Emile Zola-- Germinal

[amale]

After reading Germinal I was left with a few questions:

1. How is Zola's character of Etienne Lantier a paradigmatic representation of the ideals and conflicts outlined in the works of Rousseau, Marx, Nietzsche and Baudelaire?

2. In what ways was Etienne's conduct among the miners an enactment of Rousseau's ethics of reciprocity?

3. How did Etienne's inner conflicts (between ideals and desires) represent the larger problems of modernity and its discontents as addressed in Rousseau, Marx, Nietzsche and Baudelaire?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Interesting questions, but this is the wrong forum; I think this needs to be moved to Literature and films.

[bayano]

I read Germinal recently, one of those books on my reading list 15 years ago that I just finally got around to. I'm surprised there's not more talk about it on the board, but rather than start a new thread. It's a good book, and I hope I'm not projecting based on what I'd heard before reading it, but there was a great degree of theory on Zola's part arguing that the characters had genetic traits that they could not shake off. As hopeful as it seems to be about the possible class struggle for socialism (despite clear defeats of each type of socialist politics that gets personified in the book), it also clearly demonstrates a view that people of different classes have different traits in their bloodlines that predispose them to behaviors befitting their class, an anti-socialist and eugenicist of a field of thought.

beyond that, though, zola is dealing with the radical politics of his day, so the anarchist is more a nihilist, the old miner would be sort of a kautskyite conciliatory socialist, and entienne is mixed, but the marxist. and pluchart is sort of a socialist careerist. the workers, on the other hand, were depicted in typical jacobin mob fashion, though im not saying it wasnt partly accurate. still, a stirring book with a decent degree of the mechanics of organizing in its day.