Germinal

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1885

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Part 1, Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary

Of all the members of his team, Maheu has the toughest job: He works at the top, in the highest heat, with no air or room to move and with a constant stream of water tormenting him. Zacharie is concerned about cracks in the supports; Maheu says if it falls, they’d survive, as they have before.

Catherine teaches Étienne about the work. Étienne struggles to prevent his tub from getting stuck as he pushes it, and swears with frustration; Catherine, laughing, lifts it with her back and hips, amazing and humbling him. They go together to dispatch their tubs, ensuring they attach a token that will identify it as belonging to their team. The pit-boys, no more than teenagers, talk raucously with each other. La Mouquette is often the subject of their jokes. Chaval teases and insults Étienne, who declines to respond, not wanting to jeopardize his job and “ready to acquiesce in the brutal hierarchy of the skilled and the unskilled worker” (45).

The team stops for lunch. Catherine realizes Étienne has no food and offers to share hers; Étienne, though famished and shaking, refuses, but she insists. She asks him why he left his job, and his answer stuns her: He was fired for hitting his boss. He explains he had been drinking and that he becomes angry when he drinks. He drifts off into a dark reverie about alcoholism and his poor mother in Paris, who likely will starve now that his pay won’t allow him to send her money.

Catherine shares her coffee with him, and he considers that, despite his original impressions, she is attractive, with a “strange charm” (48). He is surprised how, at 15, though evidently a virgin, she knows everything “about the ways of men and women” (49) and can tell stories of Mouquette with no embarrassment. They talk about how she does not have a boyfriend. Étienne has the urge to kiss her, but before he has the chance, Chaval, who has been watching jealously, forces a kiss upon her. Étienne is dismayed at missing his chance, and Catherine, attracted to him, worries over his changed mood. Desirous “of showing him kindness” (50), she shows him something of interest in the mine until they are called back to work by her father.

Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary

The team grumbles when they hit loose earth, claiming the Company wants to bury them alive. They joke about the Company, but Maheu and Levaque quiet them lest an informer be nearby. At that moment, Paul Négrel, engineer at Voreux and nephew of the manager Hennebeau, and the overman Dansaert arrive. Négrel is angry when he sees the poor condition of the timbering; ordering them to strengthen it, he reprimands them for caring more about producing tubs than saving their own lives and asserts that if they die, the Company will have to pay. Maheu states they could build better timbering if they received more compensation. Négrel says he is fining the team and threatens to reduce their pay to make up for the timbering. As they leave, Dansaert chastises the group for getting him in trouble and threatens to fine them, as well. The team, unwilling to appear insubordinate, say nothing. Étienne is livid, wondering how they work in these hellish conditions without even being able to feed themselves.

Maheu is furious and tells the team the Company just wants to pay them less. The team shores up the timbering as told, and Maheu instructs them to leave early. As he walks through the mine with Catherine, Étienne is irritated, thinking Chaval is her boyfriend and that she lied about not having one. Catherine, sensing his anger, helps him navigate the path.

They reach the pit-bottom and learn they have arrived too early. Maheu asks Pierron, the banksman, to let them up, but Pierron is nervous about getting in trouble. When the cold bothers Étienne, Catherine brings him to the stables, where they find La Mouquette. Her father Mouque, who cares for the horses, yells at them for bringing a man there. Catherine pets Battle, the horse Jeanlin leads and which has been working there for 10 years without having seen the sun. A terrified young horse named Trumpet is brought down for the first time. Battle approaches Trumpet and whinnies both in welcome and in sadness, remembering the “long-forgotten smell of sun-drenched grass” and lamenting “the sight of yet another prisoner who would never return to the surface alive” (61).

Workers, wet and cold, assemble for the ascent. Chaval and Levaque tell them about Négrel’s threat, and “the spirit of rebellion” (62) grows. Richomme, the deputy, implores Maheu to quiet them. Everyone stops talking when Négrel and Dansaert pass and go first into the cage.

Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary

Étienne decides not to return to the mine: “He might as well die straight away as go back down that hell-hole and not even earn enough to live on” (63). As an educated man, he does not have the “herd-like sense of resignation” (63) of the others. Chaval discovers the rejection of two of their tubs for not containing the regulation amount and for being dirty. He blames Étienne, but Maheu reminds him it was his first day. At Catherine’s suggestion, Maheu tells Étienne he will try to help him buy some things on credit. Étienne, embarrassed to say he isn’t coming back, accepts; he then feels guilty seeing Catherine’s excitement.

Maheu invites Étienne to join him in a small public house that, to the dismay of the Company, sits between the mine and the miners’ village. Rasseneur, who had been a good worker at the mine until he was fired for striking and being “the leader of the malcontents” (68), owns the little property. Opening the public house “was an act of provocation towards the Company” and enables him “to cash in on the anger he had been gradually inciting in the hearts of his erstwhile comrades” (68). Maheu asks Rasseneur if he can let him a room. Rasseneur, suspicious, says his rooms are taken. Étienne is “surprised to feel disappointed at the prospect of leaving” (68).

Maheu and Rasseneur, conscious of Étienne’s presence, cautiously talk about the fight over the timbering. Rasseneur says “things could not go on like this” (69). He alludes to the closing factories and talks about how much bread he gives away. His wife, “much more radical than her husband” (69), joins them. Étienne is “increasingly excited by all this talk of poverty and revenge” (69). He gains their trust when it’s discovered they have a mutual friend, a mechanic named Pluchart who is interested in their cause. Rasseneur rents Étienne a room and gives him supplies on credit.

Maheu leaves, and Étienne debates whether to stay or to be his “own boss” (70). He dislikes the thought of going back into the pit, where he was “treated like some animal that can be blinded and crushed” (71). He looks about at the land and, thinking of Catherine, the desire “to suffer and to struggle,” and the “sated deity to whom ten thousand starving men and women day daily offered up their flesh” (72), decides to stay.

Part 1, Chapters 4-6 Analysis

These chapters offer a detailed glimpse into the Company, which is so elusive and powerful the people do not even know for whom they work. Négrel, who scolds Maheu for failing to erect adequate timbering, represents this power. He tells him that if they all die, “it’s not you that’s going to have to answer for the consequences” but the Company, which will “have to fork out for pensions” (54) for their wives. The Company is established as purely mercenary, uncaring of its workers except as far as their production helps the bottom line. Zola’s description of the Maheu team, so “covered in black grime” that they are “indistinguishable” (45) from the coal that surrounds them, reinforces the commodification of the workers. That “Company” is always capitalized further shows it to be an abstract, all-powerful “deity” (72)—unknowable, but awe-inspiring for its strength by those beneath it. The frequent refrain whispered among workers that “[w]alls have ears” (52) suggests not only the fear in which the people live but also the omnipotent nature of the Company, which is in all places at once.

These chapters depict the nightmarish conditions the workers endure. The physical discomfort of the job is felt most profoundly by Maheu, who works in high temperatures with “no circulation of air” (39) and a constant stream of water tormenting him. Workers must crawl through tight spaces. Their skin is scraped and bleeding, and between the drastic changes in temperature and the wetness they are prone to coughing and pneumonia. Catherine has “been prevented from maturing into full womanhood by the poor air and state of exhaustion in which she habitually lived” (49). The workers are, in many ways, like the horses who do their jobs mechanically, mere yoked animals who, “buried like moles beneath the crushing weight of the earth […] simply went on tapping” (51). New batches of “human insects” (67) continue, throughout the day and night, for the pit to devour.

The workers are similarly like the horses in their obedience to the Company. Catherine is “astonished” to hear that Étienne hit his boss, for “it offended her own inbred belief that one should be subordinate and do what one’s told” (46). Étienne notices that she works “without complaint, with the indifference of habit, as if it was everyone’s wretched lot to live like this beneath the yoke” (43). Despite the team’s fury with Négrel’s threat to deduct the price of timbering from their pay, “their sense of hierarchy held them in check” (54). In this way, the people are dehumanized not only in that the Company sees them as faceless and expendable: They are animal-like in their unthinking acceptance of their inferiority, of the system that oppresses them, and of the miserable conditions of their lives.

However, readers see the seeds of rebellion quietly sowed in these chapters. Even the compliant Maheu complains to his team that charging for timbering is “just another way of paying us less” (56). In response to Négrel’s reprimands, Étienne is “outraged” (54), burning with “the spirit of resistance” and wondering whether it was “possible that people could work themselves to death at such terrible labour […] and still not earn even enough for their daily bread” (55). Inspired by the “wind of revolt” (72) he senses in Rasseneur, and eager to fight for workers’ rights, Étienne decides to continue working in the mine.

These chapters are also notable for their characterization of Catherine, who in the darkness of the pit emerges as a source of cheerfulness and light. Although Étienne himself “suffered all manner of cuts and bruises” (42), Catherine works quickly and dexterously. Catherine laughs good-naturedly when Étienne’s tub goes off the rails; she easily fixes it, impressing and humbling him with the strength she holds in her thin body. Despite her hunger, she insists on sharing her meal when she discovers he is going without, and after the confrontation with Négrel, she heartily continues working, annoying the others with her “zeal” (56). Her kindness and positivity charm even the cynical Étienne, who considers her in his decision to remain at the mine. However, her resigned acquiescence to the Company’s cruelty troubles him.