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The novel ends with Eden’s committing suicide by drowning, which contributed to what researcher Clarice Stasz calls the “biographical myth” that Jack London's own death was a suicide (Net.2). Earle Labor and Jeanne Campbell Reesman deems that “Martin” has a meaning of “fighter” and “Eden” means “the garden of Eden”, so it is a story about a fighter seeks for “the paradise”, which is just an epitome of the American Dream (c.f. Yu Jianhua, 2009:240). Martin, originally an ambitious and adventurous young man, loved life and worked hard to get what he wanted. His killing himself shocked everyone. He became a famous person by writing, and he also saw clearly the hypocrisy of the literary world of those days in this process. He won Ruth’s love but came to feel that the girl, once the pinnacle of his dreams, was merely prissy and narrowly educated. Martin became affluent and socially accomplished, but he felt contemptuous of middle-class society and nostalgic for the working-class life from which he was irrevocably separated. If the novel began with freshness and inspiring hope, it would have ended in moody disenchantment. Just as what Martin did, Jack London had experienced an unsuccessful romance and had committed suicide at a youthful age. Martin’s working-class background and his frenetic program of self-education were London’s own, while the affair with Ruth resembled a youthful romance with the genteel Mabel Applegarth. There is no doubt that the ending of the novel was suggested by London’s earlier attempt at suicide; it was also unintentionally prophetic, for London did finally have died on his own hand.
1.1 A Brief Introduction to Jack London
Jack London (1876-1916) was a renowned and a prolific modern American novelist and the most successful writer in America in the early 20th century. His works dealt romantically with the overwhelming power of nature and the struggle for survival and his life symbolized the power of will. His vigorous stories of men and animals against the environment and survival against hardships were drawn mainly from his own experience. At the beginning of a book Study of Jack London Yu Jianhua (2009:1) writes: “With the irresistible charm of his novels, he not only governed American literature market, but guided the public imagination before the First World War. The road he has taken to be a writer is mainly related with his real life, both unusual. Perhaps, unlike him, no anyone else, among all American writers, can go to unthinkable fame after having suffered so much; no one has made a success so deep and wide all around the world as his is; neither can anyone else be so controversial and so much criticized”.