The Manufacture of the Self in Martin Eden

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between discourse, ideology, power, and identity in Jack London’s Martin Eden through an interdisciplinary framework combining Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), Marxist criticism, Foucauldian theories of discipline, and Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic capital. While earlier scholarship has often interpreted the novel through autobiographical or purely Marxist perspectives, this study argues that Martin Eden is fundamentally a novel about language and subject formation. Martin’s transformation from working-class sailor to intellectual writer is mediated through discourse, linguistic performance, and institutional validation. The paper examines how bourgeois ideology operates through language, education, publishing institutions, and social interaction to construct and regulate identity.

Using close textual analysis supported by theoretical interpretation, the study demonstrates that language in the novel functions as both empowerment and domination. Martin’s acquisition of elite discourse enables social mobility while simultaneously alienating him from his original social class and from himself. The paper further argues that the novel exposes the contradictions of capitalist meritocracy by revealing that cultural legitimacy depends less on talent than on ideological recognition. In addition, the article examines masculinity, the disciplined body, class anxiety, and the symbolic function of the sea as a counter-discursive space resisting bourgeois normalization.

Ultimately, the study positions Martin Eden as an early critique of modern subjectivity in which identity is manufactured through ideological discourse yet remains fragmented and unstable. By integrating literary criticism with discourse analysis, the paper contributes to broader discussions concerning language, class, and the politics of identity in modern literature.