Marcher vs Eden

[Knox]

To me, The Beast in the Jungle is infinitely scarier than The Turn of the Screw and still has me looking over my shoulder (figuratively, of course) decades after I first read it. We can all become Marcher, the poster child for regretting what one didn't do in one's life as opposed to regretting what one did. He stared down the personal demons in his life, unaware that by doing so he was playing into their hands.

Anyone bowled over by The Beast in the Jungle should also read Jack London's Martin Eden, written around the same time. Both stories are amazingly and uncannily similar, though the protagonists have opposite and/or complementary approaches to life -- generally, passive vs active.