Germinal - Emile Zola

...back to Paris. " Germinal is the rising of the employees, the blow of shoulder given to the company, which cracks: in a word, the fight of the capital and work. It is there that is the importance of the book; I want it to be predicting the future, carrying the question, which will be the most significant question of the 20th century. Thus, to establish this fight it is necessary I show on one hand the work, the coalminers of the mine, and on the ...
...and perhaps more dramatic?" (...) Germinal is a work of pity, and not a work of revolution. What I wanted, it is to shout to the happy people, the one who are the Masters: Take guard, look under ground, see these poor wretches who work and which suffers. It is perhaps still time to avoid the final catastrophes. But be quick to be right, otherwise here is the danger: the ground will open and the nations will be absorbed in one of the most appalling ...

alexandrapontecaille 13.09.2001 · Read full review
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Review of Germinal - Emile Zola

...The novel Germinal was published in 1885, but set in around 1860, and was part of set of twenty novels which was to trace the history of a family during this great change in French history. The novel starts with the main character of the book, Etienne, looking for work, and stumbling into a mining town. Through the eyes of Etienne, we see how the miners and their families live, and their daily struggles to survive. Zola does not paint a pretty picture ...
...openly their sexual lives, which must have shocked the middle class readers of the time. The miners come over as crude, poorly educated and in many ways not much better than animals. Zola sees this as an effected of the society they live in, but also to their genetic makeup. That the new science of genetic was making a breakthrough at this time and Zola was interested in this area, and it runs throughout the novel. Just over a hundred years later, ...

oldgoth 21.07.2003 · Read full review
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Review of Germinal - Emile Zola

...themselves violent and amoral. Germinal becomes somewhat of a hero and leads the workers revolt against their conditions. The protest however gets out of hand and though he is the one trying to calm things he ultimately gets the blame. In the words of Thomas Hobbes life there is 'nasty, brutish and short'. People live from day to day often unsure of when or where the next meal might come. The behaviour between the sexes is quite ribald, with affairs ...
...as a makeshift banner. Germinal is revolted by the violence and the author seems to be trying to put across the message that while conditions may be bad for the working classes you can't trust them to usher in an immediate utopia. It is perhaps an admonition to Marxist utopianism. If the dictatorship of the proletariat is as bad as this is it worth having? It is an enjoyable read, though the violence and degradation may make you whince at times. ...

oclumhain 28.02.2001 · Read full review
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Review of Germinal - Emile Zola