Germinal is a novel written by a French writer named Emile Zola. The book was written between 1884-1885 and completed and published in March 1885 and was later set 20 years after it was written. The book is culturally and politically set as it tells a tale of poverty stricken miners and their harsh working conditions as well as the workers strike and crying out for socialism. The setting takes place in a small mining town called Montsou in the north of France. Zola presents a powerful and authentic look into the tragedy riddled lives of miners in Montsou who are forced to endure harsh conditions, risk their lives by working from before dawn and after disk just to put some food on the table. The men and women in Germinal only had one option for mining, starvation; it was either they work or starves to death.
Germinal has a host of characters with Etienne Lantier being the main character. Etienne arrived at the cold mine in search for a job after being sacked from his previous job. He was willing to do anything just to make money and earn a living to avoid starving to death. He is portrayed as a hardworking idealist who later became the miner’s leader during the revolution. Etienne faces issues of social justice, socialism, relationships and human nature just like other main characters in the book. Zola creates a diverse and great community with all conceivable characters with only a few who can stand on their own. There were mining men and women, managers, Parisian visitors, wealth owners and revolutionaries who included anarchists and strikers. Moreover, Zola includes retirees, bar owners, whorish daughters and abusive husbands in his novel to make it a complete community of all kinds of people. The wealth owners oppressed the miners by forcing them to be submissive to their orders “restrained by the force of hierarchical authority, that military command structure which ran from the lads at the incline right up to the over man, keeping everyone subservient to the person above him” (Zola 78).
Zola spends considerable time writing about the detailed and miserable daily lives of the miners. He talks of how they are underpaid and subjected to fines. Young children are forced to work in pits under horrendous conditions with the hopes of earning pension at the age of 60 and to help their parents put food on the table. Furthermore, children are seen as assets by their parents as they contribute in putting food on the table. Some families even prostitute their wives and daughters in exchange of food from the shop owner. The rich lived a better life on the land while they oppressed the poor without caring “the bourgeois had been living on the fat of the land, and so greedily that they didn’t leave even the plates to lick” (Zola 45). The miners criticized capitalism by striking and destroying the mine in order to fight for their rights and improve their living conditions. The bourgeois lived a good life supported by capitalism while the miners live a miserable life full of poverty.
The most interesting and pivotal character in the novel is anarchist Souvarine. He believed that a peaceful strike could not solve their problems and it was meaningless and only damage could work. He also believed that there is no need for negotiations with the bourgeois as it was pointless too. Souvarine argued that everything has to be destroyed since the bourgeois system could not be reformed so destruction was the best solution for their plight. This is seen through his argument “We must destroy everything, or hunger will spring up again. Yes! Anarchy, and end to everything, the earth bathed in blood and purified by fire .. Then we’ll have another think” (Zola 115). He opted for destruction so as to build everything afresh.
Zola’s novel Germinal is a great book and a page turner as it explores the plight of the poor in a mining town. It is a struggle between the bourgeois and the poor with a host of characters one can never miss out to read about them. It is culturally and politically set, nevertheless it is humanized by heartbreaking poverty of the miners.
Work Cited
Zola, Emile. Germinal. France: Chapentier Press, 1885. Print.
