Characteristic American novels of the period – Stephen Crane´s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, Jack London´s Martin Eden, and later Theodore Dreiser´s An American tragedy depict the damage of economic forces and alienation on the weak or vulnerable individual. Survivors, like Twain´s Huck Finn endure through inner strength involving kindness, flexibility, and, above all, individuality.
JACK LONDON (1876 – 1916):
A poor, self-taught worker from California, the naturalist Jack London was catapulted from poverty to fame by his first collection of stories The Son of the Wolf, set largely in the Klondike region of Alaska and the Canadian Yukon. Other of his best-sellers, including The Call of the Wild and The Sea-Wolf made him the highest paid writer in the United States of his time.
The autobiographical novel Martin Eden depicts the inner stress of the American dream as London experienced them during his meteoric rise from obscure poverty to wealth and fame. Eden, an impoverished but intelligent and hard working sailor and laborer, is determined to become a writer. Eventually his writing makes him rich and well-known but Eden realises that the woman he loves cares only for his money and fame. His despair over her inability to love causes him to lose faith in human nature. He also suffers from class alienation, for he no longer belongs to the working class, while he rejects the materialistic values of the wealthy whom he worked hard to join. He sails for the South Pacific and commits suicide by jumping into the sea. Like many of the best novels of its time, Martin Eden is an unsuccess story. It looks ahead to F.Scott Fitzgerald´s The Great Gatsby in its revelation of despair amid great wealth.

Sixth chapter – modernism and experimentation.

In the postwar Big Boom business flourished, and the successful prospered beyond their wildest dreams. For the first time, many Americans enrolled in higher education – in the 1920s college enrollment doubled. The middleclass prospered; Americans began to enjoy the world´s highest national average income in this era, and many people purchased the ultimate status symbol – an automobile. Western youths were rebelling, angry and disillusioned with the savage war, the older generation they held responsible, and difficult postwar economic conditions that, ironically allowed Americans with dollars to live abroad handsomely on very little money. Intellectual currents, particularly Freudian psychology and to a lesser extent Marxism implied a godless world view and contributed to the breakdown of traditional values.