A Nietzschean Reading of Jack London’s "Martin Eden" (1909) and James Joyce’s "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" (1916)

Table of Contents

ABSTRACT

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

General introduction

Chapter 1
1.1. The intercourse between the Intellectuals of the 19th century and Nietzsche
1.2. The Bildungsroman genre and Nietzsche
1.3. Principles of the Nietzschean philosophy
1.3.1. Will to Power
1.3.2 Master and Slave Moralities
1.3.3. The Übermensch (The Superman)
Conclusion

Chapter 2
2.1. London’s literary creation and Nietzsche’s conception of the world
2.2. Martin Eden as the embodiment of Nietzsche’s philosophy
2.3. Joyce’s endeavor towards the fictionalization of Nietzsche’s ideas
2.4. Stephen Dedalus as the implementation of the Nietzschean thought
Conclusion

General conclusion

Bibliography

ABSTRACT

This dissertation is a comparative analysis of the two works by Jack London and James Joyce in view of Nietzschean philosophy. Martin Eden (1909) and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) are Bildungsromans that reflect the ideas and beliefs of the beginning of the twentieth century. The heroes of these novels are rebellious characters who struggle to be liberated and to gain genuineness. Showing the role of Nietzsche at that time, this work tries to reveal his impact on Jack London and James Joyce by detecting the Nietzschean concepts that can be found in their works. The characters Martin Eden and Stephen Dedalus are Nietzschean characters; they do not follow the values of the herd and they create their own values. It is revealed that James Joyce and jack London use Nietzsche’s philosophy in different ways. In Martin Eden, jack London, by using a Nietzschean character, wants to criticize Nietzsche’s ideas that result in destruction, while Joyce uses these ideas in a positive way. Even though the future of Stephen is not known, but by following the Niezschean philosophy, he becomes a successful writer.

To my parents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am extremely grateful to my thesis Supervisor from finding an appropriate subject in the beginning to the process of writing this work, for being friendly, supportive, caring, and helpful in many ways. He guided me and was with me to check on my research progress. Also, through seminars and lectures, KH helped me enhance my learning and presentation skills.

I would like to offer my special thanks to Professors $. %. and ). .., I have greatly benefited from their guidance and valuable suggestions.

I am deeply grateful to my family and I am indebted to my parents for their care and support.

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche

General introduction

Despite many critics that attacked Friedrich Nietzsche and his philosophy, the German philosopher was a very influential thinker and was considered as the prophet of the 20th century as Phil Fernandes described him, Nietzsche’s ideas can be found nearly in all of the literary works written in the late 19th century and early twentieth century. Many writers from different countries and cultures in the world used Nietzsche’s ideas in their works either to show its utility or to criticize it, personally I read his philosophy ,and I read about it and I read many literary works, and I found that Jack London and James Joyce are the appropriate writers who can reveal how novelists both supported and criticized Nietzsche’s ideas through their works, so this study is about the reception of Nietzsche’s philosophy in the Irish and the American literature, and the novels selected for this study are Jack London’s Martin Eden (1909) and James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916).These two novels are chosen from different cultures in order to see how Nietzsche’s ideas were fictionalized in different cultural contexts. Therefore, the aim of this dissertation is to make a comparative study of the two novels written by jack London and James Joyce, in view of Nietzschean philosophy. Martin Eden and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man were published in the early 20th century, they reflect the ideas and beliefs of this era and they are known for their revolting characters. So how did Jack London and James Joyce use Nietzsche’s philosophy in their works and particularly in these two novels?, and to answer this question I divided this work into two chapters, a general introduction and a general conclusion. The first chapter is about the intercourse between thinkers of the nineteenth century and Nietzsche, the Bildungsroman genre and Nietzsche, and Nietzsche’s philosophy, the second chapter shows how the two authors used Nietzsche’s philosophy in their works and especially in the selected novels, and finally a general conclusion is drawn to detect the similarities and differences between these two novels according to their reception of Nietzsche’s philosophy.

CHAPTE R 1

1.1. The intercourse between the Intellectuals of the 19 th century and Nietzsche

At the end of the 19th century, there were many changes that took place in Europe and in America, the Victorian England was an era of different discoveries and events which spread throughout Europe and the world and changed the culture and the life of that time. The industrial revolution and its horrendous working conditions, the factories were dangerous and unhealthy areas to work in about fourteen hours daily. People worked under these conditions and ‘’workers were viewed by their employers merely as hands.’’ (Montagna), men and women and children all worked in brutal situations in industrial cities like Manchester, Elizabeth Barrett's poem "The Cry of the Children" (1843) describes the horrors of child labor (Greenblatt), and this led the working class to despair and pessimism.

There was a similar situation in America, in the cities, the industrial companies made some people rich and turned many others into hard-working labor looking for money. (Eliasson 10)

This situation helped Karl Marx to see the problem of the working class and the contradictions of the capitalist system, in 1867, he published his major work Dos Kapital, he asserts that work is a very important factor in one’s own life, and because of the bad working conditions , workers become poorer and experienced alienation and isolation from their work, Marx criticized the capitalist system, and by doing so he established the principles of the modern isolated man giving up bourgeois values.( Johnson). The capitalist system caused the poverty and the misery of the working class, for Nickolas Conrad, this was why atheism spread among people living in misery (13)

Skepticism and atheism become widely spread because of the scientific and technological developments. The age of earth was proved by the discoveries made by geologists to be millions of years, this made people skeptical about what the old testament says about the history of earth, as John Tyndall stated that ‘’ not for six thousand, nor for sixty thousand, nor for six thousand thousand, but for aeons embracing untold millions of years, this earth has been the theater of life and death’’. (qtd in Abrams 987)

Another scientific discovery that confirmed the nothingness of man was that astronomers found out that the distance between stars is longer than what people used to know. The scope of the existence just as the history of earth came into a clash with the Bible and what people used to know about the universe. This confirmed man’s nothingness and limitation since the world is bigger than he thought, and was created longer before him.

These discoveries made people more skeptical about religion, this skepticism was confirmed with Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species in 1859, Darwin denies the divine being behind the creation, and he asserts that evolution depended mainly on chance, he called this process a naturalistic selection, for him, individual species try to cope with the environment, those who cannot cope should die, and the ones who cope well with the environment will live and grow. Therefore constructs a set of species including man too and takes place with no divine intervention. (Richardson 11)

What Darwin disseminates was the randomness of life and the essential chanciness of nature (11).Confirming the uselessness of God during evolution, this randomness produced a world without definitive meaning as well. Moreover, people started to identify with animals more apparently when Darwin published T he Descent of Man, in 1871; this convinced man that his role in the world and the values related to him were devastated. “If the principle of survival of the fittest was accepted as the key to conduct, there remained the inquiry: fittest for what?” (Abrams 1896-7). Thus Darwin’s ideas made man wonder what it means to be human.

Even though Darwin’s theory was full of inconsistencies, it was widely spread to a degree when everybody was talking about it (Richardson 06). The loss of faith in religion and in man’s role in the universe increased, therefore many people among whom famous writers like William Faulkner (Jerng 71), Theodore Dreiser (Zhang 196) and Victorians like Thomas Hardy and George Eliot who questioned the truth of the bible and turned to skepticism and even atheism (Zhang 445).

Virginia Woolf’s father Leslie Stephen was a famous agnostic and rationalist, he inspired her to have no religious or spiritual beliefs through his essays like “What is Materialism?, and books such as ‘ An Agnostic’s Apology ’ (1876), in which he popularized agnosticism. (Yünlü, Memmedova 189). The spread of this kind of writings was a sign of the continuing changes in the Intellectual life.

This was a cultural crisis and a transition that paved the way for the appearance of other scientists in philosophy and psychology like Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud. These thinkers were influenced by Darwin’s ideas and played a fierce role in establishing modernism. Thomas Huxley, in a review of The Origin of Species talked about the intermixing of thought of the time and science and said that ‘’we do not believe that…. any work has appeared calculated to exert so large an influence…..in extending the domination of science over regions of thought into which she has, as yet, hardly penetrated."(qtd in Richardson 07)

Darwin’s work had an important effect on the field of psychology, Freud said that “the theories of Darwin ... strongly attracted me, for they held out hopes of extraordinary advance in our understanding of the world.”(qtd in Bergman 117). For Darwin, humans can be identified with animals, but this was controversial since it challenged the idea that humans are above animal species, then it was accepted that both animals and humans depend on instincts. Eduard Hartman was a German philosopher depended on Darwin’s theory and he dealt with the relation between animals and human beings ‘’ with respect to mental capacity man differs from the brutes in degree and not in kind, just as the brutes differ among themselves’’ (Hartmann 59).

Hartman deduced that we differ from animals only in degree and we are controlled by instincts. Darwin introduced this idea and then Hartmann accepted it and it was used by Fraud in his psychoanalysis. For Freud, there are three categories of the human psyche: id, ego and superego. The id is the source of our desires, wants and bodily needs and particularly our sexual and aggressive drives. The Ego, which ensures that the impulses of the Id are revealed in a way that is justifiable to the real world. The Super-Ego looks for perfection, it is made up of the individual’s Ego ideals, one’s conscience and spiritual goals. The Ego often should mediate between the two since the Super-Ego is conflicting with the demands of the Id (Siegfried 1.2).

Freud asserts that it is natural that humans have the desires of the id and he wanted to free the ego from the calls of the super ego, and for him, the goal of psychoanalysis is ‘’ to strengthen the ego, to make it more independent of the superego…. Where id was, there ego shall be: it is a work of culture’’ (qtd in Richards 08), this statement means that Freud concentrated in his studies to emancipate the ego, this emancipation is a work of culture, and this makes us understand the relation between psychoanalysis and culture when we take into consideration the conflict between the cultural values and the human nature .Stephen Frosh indicates this contradiction between the modern thought and culture, he noted that confusion was because of the scientific discoveries as well as because of he works of psychoanalysts, and he says that Freudian patients did not listen to their inner demands and were repressed by the calls of society.( Bradshaw 112)

The human nature represented in the id is controlled by aggressive instincts and the sexual desire but to be socially and culturally accepted, humans should control their impulses. For Freud, it is the repression of these desires that causes neurosis, so psychotherapy tries to reunion the ego with theses instincts, in order to have a healthy body and mind, it deals with the diseases caused by the conflict between both the demands of society and the demands of the human nature.

Freud, like Darwin, took time to be accepted, he changed what was known about sexuality, and as a result he deepened the modern man skepticism about the existing values and knowledge, he justified what was seen as bad by society, and adopted the impulses that were repressed.

Nietzsche or the prophet for the 20th century as Phil Fernandes described him, like Freud, was another prominent figure who was also influenced by Darwin, the main composition of his ideas relies on what Darwin named instinct, or what Freud brought which is the psychological derives. For Nietzsche, the most important impulse in humans is the ‘ will to power’ which I will explain in the next part, with the main concepts in Nietzsche’s philosophy after dealing with the bildungsroman. The will to power as the most important impulse in humans to fight for growth is similar to Darwin’s ‘ survival of the fittest’, which confirms the impulse to survive and to be strong. Moreover, it can be deduced that humans are different from animals only in degree, and this is similar to Nietzsche’s thought. According to Nietzsche, humans have the animal nature within them, and this should be acknowledged, but culture obliges humans to restrain their desires, thus all of the existing cultural and religious values work against this animal side in man, for Nietzsche, this western culture is against the life’s zeal and that is why he criticized it.( Bittner).

Nietzsche rose an opposition to Christianity and to the western culture , he ended up in refusing all of the existing values, regarding this, it is known that Nietzsche stands for the modern man who does not feel at ease with the prevailing norms of the existing culture. For both, the modern man and Nietzsche, life became meaningless.

The consequence of these changes of the 19th century (The industrial revolution, discoveries in Astronomy, Darwin’s theory of evolution and Freud’s findings) was uncertainty, feeling of meaninglessness and pessimism. Therefor Fredric Jameson said that modernity was a ‘ catastrophe’ and it caused nihilism (weller 02). This modernity passed through two phases, a progressive one in the 18th and first half of the 19th century ,and a nihilist one in the late 19th and first half of the 20th century (weller 01). ‘’Nihilism (as an ethical stance) is the view that there is no such thing as right and wrong or good and bad/evil actions. Nihilism can also involve denying God’s existence and any objective meaning of life’’ (YOUNT 01), and for Nietzsche, there exist two kinds of nihilism, an active nihilism which is ‘’a sign of increased power of spirit’’ and a passive nihilism as ‘’a decline and recession of the power of the spirit’’ (Nietzsche 1888 07), ‘’Passive nihilism takes the form of the ultimate pessimism’’ (singer 01). Nietzsche related passive nihilism to Schopenhauer’s philosophy, Buddhism and Christianity. He preferred the active nihilism which paves the way for people to create their own values. (Tomasi 172), therefore, Nietzsche’s nihilism is a life-affirming philosophy and it is a step towards the Übermensch.

As a supporter of active nihilism, Nietzsche inspired the modern man to create his own values and norms .Nietzsche’s rejection of morality helped man to get a godly feeling to create his own modes of existence. This is why great writers like Jack London and James Joyce were hugely influenced by his ideas and why he is chosen, as the most important source of influence on the two novels that compose the scope pf this dissertation.

1.2. The Bildungsroman genre and Nietzsche

Revolutionary changes brought by scientist and intellectuals such as the ones discussed in the previous part caused a tremendous change in art in the following time. Consequently, we can say that modernism is a reaction to this intellectual transformation. That is why Jesse Matz states that “the modern novel” means fiction that tries for something new, in the face of modernity, to reflect, to fathom, or even to redeem modern life’’(07). Modernity assured two things progression and confusion , for Marshall Berman, ‘’To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world and, at the same time, that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are’’(qtd in Anderson 97)

Writers were aware of this contradiction and they started to isolate themselves from society and from the conventional norms of writing. According to Virginia Woolf, the traditional novel could not keep up with the current life (Matz 09), so to make the modern life significant and to criticize it, writers made experiments with the language and the form of their works, since the old norms were not able to answer the new changes, these writers were obliged to try new norms in writing.

Naturalist writers also, like Jack London got a strong believe in the human instincts as the driving force of individuals, Man was related to animals, an idea taken from interpretations of Darwin's evolution theory, Naturalists were inspired by this theory, they lost faith in religion and in the conventional norms, their novels usually end tragically.(Eliasson 06), and his semi-autobiographical novel Martin Eden is a perfect example of that.

The change was in both the content and the form of the novel, the new ideas in psychology led writers to concentrate on the consciousness of the character; they used the stream of consciousness which is a technique that stresses the mental workings and the isolation of individuals, since each person has a unique consciousness. There were changes also in the plot, modernist writers refused the strong plots, since “there is, in none of them a story” as it is said by Gertrude Stein about the contemporary novels. (qtd in Fitz 231). Since there is no story in the modernist writing, the unimportant events replaced the striking ones, James Joyce,for instance, used epiphanies ‘’to describe the sudden and profound insights of Stephen Dedalus’’ (McDONALD 12) in the events of his daily life which can be considered as useless but they effect the character’s feelings.

Virginia Woolf stated that the human character changed at the beginning of the 20th century thus, the hero of the novel should change, he become complex and fragmented being. Hence, stereotypes, heroism, and conventional norms were replaced by uncertainties (Matz 45). The hero of the traditional novel had only one personality but the modern one got different personalities; he got a mixed identity. ( Kern 28)

The revolting character is related to the Bildungsroman, since the bildungsroman experienced a parallel change with the modernist hero. Characters started to isolate themselves from society; the plot in the bildungsroman changed and paved the way for the characters to confirm their individuality without following the conventional values. A short summery of the Bildungsroman may be helpful to understand its relation with the progress of the Nietzschean characters in Martin Eden and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

The Bildungsroman or the novel of formation (Boes 230) was introduced in the 19th century by the German sociologist and philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1941), and the term occurred in English in 1910 by Encyclopedia Britannica. The conflict of generations, childhood, isolation and self-education are some of its characteristics (231), and Lawrence’s sons and lovers and Golding’s Free Fall are examples of this genre, in this his genre “[a] regular development is observed in the life of the individual: each of the stages has its own intrinsic value and is at the same time the basis for a higher stage” (qtd in Boes 232)

Franco Moretti noted that the social norms were respected in the previous novels in this genre regarding the Bildugsromans produced in the 20th century (230), thus the characters become rebellious and most of the time they end up tragically (Kern 48), such characters in the bildungsroman can be seen in both of the novels this study deals with. Martin Eden, for instance, has the characteristics of the 20th century bildungsroman, since he turns away from his own class at the beginning of the story, he decides to be a writer In order to win Ruth’s heart, for him, this can be done through hard work and strong perseverance, he worked like a dog, since the naturalist writers were influenced by Darwin’s theory (as discussed previously), he chose to do so regardless of noting that the consequences may be destructive.

In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus, thinks that the conventional norms interrupt his self-cultivation, and as a result he chose to leave his country rejecting all of the existing institutions.

Nietzsche supports man to be an artist since, for him , “it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified” (qtd in Stokes 01) and to do so; man should ignore the existing values and follow his own nature (Koelb 94). Considering this, this dissertation follows the development of the protagonists Martin Eden and Stephen Dedalus in view of Nietzsche’s philosophy. It is argued that jack London and James Joyce were influenced by Nietzsche’s ideas, and this influence appears in their Bildungsromans, thus this thesis tries to find out the parallels between Nietzsche’s philosophy and the ideas these heroes adopt during their development.

1.3. Principles of the Nietzschean philosophy

After many readings about Nietzsche and his philosophy, many influential people came to my mind like Tony Robbins and Dale Carnegie, those thinkers who try all the time to persuade others that they can achieve their goals through hard work and perseverance, but Nietzsche, in the 19th century, was controversial and his ideas were not that easy to be grasped, I deduced this from all the resources that I have read on the net, these resources agree upon one thing which is that Nietzsche’s ideas are complicated and open to many interpretations, so in this chapter I try to make things as simple as possible for the literary reader first then to the philosophical one, and it is necessary to get this chapter well in order to go smoothly while reading the next chapters. Nietzsche rose in opposition to not only the previous philosophical systems like Karl Marx did, but Nietzsche was exceptional, he criticized philosophers themselves and philosophy itself, he did not write his philosophical ideas in detailed theories like other philosophers, but he wrote aphorisms and set his ideas in single pages or paragraphs, his style seems more literary than a philosophical one, that is why he was called ‘the Anti-Philosopher’. In doing so, he became one of the enthusiastic pundits of culture and religion, and concurrently smoothed the way for the emergence of a different kind of man he instead calls The Übermensch. Thus, it can be confirmed that the philosophy of Nietzsche is about abandoning nihilism and then becoming completely positive because of its optimism and life-longing character, opposite to the common misunderstanding that Nietzsche is a nihilist, he celebrates a different and cheerful kind of man who has zeal for life.

Nietzsche’s ideas about life, man, the difference between the herd and the Übermensch, and how can this man achieve his dream can be well grasped once some important ideas of Nietzsche’s philosophy are made clear. From here, in this part, the main key ideas of Nietzsche’s thought will be tackled in details. In the first section, the Will to power will be discussed, then Slave-Master morality in the next section, Nietzsche’s catch phrase ‘’God is dead’’ will be explained in the last part to have a clear picture of the Superman predicted by Nietzsche.

1.3.1. Will to power

This doctrine can be found in many books of Nietzsche like ‘Will to power’ and ‘Beyond Good and Evil’. So far, there are many ideas on the will to power sprinkled in his unpublished notes, this makes critics deal with this concept doubtfully (Del Caro 2004), in spite of that, the will to power might be the core of Nietzsche’s philosophy, and out of it he theorized about life and man (Lacewing 01)

To start with, Nietzsche’s will to power will be explained from a psychological point of view, because it is more appropriate for discussing the events that take place in the two novels. Nietzsche had taken the idea of the will to power from Schopenhauer’s’ ’will’’ but Nietzsche criticized him and rejected his metaphysics. The word ‘power’ does not signify power over others or military power; it is the power of innovation and passion (Solomon 48)

For Nietzsche, the self is a set or a bundle of lusts, hopes, fears and emotions; he sees that both humans and animals have the desire for power and love of life (Hales. Welshon 1999 :176), not life as it is but one’s own life , what he has done and what he is doing (Solomon 49), this universal instinct is called the will to power (Cooper 77), this instinct controls all what is alive not only humans, so this instinct rules the world as a whole :

Everyone wants and seeks power, from religions to universities to philosophers to servants. Have you ever seen the way grass and weeds sometimes grow out of the cracks in cement? This is an example of the will to power. The cement cannot contain the grass; the grass always seeks freedom, expression of itself. Another example: my father used to live in Gabon (Africa) and he told me once that, after trekking through the jungle one day with some others, they came upon a hotel that had been built by Europeans several decades before. The jungle was growing all over the remains of the hotel; the hotel had been reclaimed by the jungle. Again, the will to power here is the jungle’s raw “desire” for expansion.1

There are some basic elements of this will to power which show its manifestation like upward mobility, Growth, and self-preservation, and by doing so, suffering is not evil, but rather, it is a necessary part which must be included, here we understand that Nietzsche’s view is a life-affirming one (Denneson)

For Nietzsche, we are creatures with animal instincts for aggression and cruelty, and to be nobler we should come across an inner struggle and self-examination, this is a punishment and it is called self-overcoming. (‘’BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL’’) . . . --do you want a name for this world? A solution for all its riddles? A light for you, too, you best-concealed, strongest, most intrepid, most midnightly men?--This world is the will to power--and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power--and nothing besides! (qtd in Williams 51)

After examining all the critics about the different interpretations of the will to power, Angel cooper found in her article2 that there are different interpretations of the will to power but the psychological one is the most compelling and it could defend the objections presented against it, while the metaphysical and the metaphorical could not do so. She thinks that the desire for power does not mean dominating others, imposing power over them or controlling them, but rather, it is for the inner growth of the individual, it is to better one’s own life, in his book The Genealogy of morals, Nietzsche says that the will to power is ‘’the strongest, most life-affirming drive’’(qtd in Nietzsche, Genealogy, III), it allows us to overcome ourselves through changing and growing, this will to power reshapes our lives, thus, we will not only achieve a goal, but we change an essential thing in ourselves.

The will to power is the fundamental human drive, some consider it as a tool to dominate others, while others think that it is a drive for self-actualization; the human being does not want only to survive, but also to grow, this is called self-mastery. (Jenkins 10), the will to power is stronger than the will to survive, the martyrs are able and ready to die for a cause if they link death to a greater power, this will to power can be achieved by using violence or physical dominance, but for Nietzsche, the will to power is for self-mastering more than for mastery over others, an Indian mystic is ready to face all kinds of physical deprivations for the sake of self-control and spiritual depth and he will get a power greater than the one got by a conquering barbarian. (‘’FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE’’)3 2 A1+)/ C223)4. D20-1%6-21, I1(-8-(7%/-6:, %1( M24%/ C,%25: N-)6;5',)=5 #-// 62 P29)4. "1()4+4%(7%6) R)8-)9, (2 1 ) 6, 6 -65.

According to Nietzsche, pleasure comes as a product of overcoming an obstacle, any kind of obstacle, a fear, an enemy, an exam or anything that face one’s way, so obstacles and pain are a must for the one who wants to be more powerful, and without them the process of achieving power would not be logical. (‘’Nietzsche – Will to Power’’)

Nietzsche’s will to power is not a will to life but a will to power, it is the drive for achievement and having a better position in life, but his sister used this in another way; it is said that Nietzsche did not prepare his book ‘The will to power’ for publication, and it is his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche who did so, she modified the book in a way to convince the reader that Nietzsche was in favor of breeding an ideal master race, and it was used by the Nazis to justify their cruel ideals of overpowering ‘’Mongrel races’’, they implied ‘The will to power’ as a reason for expansion over other countries and having control over them, it was used for the Nazi’s zeal of more territories.( Carter 07)

Nietzsche was not a fascist thinker, and it is only intended by his sister who did that as revenge against him, since his love for her waned because she destroyed his friendship with Lou Andreas-Salomé. (‘’ Nietzsche’s Sister‘’)

Frequently asked questions

What is the focus of this dissertation?

This dissertation offers a comparative analysis of Jack London's Martin Eden and James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man through the lens of Nietzschean philosophy.

What are the key themes explored in the analysis?

The key themes include the impact of Nietzsche's philosophy on early 20th-century literature, the portrayal of rebellious characters seeking liberation and authenticity, and the contrasting ways in which London and Joyce incorporate Nietzschean concepts into their novels.

Who are the central characters discussed, and how are they related to Nietzsche's philosophy?

The central characters are Martin Eden and Stephen Dedalus. The dissertation analyzes them as Nietzschean characters who challenge societal values and strive to create their own.

How does Jack London use Nietzsche's philosophy in Martin Eden?

Jack London utilizes a Nietzschean character to critique Nietzsche's philosophy, highlighting its potential for self-destruction.

How does James Joyce use Nietzsche's philosophy in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man?

James Joyce employs Nietzsche's philosophy in a more positive light, suggesting its role in Stephen Dedalus's development as a successful writer.

What is the context of the 19th-century intellectual landscape that influenced Nietzsche?

The 19th century was marked by significant changes, including the Industrial Revolution, scientific discoveries, and the rise of skepticism and atheism, all of which influenced Nietzsche's philosophical development.

What is the role of the Bildungsroman genre in the context of these novels?

Both Martin Eden and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man are Bildungsromans that reflect the changing social norms of the 20th century, portraying characters who isolate themselves from society and challenge conventional values.

What are the key concepts of Nietzsche's philosophy discussed?

The key concepts include the Will to Power, Master and Slave Moralities, and the Übermensch (Superman).

What is the "Will to Power" according to Nietzsche?

The Will to Power is described as a fundamental drive for growth, self-overcoming, and the affirmation of life, rather than a desire for dominance over others.

What are Slave and Master Moralities in Nietzsche's philosophy?

Nietzsche challenges traditional morality by contrasting master and slave moralities, where master morality values pride and nobility, while slave morality emphasizes kindness and humility.

Who was Friedrich Nietzsche?

Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher who challenged traditional philosophical and moral values.

Why did Nietzsche criticize Christianity?

Nietzsche criticized Christianity because he believed it promoted a "slave morality" that undermined individual strength and self-affirmation.

What are some of the main influences that led Nietzsche to write about the concepts and beliefs of the "Übermensch"?

Nietzsche was influenced by Darwin's theory of evolution, he lost his faith in religion and in the conventional norms, and his exposure to Freud's Psychoanalysis.

Why did Nietzsche criticize the philosophers?

Nietzsche criticized philosophers because he believed they wrote detailed theories and therefore did not write his philosophical ideas in aphorisms and put his ideas in single pages or paragraphs.