Achieve the impossible

“Achieve the impossible” is Martin Eden’s declaration of resolve when Ruth Morse questions how writers can succeed if, as he has argued, the doors are closed against them. The phrase turns a bleak account of literary barriers into a personal vow: Martin will attempt what ordinary chances seem to rule out, even as he asks Ruth to trust their love rather than his prospects alone.

The Phrase in the Argument

Ruth points to the contradiction in Martin’s position: if all the doors are closed, how did great writers ever arrive? Martin answers that they did so by achieving the impossible. He describes their success as a miracle and a thousand-to-one wager, won through blazing work that burned away opposition. The phrase therefore does not mean that obstacles are imaginary; it names the extraordinary labor Martin believes is needed to overcome them.

Martin makes the idea personal with the words, “I must achieve the impossible.” The shift from writers in general to himself converts an argument about literary history into a commitment. Ruth has challenged the logic of his account, but Martin responds by treating exceptional effort as the means through which a writer can refuse to be kept down.

Love, Risk, and the Alternative

Ruth asks what will happen if Martin fails and insists that he consider her as well. Martin initially regards failure as almost unthinkable, then offers a facetious fallback: he could become an editor, and she would be an editor’s wife. Her frown registers her disapproval of the joke; he puts his arm around her and kisses it away. The exchange sets the grand claim beside a practical contingency, while showing that their shared future is part of the stakes of his ambition.

In a later appeal, Martin says he knows what he has in him and believes he will succeed, but he does not ask Ruth to have faith in his writing. He asks her to love him and have faith in love. He recalls that she once told him he must serve an apprenticeship to writing, and insists he has served it, compressed into a short span by his effort and hope of reaching her. His vow thus belongs to both a literary ambition and a courtship: he imagines success as the end of arduous preparation and as the point at which their future can begin.

The Cost of the Vow

Martin’s account of that apprenticeship gives the phrase a bodily cost. He says he has forgotten how to fall peacefully asleep, sets an alarm clock as one of his last conscious acts, and fights drowsiness by changing from a heavy book to a lighter one and striking his head with his knuckles. He describes using a spur to keep himself awake until an appointed hour, and says that five and a half hours of sleep has become an extravagance while he now sleeps four. At times, he is light-headed from lack of sleep and death, with its rest, seems a lure.

The contrast sharpens the meaning of the declaration. “Achieve the impossible” is not presented as effortless confidence: Martin’s conviction rests on an apprenticeship he describes as relentless and exhausting. The scene leaves the promise at the level of resolve, placing the hoped-for literary success beside the immediate physical price of pursuing it.