He discovers the woman he has put on a pedestal is really just a mere mortal, and not a very nice one at that. In the beginning of the novel, he sees Ruth and her crowd as perfect. London writes, "Here was intellectual life, he thought, and here was beauty, warm and wonderful as he had never dreamed it could be" (London 8). Later, Eden learns the truth, and begins to despise the society that he worked so hard to join. He becomes despondent because his dreams came true and he found he did not want them after all. He is no longer innocent as he was in the beginning of the novel, and he has lost some of the charm that made him who he was. He finds that everything he worked for is a sham, and his only solace is to return to the sea that he left so abruptly. His is a sad story because it is so true. Someone once said, "What do you do when all your dreams come true?" You have nothing left to work for, and that is just what happened to Eden. (And perhaps, London too). He had nothing left to hope for, and no dreams to fulfill. The dreams that had come true were false dreams, and made him miserable instead of content. Eden's story is all the more tragic because he worked so diligently to make his dreams come true, and then, when they did, he found he did not want them after all. He would have been better off going back to being a sailor, or getting his own ship and leading a band of men. He would have been happier and he would have been more appreciated by those around him. As it was, his story ended too soon. Some readers might think that Eden's suicide...
The ending is not incongruous however, when the reader looks at what Eden was hoping for, and what he found. He put the entire effort of his life into his dream of writing, and found to do it, he had to "sell his soul" to survive. He had to do "hack" writing to pay the bills, and so his real love, great writing, was often on the back burner. He was disillusioned with his own career and with his dreams. In addition, he had reached the pinnacle, and found it was not as he had imagined. There was nowhere left for him to go but down, and he did. His suicide makes perfect sense in this regard.
He is also adrift intellectually, examining books randomly he does not yet have the background to read and understand, intimidated by Ruth's superior education. London says about Eden at this time, "it seemed that the room was lifting, heeling, and plunging like a ship upon the sea" (Chapter 7, p. 1). Frustrated, he is like a sailor caught in a storm before he has learned how to sail. He
2. Discuss the green light in The Great Gatsby and the rain in A Farewell to Arms as symbols of fertility and death. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby, the green light represents hope, renewal, and (since Gatsby associates the green light with Daisy) Gatsby's desire for her, as well as (in Gatsby's mind) Daisy's fecundity and fertility. In nature, green is the color of life: trees, grass, and
He also provides very interesting passages from London on his own work and the ideological inoculations which have also undermined the value of London's writings. Ludington, Townsend. "Jack London: Overview." Reference Guide to American Literature. Ed. Jim Kamp. 3rd ed. Detroit: St. James Press, 1994. Townsend talks about London's background and childhood, as well as his Socialist views, and their influence on his adult life and writings: "London saw himself as
instant he knew, he ceased to know. Throughout the history of literature, authors have used their works to underscore beliefs that they hold dear. This can happen whether the work is fiction, non-fiction or a combination of both. The work of the author can illustrate a point by using obvious comparisons and angles or it can use a more subtle approach such as metaphors or other methods of illustration. Even when
Mark Twain's realism in fully discovered in the novel The adventures of Huckleberry Finn, book which is known to most of readers since high school, but which has a deeper moral and educational meaning than a simple teenage adventure story. The simplicity of plot and the events that are described in the book look to be routine for provincial life of Southerners in the middle of the 19th century. But
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