著者

小島 尚人

出版者

東京大学大学院総合文化研究科附属アメリカ太平洋地域研究センター

雑誌

アメリカ太平洋研究 (ISSN:13462989)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.10, pp.67-80, 2010-03

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This essay is an attempt to read Martin Eden, Jack Londonʼs autobiographical novel, in terms of the inextricable relationship between the author and the protagonist. Critics have often taken the unbalanced plot and the lack of ironic distance between narrator and character in Martin Eden as the technical weakness of London, but this paper argues that the achievement of this novel owes a great deal to the attachment of London to Martin. The unbalanced structure is a necessary product of the severe struggle of the author to kill his romantic alter ego. // Martin, who aspires to win Ruth Morse, tries to cross class boundaries by making a career of a writer. Even after realizing the emptiness of Ruth, who turns out to be nothing but a typical figure of the bourgeoisie, he somehow persists in loving her. The notion underlying here is that, for Martin, love, career and art are fundamentally inseparable. He objects to the aestheteʼs view of Brissenden on account of his separation of art from career. Martinʼs identity and life consist only in the triunity of love/career/art; the alternative is the repudiation of life. Thus, the unnatural delay of his disappointment in love can be regarded as Londonʼs strategy to set the suicide of Martin as the necessary consequence of the story. // By finishing the story and killing Martin, London finally detaches himself from Martin, reconstructs his self, and, unlike Martin, survives as a professional writer. In this sense, Martin Eden is a story about “writerʼs self-reconstruction.”