Answering other people's questions for the first time, I hope it will help you.

Through the love, struggle, ups and downs and death of Martin Eden, Martin Eden described the money worship, vulgarity and hypocrisy of American society at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and its strangulation of culture and talents, and also exposed various drawbacks of American publishing industry at that time.

Martin Eden, the hero of the novel, accidentally came to the home of a rich girl, Ruth, saw the richness and warmth she had never seen before, fell in love with Ruth and the society she lived in, and decided to climb up. He finally succeeded through hardships, only to find that this society is vulgar, shallow and hypocritical; That lady is not so pure. Although his works were all the rage and brought him a lot of money and great honor, he was tired and finally committed suicide. This is an intriguing tragedy.

Martin's love for Jane is a romantic spiritual worship, while Ruth's love for Martin stems from physical attraction. This is a root cause of the tragedy.

Martin fell in love with Ruth at first sight In his mind, she is a golden flower and a fairy, and he is willing to sacrifice everything for her. So he made up his mind to win her heart. First he wants to be a captain, then he wants to be a writer. Inspired by Ruth, he taught himself English, chewed grammar, memorized words, changed his language and pronunciation habits, and soon made his speech accepted by Ruth's upper class. When he first learned to write, he didn't know what punctuation was, nor did he know that punctuation should be segmented, but he taught himself to be an excellent writer a few years later. He struggled on the hunger line and went through hardships to deserve her.

But Ruth's love for Martin is mainly due to sexual attraction, which is subtly described in the novel. Ruth is a girl with slow personality awakening. She seems to study hard in college, but she is not interested in the opposite sex. Her parents are secretly worried about this. But from the first day she met Martin, she was attracted by this strange and energetic young man, and subconsciously wanted to hug his strong neck. This physical closeness is constantly emerging. Sometimes when Martin comes in, she is attracted by his strong body and wants to hug. This is obviously a sexual attraction, and there is no mutual understanding and love between hearts. Her other feelings for Martin have nothing to do with love. She wants to educate and reform him, so that he can struggle from poverty to success and become a figure like Mr. Butler whom she worships. She felt that she was Martin's teacher and always felt condescending, so once Martin was attacked by the newspaper and seemed to be ruined, she felt that he was hopeless and broke off his engagement.

But reading and writing opened Martin's eyes. His pursuit of beauty makes him pursue truth, goodness and beauty. He failed many times in reading. Kant and Leibniz gave him a headache today, and Luo Mai Nice made him irrelevant. But he finally found Spencer, saw a magical universe closely related to each other for hundreds of millions of years, and learned the mystery of the organic world from protoplasm to human society. He was suddenly enlightened, fully conscious and mastered the key to understanding and interpreting the world.

He has a rich life experience, and the harvest of the ideological world endows his works with depth. Coupled with his repeated writing exploration, he has matured and realized his own maturity. He showed Ruth his masterpiece, but Ruth couldn't keep up with him. What she learned in college is not enough for her to really understand Martin's works. To make matters worse, while Martin is studying hard at writing, she wholeheartedly expects him to fail early and then embark on the "right path". Poor Martin, he doesn't know that his lover is completely heartless to him!

However, Martin actually succeeded. In Ruth's eyes, Martin has made great achievements and become a literary Mr. Butler. Ruth regretted it, and she turned to those whom she had spurned. It is extremely unbearable that she should sneak into Martin's hotel at night and want to dedicate herself to him. If she broke off her engagement with Martin, it was a great harm to Martin, then her quiet delivery to the door completely destroyed Martin's love for her and his ideal of pure love. Finally, Martin came to his senses. It turns out that all he loves is his own illusion. Male ... the Ruth in my mind doesn't really exist.

The painful struggle is the disillusionment of love. No wonder young Martin is tired of life.

Reading makes Martin's spirit rise to a high level, from which he sees through the shallowness and hypocrisy of the upper class; At the same time, reading has also created a huge gap between him and his classmates. In this way, Martin's efforts and success isolated himself.

He thinks that high society is full of paintings. Music, philosophy and poetry are elegant and warm places, and profound thoughts, elegant behaviors, noble hearts and pure feelings are the crystallization of human culture. But when he finally arrived, he found that it was occupied by vulgarity and hypocrisy, even his purest and noblest lover, Ruth, was no exception. He couldn't find any friends there, and his only bosom friend, Brissendenny, died.

On the other hand, he lost his usual relatives and friends. He had friends and family before he climbed up. Although he is poor, he is a figure among his friends. He is good at fighting, dancing and falling in love, and is very popular. At home, he has his sister and sister who love him. But after climbing up, he lost his friends and home, not because they were bad, but because there were countless open books, which formed a huge gap between himself and them. The battle in Belling Park is an excellent proof. His friend ran away under cover, so did he. The heroic spirit of that year is gone. Even the beautiful Lizzie Connolly's passion for him doesn't interest him. He knows that even she can't communicate with him spiritually. If they hit it off, it's just torture for Connolly. To avoid further harm to her, he had to leave early.

The shallowness and hypocrisy of the American publishing industry fundamentally disappointed him.

When Martin Eden was unknown, the publishing world was indifferent to him. He wrote down the best things in his life and contributed to magazines, but the articles were always rejected, and he always wandered between magazines. He was hungry for a long time before he started writing, but the works he tried to write got no response, which made him feel that the so-called editorial department did not exist, and there were only machines that refused manuscripts. Later, a work was published by accident, but the remuneration was often deducted, and sometimes the manuscript was irresponsibly tampered with. In this book, Martin's two almost farce-like fights when he went to the editorial departments of two magazines in San Francisco to ask for manuscript fees are exaggerated descriptions of this phenomenon.

But when Martin Eden's works were suddenly favored, the situation was completely reversed. Magazines and publishing houses are scrambling to contribute to him, no matter what works, forcing him to deal with immature works, but they are still published, causing readers to protest. At first, he was frugal, hungry and barely wrote a book to eat. Now money is rolling in and filling his pockets, which makes him laugh and cry. More interestingly, magazines and publishers come to show off how they first discovered Martin Eden.

The most embarrassing thing for Martin is that his friend Brissenden's masterpiece "Ephemera" was used as a tool for political struggle and interpersonal disputes when it was published. No one pays attention to his lofty thoughts and exquisite art, and publishers and writers only use Brissenden's poems to gain fame and fortune; Readers also joined in, making a stink. "Every fool in this country is making a fuss about Brissenden's greatness, forcing his skinny figure into the reader's eyes."

The two attitudes of the publishing industry, indifference and excitement, are actually two sides of the same thing: publishing is just a means for philistines to pursue their own interests, and literature and writers are actually not important. When Martin didn't become famous, of course they ignored him; Now that he is famous, of course they want to make money with him. The question is so straightforward and simple. Knowing this, Martin Eden saw through the situation of American literature and culture and was very sad. He learned a truth: how hard evolution studies and writes, and his thoughts and art are not understood by many people in the final analysis. This loneliness eventually led to his suicide.

In short, his career was occupied by scholars in the publishing industry, and his works became a means for scholars to pursue fame and gain. Whether he succeeds or fails, he can't achieve his goal, which makes his life meaningless, which is one of the reasons for his suicide. He once told Brissenden that love is the first thing for him, and beauty is only the handmaid of love. Since he met Ruth, his life belonged to her, but in the end he found that Ruth was as vulgar and shallow as other ladies and didn't deserve his love, which was the second reason for his suicide. But as a result of studying hard, he found that he despised the bourgeoisie, broke away from his own class, and became a loner, alone and inseparable, with no fun in life. This is the third reason for his suicide. With these three things, Martin Eden born to die.

He also tried to escape, intending to go to the distant South China Sea to do coconut business and collect pearls. But when I got to the boat, I found it was just boring and busy. So when he was extremely tired, he was tempted by Shi Wenyong's poems, drilled out the porthole of the passenger ship he was riding, and fell into the sea, ending his nostalgic life. Death seems to make him:

"Relieved hope, relieved fear,

Get rid of excessive love for life. "

He has no hope and no interest in life, so he has no "excessive love" and no fear of death. In fact, since Brissenden's death, he has been a cardinal without a song in his throat and needs a rest:

"I used to sing like an early thrush,

Whistle in the wet bushes.

But at the moment I was speechless;

I'm like a tired cardinal,

Because there is no song in my throat anymore,

I spent all my singing time. "

Can he not kill himself?

If he doesn't kill himself, he seems to have only one way to go. He can marry Ruth or Liz Connolly and live a rich life, but he must give up his formed beliefs, which is actually a kind of mental suicide. He can also escape, build a house with hay as the wall overseas, do coconut business, collect pearls, and entertain businessmen in the past with a luxurious life, but that is still the life of rich citizens and a mental suicide. Martin Eden died not in difficult times, but after success, which gave people a lot of thinking.

It is worth noting that the author also pointed out a way for Martin Eden, but unfortunately he didn't want to go.

Brissenden, Martin Eden's only confidant, once told him that his future was only socialism, because he was handcuffed to life and socialism was inevitable. Only by becoming a socialist can you have friends, and there is a goal you can fight for all your life, and life is meaningful.

Brissenden told him when he took him to a socialist seminar:

"You read some books and found yourself completely lonely."

It can be seen that Brissenden thinks that Martin's spiritual loneliness is inevitable, because there are many such people among the socialists he knows: some are rich young masters, some are awakened in slums, and all are people outside their own class. These people:—

"They are all thoughtful people, although they often collide with each other; Everyone is smart and funny, but by no means shallow. ..... No matter what they talk about, they can comprehensively use knowledge and have a deep and systematic understanding of society and the universe. They are all some kind of rebels. Their ideas were not concocted by anyone in advance, and there were no cliches in their mouths. The number of issues they discussed was amazing, which Martin had never seen in the Morse family. "

These people are also familiar with his politics and know "the latest plans and scandals of the United Labour Party"; And the behind-the-scenes matchmaking that led to the strike of coastal seafarers. Martin was shocked by the amount of inside information they had. They know something that has never been published in the newspaper-strings and hands that manipulate puppets to dance. "

After contacting these people, Martin got the impression that he came to heaven that night. He said to Brissenden, "You gave me a glimpse of the fairy world. Meeting such people makes life valuable. " (For the above quotation, see Chapter 35)

So Brissenden said to him

"I want to see you become a socialist before you die, which will make you live. You will be disappointed in the future, when only socialism can save you. " (Chapter 38)

Unfortunately, Martin Eden did not seriously consider Brissenden's suggestion. This is regrettable.

Why didn't Martin accept Brissenden's suggestion? Because Martin Eden is Nietzschean in spirit, he talked about the theory of "nature makes way for superman" at the socialist rally:

"In order to make way for superman, nature rejected them (by: referring to the weak, that is, ordinary people), ignoring their cunning philosophy and the cooperative nature of ants. She only chooses the best among the beautiful beings spread by her rich hands; Humans, like nature, breed cucumbers and horses in this way. " (Chapter 38)

You see, human beings are cultivating cucumbers and training horse racing by selecting seeds, but they are actually imitating the methods of nature. It is absolutely right for nature to make way for people. This is the basic idea of Martin Eden. He simply applied the law of natural selection to human society and advocated natural selection in human society. This theory made him lose his way, made him despise ordinary people, rejected socialism, and finally committed suicide in loneliness and boredom. Martin Eden is still very young and immature in socialist circles. Unfortunately, he was too confident, closed his eyes and finally committed suicide.

Jack London once said in a letter: "I am Martin Eden." But Martin Eden died because he was an individualist; I am alive because I am a socialist. " This is worthy of our attention, although we did not turn a blind eye to Nietzsche's shadow in Jack London.