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Martin Eden Synopsis

From a hard-won leadership of a hoodlum gang in Oakland, Cal., from a beach-comber's life in the South Seas, and from the inferno of the stokehole, Martin Eden, an unlearned sailor, wins his way to fame and fortune. But it is not until great odds have been conquered and much has been sacrificed that the goal is reached. And then it is too late. The odds are ridicule, poverty and lack of education. The great sacrifice, love. A chance meeting, in his hoodlum days, with Arthur Morse, a college man, proves the turning point of his life, for through him he meets Arthur's sister Ruth. This means the opening of a new world, and in the remaining reels of the play we see Martin's indomitable spirit and the development of his career. He makes two picturesque friends. One is Russ Brissenden, a poet, who encourages Martin when he sorely needs it, though his taking the latter to the Socialists' meeting had unfortunate results for the cub reporter as well as for Martin. The other is Maria, his warm-hearted Portuguese landlady, whose wildest flight of imagination, ""hoe all da roun' for da kids," Martin later is happily able to gratify. A third figure comes now and then into Martin's life: beautiful, wistful Lizzie Connelly, who loves him and whom he pities but cannot love. As in so many lives, matters are at their lowest ebb before the tide turns. Martin is penniless and without food or warmth. He has had only one sale of a manuscript in the many months of unceasing endeavor. Brissenden is dead. Ruth, losing her faith, has broken their engagement and refuses to see him. Then comes the sudden sweep of success, with publishers clamoring for his work and fame and wealth in his hand. But the tension that sustained him during his days of poverty and struggle breaks. Even Love, in the person of the repentant Ruth, knocks at his door in vain, and he sails for the South Seas, to find again, if he may, his old-time zest for life.

An Odyssey of the North Synopsis

To Cal Galbraith's cabin in the Klondike, one winter night, comes a starving, frost-bitten figure. Cal recognizes it as Naass, an Esquimau dog-driver, to whom he had lent sixty ounces of gold dust that he might buy release from the service, and who thereupon had left for a prospecting trip with Axel Gunderson and his wife many weeks before. Crouching by the fire, Naass tells his story. We see the feud in the Esquimau village between the descendants of two shipwrecked sailors, which terminates at the wedding plotlach of the last of the two lines, Naass and Unga. We see Axel carry Unga off to his ship, where he later wins her love and marries her. Knowing nothing of this, but always remembering the last appeal in Unga's eyes. Naass follows as best he can. From city to city he journeys, till a clue carries him to the sealing grounds. With Axel's ship in sight. Naass' ship is captured by Russians in waters forbidden to sealers, and he is sent to Siberia. Not even the horrors of the salt mines and the knout daunt him and he escapes, to make his way hack through Alaska to San Francisco. There he learns that Axel and Unga had left the day before for the Klondike, but at least he has a definite clue and a bait to trap Axel with in the shape of a map leading to a wonderful mine in the unknown mountains of interior Alaska, given him by a dying prospector, so with renewed courage he starts out again. At Dawson the long search is ended, but they do not remember one who had paid for Unga's love an untold price, and he easily persuades them to go with him in search of the mine in the mountains. The odyssey is over, the never-forgotten appeal in Unga's eyes will now be answered, and Axel is in his power. He destroys the caches for the return trip, kills the dogs, and watches with the exultation of the just avenger Axel's slow death from starvation and frost. Then when death has come to Axel and is very near himself and Unga, he reveals his identity, "I am Naass, the last of the blood, as you are the last of the blood." To his bewilderment, Unga laughs wildly, then denouncing him in a passionate outburst, throws herself beside the dead body of her husband and refuses to leave him. "But upon me there lay your debt, which would not let me rest. I repay." And giving Cal a bag of gold, taken from the far mountains, Naass turns again to the fire.