Reading Notes A, Week 8, London

The passage from, From Matin Eden, by Jack London, left me feeling very sad. The passage started with Martin in his apartment frustrated that his writings were being returned from the publishers. He then share his childhood memories about being bullied and beat up on and off for many years, which ended in a huge gang fight that left him with a broken arm and so angry that he could not stop punching his attack, Cheese-face, he had lost control of himself. These memories tell moments when he was as young as six years until he was eighteen and how these moments made him a fighter in life and not give up.
The passage then goes to later in Martin's life, when he becomes famous for his writings and has a lot of money, but he talks about how unhappy he is in life and he does not like to be around others. He goes to the doctors because he feels like something is wrong with himself, he he told that he is psychical healthy. "It was his "thinking machine" that had gone wrong, and there was no cure for that except to get away to the South Seas." pg 366 He boards the Mariposa and is a first class passenger, something he had wanted in the past and thought would be so great, but he was still unhappy. "There was no satisfaction in being awake." pg 367 Martin was miserable, nothing around him made him happy.
One evening Martin picked up a volume of the Swinburne and he found himself interested and happy. "That was the meaning of it all: he had been drifting that way all the time, and now Swinburne showed him that it was the happy way out."pg 369
"Life was ill, or rather, it had become ill-an unbearable thing."That dead men rise up never! That lined stirred him with a profound feeling of gratitude. .... When life became an aching weariness, death was ready to soothe away to everlasting sleep."pg 369 Martin climbed through the porthole in his room and went into the milk sea and drowned himself.
Martin gave up on life, he was not happy and although he became a successful writer, he was not happy, the money and all the things he wanted and was able to have were not enough for him in the end.