Martin Eden

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1909

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-8

Chapters 9-18

Chapters 19-27

Chapters 28-37

Chapters 38-46

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Hands

Content Warning: This section refers to depression and death by suicide.

An emphasis on hands is a common motif throughout Martin Eden. Typically, characters’ hands reflect their station in life: The bourgeoisie have smooth, soft hands, while the working class have hands that are rough and scarred by labor. For example, during his first evening at the Morse house, Martin is struck by the softness and delicate beauty of Ruth’s hands. To have perfect hands is a luxury. Ruth hasn’t been exposed to the degradation of physical labor. Working women, in contrast, bear physical markers of their hard lives. Martin tries to explain this idea to Ruth, stating, “When one’s body is young, it is very pliable, and hard work will mould it like putty according to the nature of the work” (101). Although he’s referring to the effect of labor on the entire body, hands are among the most used and most visible parts of the body and thus among the most evident markers of one’s class and trade. For example, Martin can tell at a glance that Lizzie has worked at a cannery because of the particular scars on her hand. His sister, Marian, “worked in the cannery the preceding summer, and her slim, pretty hands were all scarred with the tomato-knives. Besides, the tips of two of her fingers had been left in the cutting machine at the paper-box factory the preceding winter” (35). Marian’s missing fingertips are a sign of her working-class background that will never go away, even if she manages to rise above it.

Machinery

The motif of machinery emphasizes instances in which Martin and other characters lose agency over their life and well-being. Machines are synonymous with industry and work; consequently, when Martin begins to “lose” his humanity to the brutal work at the laundry, he begins to see himself not as a human but as a machine. Just as machine parts wear down, so do bodies, and each individual worker is easily replaced. Martin sees the editors that reject his manuscripts as “cogs in a machine” given the impersonality of their rejection notices (113). He begins to see the whole publication process as a machine designed to strip writers’ works of the humanity they so carefully pour into them. The continual rejections are thus not a fault of Martin’s writing but an inherent aspect of the publication machine. Additionally, Lizzie is the first and only person to recognize that something’s wrong with Maritn when he succumbs to apathy following his rise to fame: “It ain’t your body. It’s your head. Something’s wrong with your think-machine. Even I can see that, and I ain’t nobody” (360). Again, the novel invokes the image of machinery to describe something out of Martin’s control. Although he has the material means to make life comfortable, his broken “think-machine” makes him unable to enjoy life anymore. Lizzie’s simplistic diagnosis ironically furnishes Martin with the idea that something is fundamentally broken in him and contributes to his decision to die by suicide.

The South Seas

From treasure hunting to whaling expeditions, Martin spent most of his life sailing across the world. The South Seas—Polynesia and the other lands in the Pacific, south of the Equator—left an indelible impression on Martin’s mind. In particular, Martin daydreams of Tahiti, where he knows he’ll be welcomed by Chief Tati and his son, Moti. When Martin becomes famous, the hollowness of bourgeois life and the fake affection he now receives cause him to long again for the South Seas. For Martin, the area symbolizes freedom, an escape from the nightmare that his life becomes. They represent a setting in which he’s judged only by his character, strength, and deeds. Emphasizing Martin’s desire to escape is the harsh contrast of the language the novel uses to describe his thoughts: He longs for “clean, sweet Tahiti” over the US, where fame has landed him “in a pestiferous marsh” (328). His plans to move to Tahiti represent a desire to reinvent himself. However, as his mental and emotional state deteriorates, the existential horror of life overshadows even the allure of the South Seas: “What when the steamer reached Tahiti? He would have to go ashore. He would have to order his trade-goods, to find a passage on a schooner to the Marquesas, to do a thousand and one things that were awful to contemplate” (378-79). Martin’s last remaining reserves of self-preservation flee when he contemplates the actual work involved in establishing himself in a new country. As his vision of the South Seas as a symbol of opportunity fades, so does Martin’s last hope for life.