Germinal
Emile Zola's portrayal of French mine workers, beaten down by poverty and lead by an outsider to rebel in a Marxian vein.
For those of you who don't have any background about Germinal, it's the thirteenth in a series of twenty books by Zola called the "Rougon-Maquart" sequence, which he wrote intending to scientifically follow the effects of heretidy and environment on one family. His ideas of heredity were highly influenced by Darwin, but are much more extreme than what is generally accepted by today's standards, as he saw the genes as being physiological determinants, to which humans had no choice but to submit. Zola considers himself a scientist of the human state.
The protagonist of this novel, Etienne, has an ancestry fraught with madness and murderous tendencies. He manages this hereditary trait to some extent, but Zola presents him as being in a constant struggle against his genetic predispositions. In Germinal, the question of heredity, while still important, is veiled under an overriding theme of bourgoisie v. proletariat, where Etienne is the instigator of a mining strike.
As Etienne is encouraging his mates in "Village Two Hundred and Forty" to strike, the topic of the church comes up, with the mother (Maheude) of Etienne's adopted family maintaining that they must live as the priests tell them, and they shall be rich in the next life. Etienne responds:
There's a lot of silly ideas for you. Why do you need a God and a paradise to be happy? Can't you make your own happiness in this world?
And can't you? Why always look to the afterlife? This is what frustrates me about a lot of the religious doctrines. There are so many little tricks they use to get around it, but what it comes down to is: this life sucks, the next life is better, but you're stuck here til (the gracious and loving) God lets you out of this pathetic existence.
Make your own happiness in this world, friends.
Posted by Wern0113 at July 12, 2004 12:46 PM