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本文共分为四个部分，第一部分介绍作者生平及其美国梦的追寻与幻灭，并对其自传性的小说《马丁•伊登》作简要概括。第二部分描述美国梦的起源与发展，以及主人公对美国梦的强烈憧憬。第三部分对主人公美国梦的幻灭进行分析，讨论其幻灭的原因，并以此得出如何更好的追寻“中国梦”的经验、教训。第四部分为结论部分，对杰克•伦敦本人及其小说主人公马丁•伊登追寻美国梦的艰辛历程并最终选择死亡作总结。
关键词：杰克•伦敦，《马丁•伊登》，美国梦，憧憬与幻灭
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements.. i
Abstract.. ii
摘要.. iii
1 Introduction... 1
1.1 A Brief Introduction to Jack London.. 2
1.1.1 Family’s Influence on Jack London.... 3
1.1.2 Jack London’s American Dream.. 3
1.2 A Summary of Martin Eden...... 5
2 The Development of American Dream in Martin Eden. 7
2.1 American Dream... 7
2.2 Examples of American Dream...... 9
2.3 Martin Eden and His Pursuit of American Dream. 10
3 The Disillusionment of American Dream in Martin Eden. 13
3.1 The Disillusionment of Martin Eden’s American Dream.. 13
3.2 Factors for the Failure of Martin Eden’s American Dream.. 15
3.3 Lessons from Martin Eden...... 16
4 Conclusion..... 17
Bibliography.. 19
1 Introduction
Jack London was a well-known writer of the early 20th America. He was born in San Francisco California and grew up in extreme poverty. London was widely read in Spencer, Darwin, Nietzsche, Karl Marx, etc., and was profoundly influenced by them. He worshipped Marx and Nietzsche equally, and his writing constantly reflects contradictory beliefs. However, his good works reflect man’s struggle with nature under adverse conditions, and make scathing criticisms of the capitalist society. Jack London was a talented writer. He wrote 19 novels and more than 150 short stories and tales. Of his works the best known are: The Call of the Wild, The Sea Wolf and Martin Eden, etc. In 1893 he signed aboard a sailing vessel for a seven-month voyage to the Pacific. Upon his return he held a series of wretched jobs and then joined the army of unemployed laborers. Determined to improve himself, he returned to Oakland to finish high school in 1895, and then spent a semester at the University of California. From there he went to the gold fields of Alaska’s Klondike, and though he failed to strike it rich he did gather sufficient material for a series of stories that were published in magazines, and then collected and published in book form in 1900 as The Son of the Wolf. These stories were widely acclaimed and encouraged him to pursue his literary career.
Martin Eden was first serialized in the Pacific Monthly magazine from September 1908 to September 1909 and published in book form by Macmillan in September 1909. In the novel, Martin Eden, Living in Oakland at the beginning of the 20th century, struggled to rise above his destitute, proletarian circumstances through an intense and passionate pursuit of self-education, hoping to achieve a place among the literary elite. His principal motivation was his love for Ruth Morse. Because Eden was a rough, uneducated sailor from a working-class background and the Morses was a bourgeois family, a union between them would be impossible unless and until he reached their level of wealth and refinement. Over a period of two years, Eden promised Ruth that success would come, but just before it did, Ruth lost her patience and rejected him in a letter, saying, “if only you had settled down and attempted to make something of yourself”. By the time Eden attained the favor of the publishers and the bourgeoisie who had shunned him, he had already developed a grudge against them and became jaded by toil and unrequited love. Instead of enjoying his success, he retreated into a quiet indifference, interrupted only to rail mentally against the genteelness of bourgeois society or to donate his new wealth to working-class friends and family (Net.2).