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Germinal (Les Rougon-Macquart #13)

by Emile Zola, Roger Pearson (Translator, Introduction)

3.97 · rating details · 4,039 ratings · 265 reviews

The thirteenth novel in Émile Zola’s great Rougon-Macquart sequence, Germinal expresses outrage at the exploitation of the many by the few, but also shows humanity’s capacity for compassion and hope.

Etienne Lantier, an unemployed railway worker, is a clever but uneducated young man with a dangerous temper. Forced to take a back-breaking job at Le Voreux mine w...more

Mass Market Paperbound, 592 pages

Published May 25th 2004 by Penguin Books (first published 1885)

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Community Reviews

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Aug 31, 2009

Jason rated it

Felt like reading a Naturlist, and I remembered Zola. Germinal was the only Zola novel on the library shelf, and I chose it merely in deferrence to the author. Little did I know that many critics believe Germinal is one of the 10 best French novels ever written.

I like stories where people are ground down by nature--poverty, weather, work conditions, hunger--and the lower economic demographic is forced to suffer and survive. The Industrial Revolution offered so many ways to catal...more

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May 28, 2008

Aaron rated it

Germinal is Zola's supposed masterpiece chronicling a miner's strike in a French coal-mining town. I expected a thoroughly depressing book, and that's what I got.

I had a couple of issues with the book. First of all, the main characters felt very flat. There wasn't much to interest you in them, especially the main character, Etienne. The most interesting characters Souvarine, Bonnemort, Jeanlin, Deneulin, get reduced to bit roles and instead you're just left with fragments of ...more

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Dec 12, 2008

Graham rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: 19th-century, classics, literature

GERMINAL - what can I say? I studied this book at university and my whole degree course was worth the time and effort just for introducing me to the author. GERMINAL now stands as my favourite book of all time, an intense masterpiece of fiction.

The basic storyline is a miner's strike. It doesn't sound too good or too detailed, but it's all here: politics, chaos, social realism, a love story, an action story, heroes and villains, the good and the bad. Yes, it is melodramatic, but I gu...more

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Oct 29, 2011

MJ Nicholls rated it

Shelves: je-suis-désolé, novels, voluminous

This novel is about as grim and horrendous as literature gets. Instead of ranting about the history of human suffering at various pitches of bowel-plopping rage, let me take a more facetious route. Let me instead discuss various mining experiences lived out on the Sega Mega Drive. Remember Mega Bomberman? Those who do will remember the mine level.

description

This level was pivotal in the game, since here a remote-controlled power-up was available which was crucial for facing down the...moreThis novel is about as grim and horrendous as literature gets. Instead of ranting about the history of human suffering at various pitches of bowel-plopping rage, let me take a more facetious route. Let me instead discuss various mining experiences lived out on the Sega Mega Drive. Remember Mega Bomberman? Those who do will remember the mine level.

description

This level was pivotal in the game, since here a remote-controlled power-up was available which was crucial for facing down the final boss, whose beardy metamorphoses proved impossible without both a back-up life and a self-detonator. The problem was using the detonator hastily, as an ill-timed whack of the C button would invariably blow up the hero, who had a hard enough time dodging bombs. The mining level itself involved negotiating the terrain on a little blue cart and threats from crazed red baddies, stumbling around the scorching hellhole with startled eyes, running into bombs like kamikaze hearts.

description

Then there was Lava Reef Zone, on Sonic & Knuckles. The presence of fire and darkness usually indicated the impending doom of Robotnik and his enormous egg-shaped earth-conquering moustachiopod. Since the introduction of fire-proof TVs, leaping onto scorching lava wasn’t a great concern for Sonic. This level involved spinning down into an underground mine, where giant crushers and ledges threatened his pretty blue head.

description

And there was Scrap Brain Zone. A factory filled with trap-flaps, flame pipes and crushers, its backdrop a bleak brown silhouette of chimneys and skyscrapers. The foes being caterpillars who died by careful bops to the head and little bomb-men in metal helmets who blew up when you ran past. The challenges were all mechanical—spinning ledges, squishing ledges, vanishing ledges. A holy wine cup with black grapes shooting electricity from both sides, razors looming over sluggish conveyor belts. Some of the most terrifying moments of my childhood happened on this level. Fact.

But about Germinal? Imagine the amount of times Sonic gets crushed by gamers the world over, then transfer that to human lives, and you have the sorry state of 1800s French mining. For more info read my forthcoming book Zola the Hedgehog: When Rocks Fall On Top of People.(less)

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Sep 03, 2007

Rob rated it

Shelves: college

See also: my review of Cousin Bette.

An assigned reading for a college class. My "classics" digestion enzyme was not being secreted. I failed to appreciate it.

A classic? Perhaps. A masterful depiction of its era? Perhaps. At all enjoyable? Not by me and certainly not at the time.

And once again: it seems there are so many positive reviews of the text that I ought re-visit it. (We'll see...)

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Jan 22, 2012

Leftbanker rated it

Shelves: novels, all-time-favorites

Moi, je vois autrement. Je n’ai guère de souci et de beauté et de perfection. Je me moque des grands siècles. Je n’ai souci que de vie, de lutte, de fièvre. -Émile Zola

Zola is the supreme novelist, at least how I interpret that vocation. Like Dickens, Zola went out and studied France and her people for inspiration while Proust sat in a cork-lined room and dreamed up all of his stories in his head. I'll take journalism over the human imagination any day. Germinal is the essence of thi...moreMoi, je vois autrement. Je n’ai guère de souci et de beauté et de perfection. Je me moque des grands siècles. Je n’ai souci que de vie, de lutte, de fièvre. -Émile Zola

Zola is the supreme novelist, at least how I interpret that vocation. Like Dickens, Zola went out and studied France and her people for inspiration while Proust sat in a cork-lined room and dreamed up all of his stories in his head. I'll take journalism over the human imagination any day. Germinal is the essence of this style of writing. I like how Zola doesn't romanticize the life of the miners as he shows the terrible conditions of their work. I love how Zola trained his eye on an aspect of his society that desperately needed change and tried to effect that change. One of the culminations of this new power of the pen was his activism in the Dreyfuss Affair.

I don't have much use for the other school of novelist represented by Proust. This seems to be the one followed by so much of the current literary output in America. Whenever I read a synopsis of a novel by one of the most favored American writers and the story deals with either a writer or a university professor, my eyes roll back in my head so hard I almost fall over backwards. I'm talking about Bellow, Irving, Updike, Cheever, Roth, Carol Oates, to name a few of these types who can't seem to be bothered to leave their university jobs and cocktail parties to find something worth writing about. Instead, they obsess over the little lives of intellectuals—sort of like Woody Allen and his childish fixation with relationships. Go out and learn something new.

They always say that you should write about what you know. The problem is most of these writers don't know much. Their knowledge of politics and economics is embarrassing. Do some homework before writing and stop relying on your tired imagination. When I read something I can almost always tell if the author is a university professor. They almost all have the same lifeless style. They only write for other academics.

I am working hard this year to improve my French so that I can read this classic in the original.(less)

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Jul 19, 2007

William rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: Erin, Katy

In 1871, Zola began a 20 volume series called Les Rougon-Macquart of which Germinal is the 13th, written in 1885. The series chronicles the life of one extended family in a tale that explores the class structure in France during the Second Empire. While he surveys the society from top to bottom, he is also weaves in the influence of environment and heredity on position and behavior. Its an incredible series, and as each novel is its own character study, between the first and the last books, you...more

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Nov 24, 2011

Ensiform rated it

Shelves: fiction, french

Translated by Havelock Ellis. This 480-page monster is a novel about the exploitation of poor workers by the idle bourgeoisie. The plot was well-crafted, and the characters were well-rounded and realistic: some workers were bastards, some of the “masters” kind-hearted --- although totally naive about the condition of their workers. There was perhaps too much purple prose, but the scenes of destruction (as when the strikers cut the elevator wires in one pit, and the workers inside 700 ladders ...more

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Jan 04, 2009

Mandy rated it

I learnt a lot from reading this book about what it is like to live a miner's life underground. About the hard work that goes into mining especially in the olden days. How hard it would be to live underground and the darkness that oppresses people and the continual struggle to meet daily mining quota just to eat. The worry that you could be killed by a rockfall at any moment and the perpetual fear for your life in one way or the other. The extreme poverty and destitution that comes with bein...more

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Oct 02, 2011

Peter rated it

"Gripping tale of a coal mine strike in 1860s France. Somewhat political, which to be honest, wasn't the biggest draw for me. However, the tale is humanized by heartbreaking poverty of the miners. Led by idealistic, naive Etienne Lantier, and enwidened by his interactions with the endlessly put upon Maheu family, and in particular their lovely daughter Catherine, who shares an ill-fated affair with Etienne. The rest of the town and management and their families are beautifully realized ...more

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Sep 25, 2011

Mary added it · review of another edition

Working conditions in an 1866 French coal mine:
"The four hewers had just taken up position, stretched out at different levels one above the other and covering the entire height of the coal-face. Wooden planks, secured by hooks, stopped the coal from falling after they had cut it, and between these planks each man occupied a space of about four metres along the seam. This particular seam was so thin, barely fifty centimetres at this point, that they found themselves virtually crushed b...moreWorking conditions in an 1866 French coal mine:
"The four hewers had just taken up position, stretched out at different levels one above the other and covering the entire height of the coal-face. Wooden planks, secured by hooks, stopped the coal from falling after they had cut it, and between these planks each man occupied a space of about four metres along the seam. This particular seam was so thin, barely fifty centimetres at this point, that they found themselves virtually crushed between roof and wall; they had to drag themselves forward on their elbows and knees and were quite unable to turn round without banging their shoulders. In order to get at the coal they had to lie on one side, twist their necks, and use both arms in order to raise their rivelaine, a short-handled pick, which they wielded at an angle.
"Zacharie was at the bottom; then came Levaque and Chaval above him, and finally Maheu at the very top. Each man hacked into the shale bedrock, digging it out with his pick. Then he would make two vertical cuts in the coal, insert an iron wedge into the space above, and prise out a lump. The coal was soft, and the lump would break into pieces which then rolled down over his stomach and legs. Once these pieces had piled up against the boards put there to retain them, the hewers disappeared from view, immured in their narrow cleft.
"Maheu had the worst of it. Up at the top the temperature reached thirty-five degrees; there was no circulation of air, and the suffocating atmosphere was potentially fatal. In order to see what he was doing he had to hang his lamp from a nail, just by his head; and the continued heat of the lamp on his skull eventually raised his body temperature to fever level. But it was the wetness that made life particularly difficult. The rock above him, just a few centimetres from his face, was streaming with water, and large drops of it would keep falling in regular, rapid succession, always landing with stubborn insistence on exactly the same spot. Try as he might to twist his neck or bend his head back, they splattered remorselessly against his face and burst. After a quarter of an hour he would be soaked through, and with his body also bathed in sweat he steamed like a wash-tub. That particular morning a drop of water was continually hitting him in the eye, and it made him curse. He didn't want to stop hewing, and as he continued to hack fiercely at the rock, his body shook violently in the narrow space, like a greenfly caught between the leaves of a book and about to be squashed completely flat.
"Not a word was exchanged. Everyone was tapping away, and all that could be heard was the irregular clunk-clunk of the picks, which seemed to come from far away. There were no echoes in this airless place, and sounds were more like a dull rasping. The darkness itself seemed to consist of an unfamiliar blackness that was thick with flying coal-dust and filled with gases that made the eyelids heavy. The wicks in the lamps were no more than reddish pinpricks of light beneath their gauze mantles. One could see almost nothing, and the coal-face simply rose into a pitch-black void, like a broad, flat, sloping chimney piled high with the soot of a dozen winters. Ghostly shapes moved about in it, and chance gleams of light picked out the curve of a hip, or a sinewy arm, or a wild-looking face blackened as though in readiness for a crime. From time to time, lumps of coal would gleam in the darkness as they came away, suddenly illuminated - a flat surface here, a sharp edge there - by the glint of light on crystal. Then it would all be dark again, and apart from the loud thudding of the picks all that could be heard were gasping lungs and the occasional groan of discomfort and fatigue caused by the thick air and the water raining down from the underground springs."
Kindle location 1359-87(less)

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Aug 25, 2011

Jim Neeley rated it

"I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don't care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity. I am at ease in my generation.", (from My Hates, Emile Zola 1866)

It was an unnerving coincidence that I started reading this epic novel of a French mine disaster and labor strike as the events at Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, which resulted in the loss of 29 lives. The story is long gone from the media, but reading the book I kept...more

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Sep 07, 2010

Aiko rated it

Germinal is the one story that made me feel all emotion. It accounts the general unfairness of the world with the separation of people into classes—conventionally the bourgeoisie or the masters, and the serfs and the slaves--and details on the conflicts between them. It also suggests ways upon which such a system could be abolished—presenting many socialist theories, mainly anarchy. In the end, though the capitalists remained victor, since the poor had so much more to lose, the book still gives...moreGerminal is the one story that made me feel all emotion. It accounts the general unfairness of the world with the separation of people into classes—conventionally the bourgeoisie or the masters, and the serfs and the slaves--and details on the conflicts between them. It also suggests ways upon which such a system could be abolished—presenting many socialist theories, mainly anarchy. In the end, though the capitalists remained victor, since the poor had so much more to lose, the book still gives off a sort of optimism—as it is spring at the time, and hosts a rising tide of a force that would soon surely ‘crack the earth asunder’. The poor have stepped back for now, starved and beaten after dismal months of staging a strike and inciting havoc in the community and the papers, but they refuse to remain the oppressed, and would in the future surely be saved by [another] revolution (seen as the ‘real’ one).

Germinal was most certainly tragic, but one has a lot to learn from it. At one point I’d find myself shaking with mirth, and then with anger and rage the next. My heart went out to the characters, especially to Alzire, at whose death I found myself with tears. I pitied the miners and hated them the same and was especially exasperated by Etienne—oh I do blame him for all that misfortune! And I liked the personality of Maheude as she seemed logical most of the time. When she was seized by bloodlust and ran around like a madman, just as the others, I failed to find this aggravating (as surely I would have and did with the others)—I saw it as simply as the need to release the pent-up emotions that have stocked on for long; she just could not contain it any longer. Catherine only irked me, for her ‘inherited ideas of subordination and passive obedience’ was outlandish (the girls were generally this way, and ‘planted’ with babies even as kids themselves). She was always ready to submit to her man, Chaval, with the simple logic that she was his, as he was the first to claim her.

The poor:

People were, as they have for a long time, held in check by the strength of the hierarchy—the military system which held them down, from pit-boy to overman, by putting each in the power of another. This explains why the Gregoires, one of the owners of the Montsou Mining Company, remained passive and unruffled by the strike, the strikers having a provident fund (though it was a petty one at the time of the strikeand at less than three thousand francs, failed to hold for long) and them joining the International and running all around the province making sure the strike was made general, as they were sure that the old system would remain the same. ‘Oh, I’m sure there is no real malice in them. When they have had a good shout they’ll go home with a better appetite for supper!’ Leon Gregoire only commented even he was trapped in the Hennebeau’s alongside the others, with an enraged thousand scores of people protesting outside. And the bosses seemed to be held in high regard by the miners, even with their detestable situation. There generally are decent people in all walks of life (Maheude said in a discussion with Etienne), and this included the bosses. The bosses were charitable and almost paternal and their one failing was the refusal to see how capitalism was killing off men for generations. They were even held in awe for ‘which the managing director inspired in his ten thousand employees’.

‘I’m all for calmness, it’s the only way of getting along, but in the end they drive you mad.’ Maheu, incensed, had exclaimed. With the coming along of Etienne though, things seemed to change.

Etienne has not been formally educated and he kept his insecurities at bay with the acknowledgement of the need for study. He was a self-professed leader of the miners who he managed to make believe in their ability to overthrow the old system which has gone on for more than a century. ‘When you want everything at once, you end up with nothing’, Rasseneur, jealous of the former’s popularity, told him. It was unfortunate that Etienne was carried along with the perks of being a leader and started to see himself as more than the people he was surrounded with, and not just one of them. His leading of the miners to fighting back was tainted by his ambitions and the hunger to be looked up to (the organization International achieved not much for this very reason). Souvarine (the destructive freak responsible for the destruction of Le Voyeux and the death of Catherine and 13 more others) has proposed in a hypothesis that even after the old system gets abolished, traces of the old system would just carry on naturally, and there again would eventually be a distinction between the rich and the hardworking, and the poor and the lazy. He therefore proposes complete anarchy, a view which coincides with one of Monsieur Hennebeau’s, ‘nonexistence as a way to happiness’.

The man was seen as the master in the house. A woman who was already married at the beginning of the novel was named with the female version of her husband’s surname (In French, everything was either masculine or feminine. There was no such thing as an ‘it’—seen as neuter in English). Maheude, despite her own strong character and obviously important role in the novel, was expected to submit to her husband’s whims—she stood there assisting him even as he ate. She also was expected to produce miracles to continually feed the family, as the hard-earned pay from work hardly sufficed for a family of 10.

Most women were seen as tarts, and picked up their first babies even when they were children themselves (Catherine had her first intercourse before puberty). As for the lack of resources and money to involve themselves in any other than work and the hard job to keep alive, sex and gossip stood to be the only forms of entertainment. An established family was often a big one.

Children, at the age of eight, or nine or ten, were expected to bring back to the family that has provided for them in their first years as useless good-for-nothing infants. When Catherine had run off to work at Jean-Bart with Chaval, Maheu, her father, defeated, simply threw his arms up in resignation, was not new to children setting off early, leaving their parents destitute.

There was a sharp contrast between the way of living of the poor, and the rich: highlighted off by Zola in his comparing the Maheus and the Gregoires. While the Maheu toiled underground in risks of killing themselves, they were often hungry—as they earned less than what’s needed to keep decent meals. They were immersed in credit, at Maigrat’s. The Gregoires meanwhile had not the need for work and stayed at home with earnings of forty thousand francs per year. Monsieur Gregoire was sure that even with this Catherine’s children’s children would keep living in luxury.

It also seemed that most people were not extreme believers, and had no inkling for deep faith in god, especially the poor. They had started to lose hope and thought that god was no more. Maheude exclaimed, ‘Surely we are finished!’ The proposition of a happier life in the next world was only laughed at.

Summing it up, Germinal was a great book--one to learn many things from. Although it almost drove me mad (I often found myself wanting to just rip and tear off the pages), it is one that I recommend that everyone should read. At times crude, moving, and always astonishing, it's a crucial eye-opener.
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Aug 18, 2011

Moon 佛月球 Будда Луны rated it

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∝δ∝δ∝δ∝δ∝•THE CLAMOR FOR SOCIAL EQUITY•∝δ∝δ∝δ∝δ∝

Germinal refers to the season of spring, the time of renewal when the seed of life starts to sprout again from the ground, germinating hope after the long dormancy of winter.

Émile Zola symbolically refers to this spring of hope as the wretched lives of the coal miners, amidst the sour inflictions of deprivation, leading to their depraved lives, slowly awaken from their long years of passive obedience, allowing them to see a...more

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Feb 12, 2011

Angie rated it

Mid Feb: Finished last night and this book is exactly what I love in a novel: international and depressing. If you like books about other countries where your favorite characters live miserable lives and then die, this book is for you. The writing was excellent, the mines described adequately but not in agonizing detail, and the characters, though there were MANY, were well developed. Zola really captured the small town dynamic. I didn't like that there were two actual murders that were no...more

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Nov 16, 2011

Paul Sheckarski rated it

At this point in his career Zola had achieved a mastery of voice, and leaps from vicious criticism of the bourgeois to: sympathetic inhabitation of Monsieur Hennebeau's quiet, desperate life; celebration of Deneulin's heroism & courage; and exposals of the mob's ugly & illogical whims. Furthermore, Zola writes within each of these voices either tinged with irony or straight-faced, as the moment calls for it. This has undoubtedly led many readers to think of Zola as a mere ideologue. Though it is...more

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Jun 16, 2008

Petra X rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: People who like literature, who like socially-relevant stories and delight in a good, long book.

Shelves: fiction

Part of the 20-vol Rougon-Marquart cycle. All the books are good and very differerent, but Nana stands out as being as relevant now as then, as in any time in fact. The girl with the pretty face and no moral problem about capitalising it becomes the most-highly paid courtesan in Paris but looks don't last.

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Feb 21, 2011

Venus rated it

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Shelves: novel

ژرمینال[Germinal] رمانی از امیل زولا(1)(1840-1902)، نویسندهی فرانسوی، که در 1885 منتشر شد. این سیزدهمین کتاب از دورهی خانوادهی روگون ماکار، یکی از مشهورترین آثار نویسنده است. زولا خود چنین اظهار میدارد که ماجرا بر سر یک اعتصاب است، «قیام حقوق بگیران و فشار به جامعهای که یک لحظه از هم میپاشد و، در یک کلام، مبارزهی سرمایه و کار. اهمیت کتاب در این است، و میخواهم که ناظر بر آینده باشد و مسئلهای را مطرح کند که مهمترین مسئله قرن بیستم خواهد بود

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Sep 21, 2011

Kingfan30 rated it

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Shelves: 1001-books, adaptions, telegraph-novels

I was initially surprised to find my self enjoying it to start with, the descriptions of the mines, the poverty all seemed very real. When the strike finally happened it all got very political and I found myself a bit bored, the descriptions of speeches and riots seemed to go on for pages. The side I held my interest more was when it returned back to how the families were coping with no money coming in, the fact that could take clothes and stuffing from a mattress to a shop and get money for it ...more

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Feb 06, 2010

Jean rated it

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In GERMINAL, Zola carried me deep into the unfamiliar world of French coalminers circa 1860. Here is a story of people trying to do the right thing, trying to justify that what they are already doing is right, and sometimes getting swept away--even to the point of violence--in the name of Right. It is a world where sex is animalistic and associated more with death than life; where the frilly, well-fed rich blind themselves to the humanity of the poor; where, among the starving workers, loyalty a...more

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Mar 30, 2011

Leonard rated it

Shelves: literature-french

The wobbly cages descending into the pit, miners half-naked toiling in the scorching darkness of the mine’s galleries, the veins bursting and flooding the passages, the meager wages the miners receive at the end of the day, the wives desperately scouring for gruel each meal, the parents giving their daughters to the grocer to get flour and sugar; all recounted in a calmly detached voice.

Etienne, a vagrant worker, joined the fraternity and dissatisfied with the inhuman daily drudges ...more

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Nov 28, 2008

Sabrina1984 rated it

Shelves: literature

"Es waren wohl Liebesleute, die Lippe auf Lippe dahinwandelten, für ihn ein gewohnter Anblick. Mädchen und junge Männer, die sich das einzige Vergnügen gönnten, das nichts kostete. Und diese Verblendeten, die das einzige Glück, das es gab, das Glück der Liebe, in vollen Zügen genießen konnten, sie beklagten sich über das Leben! Gerne hätte er gehungert wie sie, wenn er das Leben von neuem hätte beginnen können mit einer Frau, die sich ihm mit der Vollkraft ihres Herzens schenkte! Für sein U...more

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Feb 21, 2011

Emily rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: read-for-school, favorites

What to say? This was without question the most depressing book I've ever read. It just kept getting worse. I cried. But it was so powerful, that idea of the workers trudging day after day, a mute herd, trying to break free of it, the power of a mob turning things into chaos, crisis after crisis, then... back to the mines. I'm not sure yet of Zola's political stance; one thing I'm sure of, he doesn't think that any sudden rebellion or Souvarine's anarchy is going to work. He's too much of a rati...more

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Apr 22, 2010

Emily added it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2010

When I noticed, over on the Classics Circuit blog, that the April tours would focus on French Alexandre Dumas and Emile Zola, it seemed like a great opportunity to continue with my pledge to read more literature in French, and expose myself to the father of French naturalism, whose work I had never read. What better starting point than his acknowledged masterpiece, the tale of a harrowing coal-mining strike in the Normandy of the 1860s?

When my edition of Germinal arrived in the ma...more

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Sep 14, 2011

lyell bark rated it

i'm glad that in the 21st the industrialized aspects of capitalism have been nicely abstracted and put at a geographic remove becasue it sounds really unpleasant, good thing i can sit around and play videogames and be alienated from everything these days instead of going into a mine or whatever.

also it's cool at french novelists from at least rabeleis on down to houellebecq throw the "f" word and the "c" word all over the place and have scenes of mass copulation, al...more

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Feb 05, 2010

F.R. rated it

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This is the very definition of a book that’s easier to admire than love.

I appreciated how brilliantly evocative it was and how keen the narrator’s eye is in making sure no detail of these character’s lives is missed. It’s brilliantly written. However it’s a long book with few light moments, which meant picking it up and reading it was occasionally daunting. It is all very well to write a book about the agony of work, but it shouldn’t be work to actually read up. That said, the drama ...more

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Jun 30, 2009

Helynne rated it

Emile Zola, is THE naturalist novelist of France. Naturalism means that he probes the most unpleasant, dificult and sometimes disgusting aspects of French society in the mid- to late 19th century. In his long, intertwined series of novels on various members of the Rougon-Marquart families, Zola analyzes the long-term effects of mental discrubances on one family and alcoholism on the other. As an aside, Zola was a courageous humanitarian as seen in his stand against anti-semitism and his defen...moreEmile Zola, is THE naturalist novelist of France. Naturalism means that he probes the most unpleasant, dificult and sometimes disgusting aspects of French society in the mid- to late 19th century. In his long, intertwined series of novels on various members of the Rougon-Marquart families, Zola analyzes the long-term effects of mental discrubances on one family and alcoholism on the other. As an aside, Zola was a courageous humanitarian as seen in his stand against anti-semitism and his defense of unjustly accused and imprisoned French Army colonel Alfred Dreyfuss, c. 1895-1906. In the vein of Stendhal and Flaubert, Zola is not the easiest writer to read in the original French. I have to admit to cheating a little and reading both Germinal and Nana in English translation. However, thanks to a skilled translator, Zola's crisp, smooth style, rich in detail and humanitarian emotions, comes through beautifully. The title of this novel--Germinal--comes from the short-lived (about 1793-99) French Revolutionary calendar, and refers to a few weeks in spring--i.e., the month of germination. The germination in this novel is a metaphor for the new, yet untested, concept of the labor union as a way for workers to lobby for better wages and working conditions. Wages and conditions are dreadful for the coal miners of northern central France in the 1860s. DUring a period of unprecedented propsperity under Napoleon III's Second Empire, the miners and their families are barely thriving on bits of food and sbustandard lodging. The powers-that-be ignore their demands for increased wages because, after all, the company provides them with free (dilapidated) lodgings. Furthermore, the miners, who work long hours underground, in dirty, dangerous conditions, are paid by the amount of coal they hew out of the mines each day. They also must do their own timbering, that is, shore up the mine caverns, with lumber to make them safer. But good timbering takes time and that means less time to hew, less coal, and less money, so the miners tend to do a hurried job of timbering so they can get to the coal, and hurried timbering means a potentially dnagerous mine . . . and you can see where this is going in terms of cave-ins, injuries, and deaths. Into this milieu comes an optimistic young newcomer, Etienne (this novel's representatvie of Zola's Rougon-Marquart family) who proposes an organization of solidarity to help the miners improve their conditions. But such unions take preparation--months or years of saving up funds to tide workers opver during long strikes and other contingencies. These miners have noo such preparetion and when the strike begins, they literally begin to starve. The other usual consequences--scabs, crime, violence, illiness,--all add up to tragedy and a high body count that is relentless. Zola, nonetheless, manages to suffuse such inhuman conditions with a beatuiful sense of humanityh as seen through the members of the Maheu family, who are victims iin so manyh tragic ways, they remain loving and surprisingly normal. The novel is in no way upbeat, but it certainly makes its point about povery, injustice, and out-of-control capitalism as well as the glaring gap between the haves and the have-nots. The film version, starring Gerard Depardieu and Miou-Miou as Maheu his wife is amazing, and although somewhat truncated from the original novel, does beautiful cinemagraphic justice to a literary masterpiece.(less)

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Dec 13, 2008

Dan rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: 2008

i wanted a big, every-strata-of-the-social-sphere type thing to dive into recently, and this was it! totally panoramic from beginning to end, and inquisitive enough to make up for its occasionally thin character development.

the story concerns a labor strike in the coal mines of northern france towards the end of the 19th century. it's grim and explicit (LOTS of sex and violence... i was shocked!), but carries a surprisingly level head about its politics. some of the characters are es...more

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Jun 01, 2009

Kate rated it

Although I found this book pretty captivating, I think I probably felt differently about the characters than I was expected to. Etienne in the end strikes me as heartless, narcissistic, and some other word that I can't think of right now that basically means "ambitious to the point of using those close to him in order to get to where he wants to be." I don't know if it was supposed to be ironic that he yearned to be just like the bourgeois that he was fighting, and pontificated about...more

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Oct 09, 2010

Heather rated it

Shelves: 2010, classic-literature, fiction

I am so glad to be done with this book! It is a French novel about oppressed coal miners in the 1800s who band together under the leadership of a newcomer with budding socialist and communistic ideals to strike against the mining company. Nothing good happens and I just couldn't get into all the revolutionary monologue. Plus the translation I read was not very well done, so it made for hard reading. Perhaps I would have liked it more with a better translation.

There was a passage ...more

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“Blow the candle out, I don't need to see what my thoughts look like.” — 23 people liked it

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Germinal (Les Rougon-Macquart #13)

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