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Martin Eden (2019 Italian movie inspired by Jack London's eponymous novel) was originally a working-class individual operating on boats.

One day, he protected a boy from getting his ass handed by another man, to eventually be invited into the high bourgeoisie family of that young man as appreciation.

He then meets his sister, with whom he gradually falls in love. They correspond, and the family likes Martin and invites him to different events.

Martin originally left school early and was uneducated, as he had to support his family while working young. Elena's family supports the idea he should seek education.

He starts liking art, especially poems. Elena, who is also not insensitive to his charms, motivates him to become literate. Their romance eventually grows so that he overhears her mom, who warns her not to get involved further with Martin. Elena is supposed to marry one of her kind eventually.

He met Brissenden, who would eventually become his mentor, at one of the parties he was invited to. He grew fond of him because he was not like the usually fake-friendly, low-key, condescending people he met from this sphere he was dying to join.

His mentor eventually died, and as a tribute, when Martin was finally first published, the book was named after him. During his many failed attempts at getting a publisher, he met this widowed single mom he initially chatted with on the train who offered to shelter him as he was kicked out of his brother's in law home, who he hated, after a raw.

His passion for writing and reading drove him to quit his labourer job. As he taught himself to be literate, he saw that his writing improved, and he became even more productive. Nobody believed in him, and he lived off advances from the local grocery shop owner and the supportive single mom with whom he took shelter.

In the meantime, he was invited to Elena's family home for dinner and met this judge, who would eventually become Elena's future husband. This is where he called out the hypocrisy of the supposed free-market sponsoring Elena's dad and the judge were preaching by acting as hypocritical socialists. This is where the rift started. Although he wanted to be part of the happy few, Martin always lived up to his ideals. He did not want to pull down his pants, even rejecting offers from Elena's dad's network for a better job.

He did not want to be the bitch of anyone. This is where Elena takes the side of her family against the idealised love Martin thinks they have. This is where the reality of what his late mentor warned him about. Family economics in the high bourgeoisie primes over romance; this is how they protect their wealth.

He eventually decided to settle with the Brunette in the video (the one walking with the suitcases), who had a crush on him and whom he had previously bedded after a night. He even stole her from her existing boyfriend. Although he liked her somewhat, it was an acceptance of his social status that he could not overcome. He was settling, and he knew it.

One day, he received a letter from a publisher who said he was interested in his writings with an advance check, which enabled him to pay back all his debts. He eventually became a world-renowned influential writer.

He made sure to give some of the proceeds back to his working-class sister and provide a property for the thoughtful single mom who believed in him and wanted him back to live with her and her kids. Overall, he had a thoughtful and grateful attitude toward the people who were with him along the journey. Georges Orwell would call this the working class’s common decency.

The spoils of the finish line are not worth sharing with the opportunistic people hanging around at the end.

He hated what he eventually thought was his aspiration. When he became rich and famous, everybody wanted him, and he was disgusted by his situation.

The pinnacle was when Elena returned and said she had always loved him, admitting her mother wanted her to marry Martin instead of the judge she had previously been promised.

Although Martin had wished her to come back through all of these years as she was the source of his inspiration, he would also renege himself because she did not believe in him when he was in the gutter, and she only provided lip service.

When push came to shove, she folded. However, that realisation eventually pushed him further, bolstering him to reach new heights from his economic and emotional frustration of not being where he thought he ought to be. Elena lacked the principles he had. She did not follow or believe in him through her actions in his journey. The idealised view of love in a man is that irrespective of the challenging situation he finds himself in; it should triumph over the harsh reality of life for him to be vindicated in providing future security to the person to which he exposed his vulnerability. Nevertheless, he lived true to his principles, rewarding the ones who did and punishing the woman he wanted the most to be part of his life because of them.

He knew what it meant to be a man: living true to his principles, no matter how pleasing the outcome was not respecting. Without them, he would not have been able to see himself in the mirror. He would not have been able to respect himself, nor could she have in the future.

Going back with her would have been, at the same time, the way he could make peace with the social tragedy which inspired his books, but at the same time, an intellectual denial of what he grew to muster over the years.

Having been the benefactor of the people who supported him on his journey to success, he could not allow the person he still loved to access him when she was in the comfort of her own home when he struggled to grow out of his situation.

Despite his newfound money and stardom, he still remembered his origins. The window dressing of his current self did not take away his values and ethics of where he came from, which fostered the disdain surrounding his new life.

The love he thought would have completed him was only made an abomination by him not being appreciated for who he actually was but for what he represented himself to be. He valued genuine character from people, not opportunistic ones.

Elena showed the latter when she could have proven the former in the past. All of the love he finally received from the glory hunters was Fugazzi. Despite their history and the story he told himself throughout the years, it was only a shade he covered himself with, only to be disgusted by it when what he idealised came to fruition.

This was the last epiphany he needed to conclude that suicide was the only logical outcome to end the suffering caused by his excessive knowledge of the world, following the footsteps of his mentor Brissenden, who shot himself on his dying bed.

This last hope was his undoing, but when it became clear, it was just a story he had told himself.

By plunging himself deep into the ocean, he ceased to know what was causing his suffering.

Red Pill Revenge, whether it is through the wishing of ill will towards others or through a bettering of one situation on the hill of revenge from life, eventually leads, if uncontrolled, to the active end outcome of death.

The real lesson is to forgive others once you have succeeded, but don't forget. If the primary driver of your accomplishments is the impression your surroundings will have of you, you will be mostly disappointed.

You will only reach true satisfaction from the validation you seek from within that you outgrew your situation, not one where you finally get the external validation, no matter how intoxicating it can be. It is a Damocles Sword, which can equally be a king or a widow maker.

As Margaret Atwood wrote: "The desire to be loved is the last illusion: Give it up and you will be free".

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