Martin Eden

The Globe publishes Martin’s “Sea Lyrics” for $30. However, they change and edit his words so much that he frantically tries to get them to cancel the publication. He must endure the shame as his mangled poems are published over the course of a few months. Martin wins a writing contest sponsored by the Republican Party, which refuses to pay the prize money. He wins a similar contest for the Democratic Party, which pays him $25.

Martin avoids Mrs. Morse’s social gatherings. He hasn’t met any attendees as intelligent as Professor Caldwell. He feels intellectually superior to all of these upper-class, conventionally educated people.

During a dinner conversation at the Morse home, Mr. Morse accuses Martin of being a socialist. Martin takes great offense to this. He considers socialism weak, and he accuses Mr. Morse of being a henchman for the Republican Party. Mr. Morse can’t defend his accusation.

Martin’s sister Marian gets engaged to Hermann Von Schmidt, a German bicycle mechanic. When they visit Martin to announce their engagement, Hermann immediately dislikes Martin because Martin reads a poem he wrote for Marian. When he sees Marian again, she tearfully tells him that Hermann thought the poem was obscene. Martin can’t find any obscenity in the poem; he sadly realizes he has intellectually left his family far behind. Like Ruth, Hermann and Marian want Martin to get a real job.

Martin feels a growing disgust for both the bourgeoisie and the working class.

An entire year has passed since Ruth and Martin declared their love for each other, yet they’re no closer to marriage. Editors are still the gatekeepers of Martin’s success; Martin believes that they’re failed writers and thus bitter keepers of the status quo. Mr. Morse begrudgingly offers Martin a job in his office if Martin asks for it, even though he thinks Martin is too radical and lazy.

Ruth has lost faith in Martin’s future as a writer. The revelation is painful to Martin, but he asks her to have faith in his love, if not his writing. He promises to succeed before the second year of their engagement is up. Impassioned, Martin explains that the urge to write is what animates his life; if he didn’t have that passion, Ruth wouldn’t have fallen for him to begin with. He assures her that he has faith in her love. He doesn’t care what her parents or anyone else think of him.

Martin runs into Gertrude on the street. Seeing her brother’s pitiful condition, Gertrude gives him $5. She wishes he’d get a job, and she invites him to dinner, which Martin politely declines. He vows to pay Gerturde back a hundred-fold for the $5.

That night, Martin meets socialist Russ Brissenden at one of the get-togethers at the Morse house. Although he previously wrote off Brissenden as a dullard, he accepts Brissenden’s invitation to get a drink. Brissenden quickly proves himself to be Martin’s equal in intellect and capacity for holding his liquor. Martin views Brissenden as the personification of all his own intellectual values. Brissenden echoes the value Martin places on the intersection of science and philosophy, and he shares Martin’s distaste for the status quo. He despises literary magazines. Brissenden has tuberculosis and recently moved to the San Francisco Bay Area from Arizona.

Brissenden briefly piques Martin’s anger and insults his pride by offering to buy him something to eat. Nevertheless, the pair quickly become friends.

Brissenden calls on Martin the next morning. He’d called Ruth to get Martin’s address. Brissenden becomes Martin’s biggest literary supporter. He loves Martin’s writing, valuing his originality and iconoclastic tendencies. Martin learns that Brissenden is a poet as well. Swept off his feet by his friend’s writing, Martin asks why Brissenden never tried to publish his work. Brissenden scoffs at the notion, calling it a prostitution of beauty. He warns Martin that fame will be poison to him and advises him to instead pursue beauty for beauty’s sake.

When Brissenden makes fun of Martin’s love for Ruth, Martin nearly strangles him. Brissenden chuckles at Martin’s strength and warns him that he shouldn’t try to love a member of the bourgeoisie.

Although the two men become close friends, Brissenden remains an enigma to Martin. Close to death because of his illness, Brissenden seeks out strange thrills to get the most out of life. Martin never learns much about his background.

Thanksgiving approaches, and Martin can’t accept Ruth’s invitation to dinner because he had to pawn his suit again. Martin borrows $.10 from Maria to visit the office of the Transcontinental to demand the $5 they owe him.

He arrives at the Transcontinental office in time to overhear the editors making excuses to their printer about why they can’t pay him. When Martin enters their office, the editors express their delight to finally meet him but claim they don’t have the money to pay him. Martin physically extorts the money he’s owed from the old men. Elated by his success, he decides to try the same at The Hornet; however, this publication is run by strapping young men. They fight Martin and forcibly eject him from the building but invite him to have a drink with them for a fight well fought.

Ruth visits Martin at home again. He just finished a story called “Wiki-wiki,” based on a Hawaiian he knew by that name. Martin reiterates that he can’t come to Thanksgiving dinner. He spent the $5 from the Transcontinental reclaiming Maria’s cows from the pound. Ruth is disappointed, even more so when she finds out that Martin declined a job offer from the railroad.

Martin receives mail from The New York Outview. The publication received an anonymous letter slandering Martin but assures him that they paid no heed to it. Martin reads the enclosed letter and recognizes the anonymous writer as Bernard Higgenbotham. He wonders why his brother-in-law would slander him.

Maria’s opinion of Martin falls when he shows her Joe’s techniques for optimizing laundry; it makes her realize that he’s working class, like her, despite his educated way of speaking and his fancy visitors. However, she’s deeply impressed with his washing skills, particularly with Joe’s hubcap wool-washing invention.

Martin’s falling out with his family continues when Hermann refuses Martin’s business and threatens to call the police on him. Martin is relieved when Brissenden visits; his friend has been gone for two weeks.

Brissenden doesn’t explain his long absence, and Martin doesn’t ask about it. Brissenden has composed a magnum opus poem titled “Ephemera,” based on Martin’s ideas. Martin reads it; in form and substance, he considers it perfect. He’s utterly moved by the poem.

Martin enthusiastically offers to market the poem for publication; he’s willing to bet that a magazine will publish it. Brissenden nearly takes him up on the offer, but he wishes to keep it private. He asks only that Martin type it for him.

Brissenden praises Martin’s “The Shame of the Sun” and encourages him to submit it to first-class publishers. He’s confident that it will be accepted and make a stir in the literary world.

Before he leaves, Brissenden gives Martin $100 he won at the racetrack. Martin doesn’t have qualms about taking it; he knows he’ll pay Brissenden back one day. He uses the money to pay off all his debts, give Maria three months’ advance on his rent, buy Christmas presents, and purchase shoes for all of Maria’s children.

Ruth and Mrs. Morse encounter Martin taking the Silvas to buy them candy. Mrs. Morse is shocked, and Ruth is deeply hurt and offended by the spectacle of her betrothed in such sordid company.

Brissenden takes Martin to a gathering of bohemian intellectuals in San Francisco’s working-class South of Market neighborhood to show him what he calls “the real dirt” (288). The intellectual gang congregates at Kreis’s apartment. Kreis was once a professor who was fired from the university. Brissenden enthusiastically describes the men Martin is likely to meet as they travel to Kreis’s apartment.

In the crowded apartment, Brissenden is in his element, serving drinks to the men in attendance. Martin listens in awe as Kreis and his gang discuss topics from sports, to literature, to the New Zealand labor movement. The only woman present, Mary, is the most intelligent, insightful woman Martin has ever met.

Brissenden introduces Martin to Kreis and playfully tells Kreis to critique Martin’s faith in Herbert Spencer. As Kreis passionately lays in on Martin, a man named Norton comes to Martin’s defense, and another man, Hamilton, soon joins in.

Martin listens in rapture. Even if he doesn’t believe in their principles, these men represent living, applied philosophy. It’s the greatest evening of Martin’s life, and he’s sorry when he and Brissenden must leave Kreis’s apartment to catch the ferry. Martin talks excitedly about the evening, but Brissenden falls asleep, breathing painfully.

The next day, Martin sends “The Shame of the Sun” and (against his friend’s advice and consent) Brissenden’s “Ephemera” to prominent magazines. He plans to argue for Brissenden’s consent to publish “Ephemera” when a magazine accepts it. Martin begins a sea tale, “Overdue,” which has a deep philosophical undercurrent informed by Spencer and the theory of evolution.

After the exciting night at Kreis’s apartment, evenings at the Morse house seem depressing and dull. No one has the same capacity for conversation and philosophy as the bohemian intellectuals. However, he’s grounded by his love for Ruth: He’s marrying her, not her family or associates. At dinner, Mr. Morse, along with Judge Blount, again calls Martin a socialist. Exhausted by his day’s labor, Martin’s temper is short. He claims that he’s such a Nietzschean individualist that compared to him, the judge and Mr. Morse are socialists. Mr. Morse purposefully steers the conversation to Herbet Spencer to incite Martin’s anger. Hearing Judge Blount insult Spencer, Martin erupts into a tirade, insulting the judge’s intelligence. The rest of the dinner is spent in dismal silence.

Ruth is devastated, but she can’t help but feel the old attraction to Martin’s power through his anger. Martin won’t go to the Morse house for dinner again. He knows he isn’t welcome, and he detests their company.