Eden? What are you? Where do you belong? Are you going to make good?[1] But the beauty of famous works attracted him, the desire to create occupied him, and the love for Ruth encouraged him. So he sustained in that writing field which he loved, and gradually became mature in his mind toward himself, and had confidence in himself. In a conversation with Ruth, he expressed that writing was the most vital thing in him, and had he been a mere clod, he would not have desired to write. Writing as a media had enriched Martin Eden, and helped him to found his way of career, to form his view on life, and even toward the world. The most important was that it provided a clear mind for him to recognize himself. And that was enough for a person’s pursuit of himself. III. MARTIN’S SUCCESS AND DISINTEGRATION A. Success and Disintegration In the latter small part of the novel Martin’s success in his career started. One of his works was accepted by a publishing house, then one after another. Most of his works changed their past destiny, and were published by magazines or newspapers or companies. People’s attitude toward him changed suddenly. The Judge, the bank manager, and all people of the upper class invited him. And Ruth came back to his arms. This was the success on the “surface.” At the same time when all the people crowded around him, Martin Eden’s concept of value collapsed. The difference of people’s attitude toward him expressed their deep hypocrisy clearly. And indeed he hated it. It seemed for him that the world was not the one he once lived in. The words “WORK PERFORMED” occupied his mind. He just couldn’t understand the world, for it was contradicted with his concept of value. At that moment, he lost his purpose, for there was no need for love, and no impulse to write. In a word, he was empty inside. It was a time of disintegration. That kind of disintegration was expressed vaguely from his self-denying. Different from the long process of his unceasing self-pursuit, after his success, when Ruth came back to him, he told her that he was sick, and there was something wrong with him, not in his body but in his mind, his soul. It seemed that he had lost all values. He cared for nothing. So life had no meaning for Martin then, and all of his pursuits just were in disintegration then. If Martin’s muttering aloud the poem “I have had my singing minute. I have done. Put by the lute” showed his potential tiredness toward love, toward knowledge, and toward the world, the line “That dead man rise up never” perfectly reflected his mood at that moment when he read Swinburne’s poem in the ship. So he went up and jumped into the sea, totally showed his despair of the disintegration of his concept of value. B. Hypocrisy of the Society Jack London depicts the world as cold, godless, indifferent and hostile to human desire through the fate of Martin Eden. He has succeeded in exposing the bourgeoisies nature of hypocrisy and being interested only in material gain through full expression by contrasting two completely different attitudes which two typical representatives of bourgeoisie treat Martin Eden’s failure and success with. The first category is the so-called wealthy class people, such as lawyers, bankers, the Morses and Judge Bount etc. Though these rich people lived comfortably, dressed well, they were extremely selfish and money-oriented in their dark souls. By contrast, Martin Eden who had written many valuable literary works, was talented, intelligent and scholarly, but he had no opportunity to publish them when he was nobody, and the Morse couple looked down on him and they thought “he had no place in the neither position nor salary. He is impractical.”[1] But to arouse her daughter’s interest in mankind in general, they began to let their daughter contact Martin because “she has been so singularly backward where men are concerned.”[1] And they didn’t think their daughter, Ruth, would fall in love with Martin. They held the view that Ruth only did a safe experiment by making use of this uncouth sailor who considered love the finest thing in the world. Once they felt “the experiment has succeeded. She is awakened at last.”[1] Mr. Morse spoke briskly in a business tone “then we’ll have to get rid of him.”[1] When they found that plan had been broken and that Ruth could not help loving Martin and had become engaged to Martin, the Morse couple tried many ways to take them apart. Later, Martin finally had succeeded in writing. “Money poured in on him, fame poured in on him; he flashed, comet-like, through the world of literature.”[1]. At this time, those bourgeoise politicians, celebrities strived to be the 284 THEORY AND PRACTICE IN LANGUAGE STUDIES © 2014 ACADEMY PUBLISHER first and feared to lag behind to invite him to dinner. Even Judge Blount invited him to dinner, although Martin had insulted him and treated him abominably. What made Martin most surprised was Mr. Morse, who “had forbidden him going to the house and broken the engagement”[1] and who found an excuse to meet him in the hotel Metropole. In fact, Mr. Morse had gone there for the direct purpose of inviting him to dinner. In the face of the inconstancy of human relationships, Martin was more puzzled, and he couldn’t help assailing, “When he wanted dinners, no one gave them to him, but when he could buy a hundred thousand dinners and was losing his appetite, dinners were thrust upon him right and left. But why? There was no justice in it; no merit on his part. He was not different, so were his works which were the original ones. Mr. and Mrs. Morse had condemned him for an idler and a shirk, and Ruth had urged that he take a clerk’s position in an office. Furthermore, they had been aware of his work performed. Manuscript after manuscript of his had been turned over to them by Ruth. They had read them. It was the same work that had put his name in all the papers, and it was his name being in all the papers that led them to invite him.”[1] His query touched the filthy soul of bourgeoise and exposed their true face of time-serving. He pointed out further: “the Morses had not cared to have him for himself or for his work. Therefore they could not want him now for himself or for his work, but for the fame that was his, that was the way bourgeoise society valued a man.” [1] And it revealed the hypocrisy of bourgeoisie. Ruth was the Morse couple’s daughter. “She was a pale, ethereal creature, with wide, spiritual blue eyes and a wealth of golden hair.” [1] Her purity and beauty gave such a deep impression on Martin that he likened her to a pale gold flower upon a slender stem. “She was a spirit, a divinity, a goddess; such sublimated beauty was not of the earth.” [1]Actually, Ruth loved Martin based on following reasons. The first one was due to the mysterious and novel psychology. She found that Martin was quite different from those macaroni she had met. Martin was full of youthful spirit and perseverance. Moreover, he was honest and intelligent. In contrast with Martin’s true love, her love to Martin was conditional. Martin must meet the demand of the bourgeois standard of valuation. She once said to Martin “her ideal of the successful man was largely in her father’s image, with a few unmistakable lines and touches of color from the image of Mr.Butler” [1]It meant either Martin had a profession, social status and money or he realized the dream from a nobody to a wealthy man like Bulter. Although Martin thought there was nothing alluring in the picture she drew, he was determined to realize his great ambition because of love. However, she could neither understand Martin’s outstanding talents nor appreciate his great aspiration of becoming a famous writer at all, which contributed to a lack of thought exchange and soul mixture. Based on her narrow mind, she reached such a conclusion that she deserted him without hesitation when the people around her began to attack him, saying Martin was the most notorious leader of the Oakland socialists. She held the view that Martin had brought her shame and destroyed her fame and her family. What she had done proved that her prejudice of being snobbish and superficial overweighed her love to Martin. When fortune was smiling on him and his works were published, Ruth came to Martin’s room to resume the engagement. She told him “You know I love you that I am here because I love you.” [1] Martin thought “yet I am not a bit more eligible now than I was when she broke our engagement.” [1], so he said “When I was just as I am now, as a man, as an artist, the same Martin Eden? That’s the question I’ve been propounding to myself for many days-not concerning you merely, but concerning everybody. You see I have not changed, though my sudden apparent appreciation in value compels me constantly to reassure myself on that point. I’ve got the same flesh on my bones, the same ten fingers and toes. I am the same. I have not developed any new strength nor virtue. My brain is the same old brain. I haven’t made even one new generalization of literature or philosophy. I am personally of the same value that when I was nobody wanted me. And what is puzzling me is why they want me now. Surely they don’t want me for myself, for myself is the same old self they did not want. Then they must want me for something else, for something that is outside of me, for something that is not I! Shall I tell you what that something is? It is for the recognition I have received. That recognition is not I. It resides in the minds of others. Then again for the money I have earned and am earning. But that money is not I. It resides in the banks and in the pockets of Tom, Dick, and Harry. And is it for that, for the recognition and the money, that you now want me?” [1] At this moment, Martin had seen through Ruth who was narrow-minded and selfish. As a result, when Ruth begged his pardon and wanted to regain Martin’s love, Martin gave an ironic remark, “I’m afraid I am a shrewd merchant, peering into the scales, trying to weigh your love, and find out what manner of thing it is.” [1] Ruth’s attitude toward Martin changed greatly because of his fame and money. Her love was based on wealth and social position instead of Martin’s talent and hard work. She loved money more than Martin. When Martin became rich, she wanted him without considering her class, her parent and friends, even her own dignity. This indicates that Ruth was very selfish. Martin realized that Ruth’s strength of love for him arose from his publication and public notice, thus exposed the false love. The second category is the selfish and vulgar businessmen, such as Martin’s brother-in-law, Bernard Higginbotham and Herman von Schmidt. Before his success, Martin had to live with sister and brother-in-law because of poverty. Higginbotham was a snobbish, mean and tricky businessman. He looked down upon Martin, looking at him with a weasel-like and cruel eye that showed irony and imperiousness. It is a sharp contrast when he made a sale in the store, the same eyes were smug oily and flattering. Therefore, “Martin Eden never looked at him without experiencing a sense of repulsion. What his sister had seen in the man was beyond him. The other affected him as so much vermin, and always aroused in him an impulse to crush him under his foot.” [1] Higginbotham treated Martin cold and sharp, even with disgust. When the name of Martin was mentioned, he always snorted. He often examined whether Martin had paid THEORY AND PRACTICE IN LANGUAGE STUDIES 285 © 2014 ACADEMY PUBLISHER the board. If Martin read in bed, he would charge him half a dollar for gas. Furthermore, he constantly made trouble for Martin and found excuses to drive him away. As to Martin’s writing, he simply sneerd. The worst was that he wrote an anonymous and slanderous letter about Martin, with assertions that the “so-called Martin Eden” was no writer at all, that in fact he was stealing stories from old-magazines, typing them, and sending them out as his own. He tried to destroy Martin’s fame, and asked editors not to publish Martin’s manuscripts. Because of propagandizing for socialism, Martin was surrounded by bourgeoise presses with violent speeches. “Higginbotham was furious with him for having dragged the family into public disgrace, and that he had forbidden him the house.”[1]When Martin suffered from starvation, he didn’t give him a hand at all. But when Martin succeeded in writing, he fawned on him and invited him to have a rich dinner. During the dinner, Higginbotham opened up his heart to Martin, showing his keenness and enormous planning with which he has made the store. It is the fact that he flattered Martin in order to borrow money from him for the only purpose of realizing his ambitious plan. Herman von Schmidt, Martin’s brother-in-law, was a businessman who set up for himself a bicycle-repair shop. He was as selfish and vulgar as Higginbotham. When Martin was poor and not famous, he looked down upon him. He even said “it was indecent, obscene” [1] when Martin wrote an airy and delicate verse for Marian, Martin’s sister. In addition, he asserted that he didn’t want anything to do with him in any shape, manner or form. However, when Martin had become a famous writer, a magazine published this poem on a striking page with decorations. Herman von Schmidt forgot that he had called the verses obscene .He announced that his wife had inspired Martin to write the poem, and the news reached the ears of a reporter, the result was a full page in a Sunday supplement, filled with photographs and idealized drawings of Marian, with many intimate details of Martin Eden and his family. It caused a stir in the neighborhood, making Herman and his repair shop famous. Many people came to his shop for repairing, so he made a fortune. He told Marian “Better than advertising and it costs nothing.” [1] He invited Martin to dinner because he found that his brother-in-law was a goodly asset to him. Through these two vivid figures of Higginbotham and Herman, this novel narrates that the bourgeoise only search for money. The word of kinship means nothing to bourgeoisie. The relationship between people is based on money. IV.

The novel’s main part deals with the process of Martin Eden’s hard pursuit, including his strong desire for love, beauty and knowledge, and a clear idea of himself. In this process the author describes in vivid words the hard condition of the hero’s life and his unusual diligence, thus portrays an image of a young man with strong power and enthusiasm inside to continue his pursuit and realize his dream. At the same time, the exposure of hypocrisy of the upper class forms a clear contrast with the hero. The tragic ending of Martin Eden strongly criticizes the society’s concept of value. The background of the empty upper class and the society reflects Martin’s truly pursuit of his dream. And his pursuing spirit seems especially precious in that kind of world.

Summary of "Martin Eden"

Martin Eden is a 21-year-old sailor, as a result of an accidental opportunity, he has known Ruth, falls in love to her, and to her family, her life. He starts to think oneself and between Ross has the huge disparity, in order to enable oneself to match on her, he must upward crawl diligently. Ruth helps him to study writing. Martin writes 40 drafts unceasingly circle throughout in various magazine company. He doesn’t understand why his own work aren't accepted, but these have a liking for the spiritless thing always to be able to publish in the publication. He looks for Ruth, reads his work to her, asks her to judge. Ruth does not appreciate his work also. After repeatedly is defeated Martin still to persist to write, which causes him and Ross has the fissure. Ruth has lost confidence gradually to him, but Martin still attacks her side upper society people. Martin see Ruth and her family clearly. Once, they participates in the time which the socialist party person assembles by a tabloid reporter confusedly is interpolated in the report, becomes the anarchism leader, encounters the isolation and besieges. Ruth leaves Martin then. The only real friend of Martin, Brissenden, is dead now. At this time, a huge change happens in his life that the publication magazine starts to use his work actually. The publishing house in order to his reputation has also accepted he all sorts of harsh requests, he became the famous writer. He can’t understand that these works all are already finish, they haven't been changed as well as Martin himself. Why does everybody flatter him today? Finally, Ruth comes back. But Martin is completely discouraged. He is so disappointed that he tells her he doesn't want to see her any more. He no longer writes a character. He leaves all his money to his sister and his laundry room partner Egypt. Then he goes on a ship and jumps into the sea.

CONCLUSION BOB 2

At the heart of critical realism is realism about ontology—an inquiry into the nature of things. Ontological realism asserts that much of reality exists and operates independently of our awareness or knowledge of it. Reality does not wholly answer to empirical surveying or hermeneutical examination. Historically, social science, rightly seeking to ground itself in empirical investigations, has paid attention to epistemology at the expense of ontology—that is to say, sociology has focused on how we know what we know, while questions about the nature of the known are largely treated as an afterthought. The result has been a focus on methods and forms of explanation, with insufficient (or naïve and misguided) attention to questions about what kind of entities actually exist in the social world and what are they like.

Jack London depicts the world as cold, godless, indifferent and hostile to human desire through the fate of Martin Eden. He has succeeded in exposing the bourgeoisies nature of hypocrisy and being interested only in material gain through full expression by contrasting two completely different attitudes which two typical representatives of bourgeoisie treat Martin Eden’s failure and success with. The first category is the so-called wealthy class people, such as lawyers, bankers, the Morses and Judge Bount etc. Though these rich people lived comfortably, dressed well, they were extremely selfish and money-oriented in their dark souls.