Course work

Main characters 
Martin Eden 
A former sailor from a working-class background, who falls in love with the 
young, bourgeois Ruth and educates himself to become a writer, aiming to win her 
hand in marriage. 
Ruth Morse 
The young, bourgeois university student who captivates Eden while tutoring him in 
English. Though initially both attracted and repelled by his working-class 
background, she eventually realizes she loves him. They become engaged, with the 
condition that they cannot marry until her parents approve of his financial and 
social status. 
Lizzie Connolly 
A cannery worker rejected by Eden, who is already in love with Ruth. Initially, 
while Eden strives for education and culture, Lizzie's rough hands make her seem 
inferior to Ruth in his eyes. Despite this, Lizzie remains devoted to him. He feels 
an attachment to her because she has always loved him for who he is, and not for 
fame or money, as Ruth does. 
Joe Dawson 
Eden's boss at the laundry, who wins Eden over with his cheeriness and capacity 
for work, but, like Eden, suffers from overwork. He quits the laundry and tries to 
convince Eden to adopt a hobo lifestyle. Toward the end of the book, Eden meets 
him again, and offers him a laundry. Joe, who likes the hobo life, except for the 
lack of girls, eventually accepts the offer and promises to treat the employees 
fairly. A sickly writer who encourages Eden to give up writing and return to the 

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sea before city life swallows him up. Brissenden is a committed socialist and 
introduces Eden to a group of amateur philosophers he calls the "real dirt". His 
final work, Ephemera, causes a literary sensation when Eden breaks his word and 
publishes it upon Brissenden's death. 
Social class
- 
Social class, seen from Eden's point of view, is a very important 
theme in the novel. Eden is a sailor from a working-class background who feels 
uncomfortable but inspired when he meets the bourgeois Morse family. As he 
improves himself, he finds himself increasingly distanced from his working-class 
background and surroundings, becoming repelled by Lizzie's hands. Eventually, 
when Eden finds that his education has far surpassed that of the bourgeoisie he 
looked up to, he feels more isolated than ever. Paul Berman comments that Eden 
cannot reconcile his "civilized and clean" self with the "fistfighting barbarian" of 
the past, and that this inability causes his descent into a delirious ambivalence.
London conjures up a series of allusions to the workings of machinery. It is 
machines that make Lizzie's hands rough. To Eden, the magazine editors operate a 
machine that sends out seemingly endless rejection slips. When Eden works in a 
laundry, he works with machines but feels himself to be a cog in a larger machine. 
Eden's Blickensdorfer typewriter gradually becomes an extension of his body. 
When he finally achieves literary success, Eden sets up his friends with machinery 
of their own, and Lizzie tells him, "Something's wrong with your think-machine."
Although London was a socialist, he invested Eden with strong individualism. 
Eden comes from a working-class background but he seeks self-improvement 
rather than improvement for his class as a whole. Quoting Nietzsche and Herbert 
Spencer, he rejects the "slave morality" of socialism, even at socialist meetings. 
London stresses that it is this individualism that leads to Eden's suicide. He 
described the novel as a parable of a man who had to die "not because of his lack 
of faith in God, but because of his lack of faith in men". 
Background
-
When London wrote Martin Eden at age 33, he had already 
achieved international acclaim with The Call of the Wild, The Sea-Wolf and White 

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Fang. Despite the acclaim, he quickly became disillusioned with his fame and set 
sail through the South Pacific on a self-designed ketch, the Snark. On the grueling 
two-year voyage, as he struggled with tiredness and bowel diseases, he 
wrote Martin Eden, filling its pages with his frustrations, adolescent gangfights and 
struggles for artistic recognition. London borrowed the name "Martin Eden" from 
a working-class man, Mårten Edin, born in Ådalen (at Båtsmanstorpet in 
Västgranvåg, Sollefteå), Sweden, but the character has more in common with 
London than with Edin. Ruth Morse was modeled on Mabel Applegarth, the first 
love of London's life. Brissenden is modeled on London's friend and muse George 
Sterling. Brissenden's posthumously successful poem "Ephemera" is based on 
Sterling's "A Wine of Wizardry".