review ✓ PDF, eBook or Kindle ePUB ´ Émile Zola

GerminalThe thirteenth novel in Émile Zola’s great Rougon Macuart seuence Germinal expresses outrage at the exploitation of the many by the few but also shows humanity’s capacity for compassion and hopeEtienne Lantier an unemployed railway worker is a clever b. Étienne Lantier Claude the painter's brother Nana the whore's brother Jacues the murderer's brother Gervaise the alcoholic's son I know this part of the Rougon Macuart family tree better than any other and each of the family members stands for a novel that sends a shiver down my spine of reading delight and sorrowful mourning over the human condition Germinal is a masterpiece in its own right but one can't help thinking of the social background of the young man wandering up the street in a French mining town in the beginning of the novel The tragic life experience he's already gathered being the son of Gervaise LantierCoupeau who drinks herself into delirium in the poor parts of Paris in L'Assommoir The Dram Shop whose daughter Nana ends up a prostitute whose other son Claude commits suicide when failing to deliver The Masterpiece he strives for whose third son is driven by murderous madness to commit unspeakable crimes Despite the family history Étienne Lantier is a decent man and a socially progressive thinker In the mining society he plunges into the life of a rising working class bound to the mine living under conditions that ultimately lead to strike and suffering The mine itself is a protagonist a scary modern monster swallowing human beings alive but spitting out most of them again marked for life by the Hades of profitability I spent some childhood years in a small community close to a famous copper mine in Sweden and one of the yearly school field trips led students down into the depth of the mine on a guided tour around the maze of former mining activity I will never forget the feeling of helpless panic when I first tried to imagine the unbearable heat close to the fires the pain in the bodies crawling into the narrow paths the physical exhaustion the lack of air the poisoned atmosphere the darkness the hunger Around the mine now part of UNESCO world heritage a small town grew with modern features such as health care and well organised administration But above all it was a living hell for the poor families trying to survive on minimum wages to fill the pockets of the owners who strove to rise on the social ladder Child labour is a crucial part of the story of Falu Rödfärg a product deriving directly from the mining business which eventually resulted in a strong national identification with the Swedish red wooden houses Whenever I see one of the many red houses in the neighbourhood I think of the paint that was produced as a by product of the copper mining and how it has become unconscious but lasting evidence of early Swedish industrialism to this daySo when I read Germinal for the first time I had a vivid real life experience to fall back upon to empathise with the characters When they went on strike found sole pleasure in promiscuity let anger take over their minds I KNEW why I still felt the cold dark mountain closing in on me I have been to the copper mine several times as a grown up taking students and my own children down into the underworld and now Zola's Étienne accompanies me every time and I relive the dramatic scenes over and over when he is trapped in the mine with Catherine Hardly imaginable that a love story could have an uglier darker setting but it remains one of my favourite scenes in world literatureAs for the social uestion despite its hopeful title Germinal doesn't solve anything The split between working masses and ownership is as wide as before when Étienne finally takes the road out of the small town again after a dramatic showdown Gaskell tried to find a solution in the engaging power of individuals linking the values of North and South in her masterpiece on social tension in England during the same era Nothing of the kind is offered the characters in Zola's novel and in a way that might make it a realistic attempt at showing the life conditions in 19th century industrial communities A true working class revolution according to Zola would fail because of the revolutionaries' inevitable transformation into oppressors should they happen to be successfulOui c'est votre idée à vous tous les ouvriers français déterrer un trésor pour le manger seul ensuite dans un coin d'égoïsme et de fainéantise Vous avez beau crier contre les riches le courage vous manue de rendre aux pauvres l'argent ue la fortune vous envoie Jamais vous ne serez dignes du bonheur tant ue vous aurez uelue chose à vous et ue votre haine des bourgeois viendra uniuement de votre besoin enragé d'être des bourgeois à leur placeThis mirrors Albert Camus' reflections on rebellion and revolution in human history L'homme révolté forever striving to take the role of his jailers thus producing new cries for justice which will end up dethroning him in an eternal violent movement As a description of 19th century life Germinal is unsurpassed in its earthly hell no need for a metaphysical one at all