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Germinal

The novel Germinal is about winning justice for workers who existed in conditions a little better than slavery. The novel begins in March of 1866. Late March early April together forms the revolutionary month called "Germinal" the month of germination. Germinal symbolizes the springtime of the social revolution, and it was the calendar used during the French revolution. Germinal is the month in which plants first begin to sprout from the ground. The image of this sprouting plant life is used throughout the novel particularly at the end to symbolize the increasing consciousness of the workers as they realize the reasons of their suffering and organize to do something about them.

The novel displays a constant conflict between the wealthy mine owners and the poor mine workers. Zola makes it a point to compare the differences between the workers and the owners. Such as the Gregoires who don't work but acquire everything and are wealthy, and the Maheu's who work and have nothing to show for it. The majority of the conflict is seen through the eyes of the miners who struggle with everything from starvation to death to strikes and revolts. Zola himself states that the subject of Germinal is the revolt of the workers, the nudge given to society, which for a moment cracks, in a word the struggle between capital and labor.

The story begins in 1866 with Etienne, a young man, who will later lead the miners in a strike. Etienne is an out of work engineman he somewhat educated, but is so desperate to make money and eat that he is willing to do almost anything. He does find work in the Le Voreux mine. He too is now forced to endure the terrible conditions, risk death, and work form dawn until after dusk. Etienne soon got the feel of how the miners were permanently hungry, and living horrible lives in overcrowded houses, which were often diseased through terrible working conditions. Montsou is the town in which the story takes place. The name means "mountain of pennies" and suggests a large number of people clustered tightly together. Montsou is a company town, it is just a mass of crowded together bars and houses that the company provided the miners with. The miners were scarcely educated and knew no other life. Their main escape was in sex and alcohol, that management had provided to keep them permanently stuptified into thinking they had it good. The workers were never able to accumulate anything; they had neither the energy, money nor the organization to do so. They couldn't afford enough money to escape form the company demands. They live in company-controlled housing and really have no basis for independence. They do backbreaking work to earn their living and expect their children to do the same. We can see examples of this in the novel when La Maheude states that one reason for having children is so that they can work and bring more money to the family. The wages were fixed by the "iron law". The iron law set them at the lowest sum possible, just allowing them to eat bread and of course reproduce. "Empty stomachs keep the balance steady". They are in a sense trapped having only one alternative to mining, and that is starvation.

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The miners are responsible for shoring up the shafts with timber, but are not paid extra for this work, so every moment spent timbering comes out of their own pockets. The miners prefer to dig coal, but as conditions worsen and become hazardous the company fears that that the mine will collapse, so they propose a scheme in which timbering will be paid for separately. The result is smaller wages. At hearing this Etienne organizes a strike. At first the strike was peaceful, and was fairly successful in continuing, but they began to lack the sense of community they started with. The strike was beginning to change people. Months went by and the strike still remained. In January Etienne was still urging them to continue the strike. Eventually the miner's frustration turns to violence, which really didn't further there cause much. During all of this Etienne was speaking with Pluchart, who is an organizer for the Communist International Working Men's Association. It tried to organize laborers from many countries into a single movement to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism. Etienne talked the miners into joining, but soon the funds were exhausted and the International collapsed. Everything around the miners goes from bad to worse. No money, no food there is nothing left for them to do but to go back down into the mines, which they eventually do.

Even though the outcome of the uprising was a failure, at the end Etienne looks onward to the future sensing more revolts and the eventual victory of the working class. "Men were springing up a black, avenging army was slowly germinating in the furrows, sprouting for the harvests of the coming century". They have planted the seeds of change for future generations, so there is a sign of hope. The novel ends just as it begins, in the month of Germinal. "Out of death could spring life, just as a lifeless seed could grow into a new plant". And that is why that after all the miners went through they were still not defeated.

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