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.
In conclusion, the sea is an integral part of this novel about a man of the sea. Even though he educates himself and enters upper-class society, there is always some of the sea in Martin Eden. In fact, much of his success is based on his early works that all described situations from his sailing days in vivid and readable terms. Eden was a writer whose roots were in the working-class, and without the sea, that would not have been evident or believable in the novel. The vivid details came from London's own service on and love of the sea. That is what made Eden's work so believable, and London's, too. The sea is one of the most important elements of this novel, and Eden would not have been who he was without it.
References
London, Jack. Martin Eden. New York: Review of Reviews,…
