During the second half of the 19th century, France experienced two great events: the transition from the First Industrial Revolution to the second and the end of the Second Empire followed by the beginning of the Third Republic in the 1870s. During this transition and the last moment of the corrupt Second Empire, the mine owners, who constituted the upper class, heavily exploited the working class. By cutting their wages and firing them, most of whom had worked in the mines for generations, the mine owners wanted to survive in the increasingly competitive environment of the mining industries. While it was true that the economic outlook was bleak, the mine owners still lived a life of luxury and continued to take advantage of poor miners for the survival of their industries. As a result, the working class was deprived of its economic power and class struggle and conflict intensified. Under the influence of ideologies such as communism and American socialism, however, they began to rebel and form unions, which were violently repressed. For example, in 1871 the Paris Commune, the first communist revolt in history, was bloodily repressed, resulting in over 20,000 deaths. The extreme hardships experienced by the working class, or proletariat, contributed to the growth of realism and naturalism, realms of art and literature dedicated to depicting the lives of those poor people as they are. Among these artists and authors, Zola was one of the most influential. To call for justice for the proletariat and warn the capitalists of the bloody consequences of their excessive exploitation, Zola writes Germinal, which naturalistically describes the unjust hardships they experienced. Naturalism is a scientific attitude in the pursuit of art and literature, and Zola's passion for it stems from his earliest memories. We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Born in 1840 Zola lived a relatively adequate life with his parents. However, seven years later his father, a skilled engineer, died with an unfinished project in Aix, the countryside where they lived. However, Zola loved the countryside and developed feelings for it. In addition to the good time he spent there, he was constantly exposed to the miseries of his communities after he and his family moved to the slum inhabited by the poor proletariats, who were unfairly taken advantage of by their employees. However, it is because of this experience that Zola feels compassion for them and seeks their justice. In 1858, Zola followed his mother to Paris and continued his studies, which he never completed, but four years later he got a job at the Hachette publication. Initially he worked as an art critic. As he became more familiar with the world of art, he was deeply attracted to Jules Bastien-Lepage, a French painter known for his almost photographic works with realistic detail. Those characteristics, in fact, were naturalistic and inspired Zola to realize that the greatest works that reveal people's lives remain true to reality. Furthermore, his meeting with the philosopher and literary historian Hippolyte Taine led him to a deeper understanding of Naturalism. Taine believes that “vice and virtue are products like vitriol and sugar.” In other words, he thinks there are material causes for every social phenomenon or human behavior. Taking this idea to heart, Zola creates characters formed by all external forces such as hereditary characteristics, environmental conditions, and historical context. Zola defines this idea as “the absence of the soul”, which becomes the core of naturalism. To write in a waynaturalistic, Zola had to engage deeply in the lives of those he was writing about. Following them and investigating them was one of the most used methods to learn about their lives. Not only that, he also had to meticulously record their lives so that the resulting books contained truthful details, which were naturalistic necessities. In 1868, using the naturalistic method, Zola began the creation of the Rougon-Macquart series, which Zola himself refers to as “the natural and social history of a family in the time of the Second Empire”. The entire series includes twenty novels, in which the main characters share the same names but appear in different settings, and Germinal is the thirteenth of them. To ensure that Germinal reflected the reality of miners' lives, Zola applied naturalism to it, from the construction of the book to the various details. On February 5, 1884, three days later, the strike took place at the Anzin mine. Zola went there himself. There he observed the workers and recorded their lives that revolved around the mine. During his visit, he went down into the mine to observe people working tirelessly in shaded tunnels, so small that a man could only pass on his hands and knees on the ground and so small that people could barely get out in case of an accident. . . Not only that, the dripping well, the flammable gas and other details that indicate the dangers faced by the miners; Zola recorded all these characteristics of the mines and inserted them into Germinal. Furthermore, it also includes details that made the mines a place of suffering, such as the unbearable heat that forces people to work naked. In addition to investigating the pits, he also visited the taverns and even the houses where the workers lived, which allowed him to write the shocking scene in which Catherine, the female protagonist and daughter of an ordinary mining family, takes a shower in the kitchen. while his whole family ate lunch. In addition to the daily scenes of the life of the miners, Zola also studied their food closely. In Germinal the workers are always short of food and what they eat is often only vermicelli, the thinnest type of pasta, dissolved in water. Depending on their economic capacity, the liquid can be thin or thick. The details about the working and living conditions of the miners could go on and on, which shows that Zola carried out a thorough inspection when he went to the Anzin mine. Returning from the North, Zola was ready to write Germinal, the first book that describes the life of the proletariat in the modern context and reveals the injustices they suffer. The story begins with the mechanic Etienne Lantier who is fired and looks for work in Montsou. He soon begins his work and lives with Toussaint Maheu who introduces him to the mine. The experience he lives is not easy: Mr. Hennebeau lowers the miners' wages, preventing the entire Maheu family from affording food, and his young son becomes disabled due to a collapse caused by unstable timber that the mining company rejects. pay to fix. The company makes its workers miserable by exploiting them while company members indulge in excessive clothing and food. Furthermore, the grocery store owner Maigrat, related to the mining company, also takes advantage of the workers: he keeps food prices high to force women to sleep with him in exchange for food. Those who hold power over the poor proletariats continue to destroy their economic income, which places them in subordinate positions and forces them into submission. Toussaint, for example, is an honest, hard-working miner who has worked for the mining company all his life. As a result, although Etienne asks him several times to consider striking, he refuses; Andonly when his son becomes unable to work, directly caused by the company's parsimony, that he decides to remain at Etienne's side. It seems the time is ripe for workers to walk away and demand higher wages. However, life becomes harder after the strike. In addition to the thinnest porridge, sugar and coffee also become a luxury. Mining is the only option for people to make an income. Without the mine they can hardly survive and the company knows it. Therefore, by employing Belgians instead, the mining company successfully threatens the striking miners. So, once again, the people are powerless and the mining industry wins. In this conflict, people have only one way to survive, but they give it up in the hope of forcing their dependents to provide them with better conditions; however, the company has multiple solutions to the workers' strike. Germinal ruthlessly exposes this apparent injustice, accusing capitalists of exploitation. Proving and accusing the wrong is not Germinal's only purpose; it is also a display of violence, resulting from the undeserved treatment of workers. Exploited for so long, the workers use intense violence to make their anger known. With their axes and sticks they march through the city to the bakery, where the women execute Maigrat and remove his penis. Even in the film, this scene is raw. Furthermore, the harmless father of Toussaint Bonnemort –– who starts working in this mine at the age of eight and still works, who is now suffering from diseases such as black lung and therefore weak and weak –– strangles the rich daughter of the company to death. Finally, after the company hands over the work to the Belgians, the unarmed miners go to the mine to protest. As tensions rise, violence occurs again with miners throwing stones at the army guarding the mine. The result is indeed more depressing: Toussaint Bonnemort is shot dead. Even after so many deaths, however, Zola continues. In the end, half of the Bonnemort family dies, and all the deaths occurred precisely because of the strike, which is directly caused by the injustice of the treatment of workers. However, the level of violence in Germinal is just a speck of dust compared to what happened in the Paris Commune. In fact, the story of Germinal takes place before the Commune, and Zola wrote the book nearly fifteen years later to warn contemporary capitalists that the same bloodshed would happen again if they continued to exploit their workers. Indeed, at the time Zola composed Germinal, the conditions of the workers, especially the miners, did not seem to be any better. Statistics show that one in five workers went on strike, and half of them were miners, who were ten percent likely to retire with a disability. Furthermore, subsequent research confirmed that approximately 150,000 people in France died each year due to consumption. Therefore, the workers' situation should be the last to be ignored, but the corporate appetite continued to grow: capitalism in France was gradually transforming from liberal to monopolistic. Many smaller companies have had to shed workers to barely survive, which has only made them even angrier. Therefore, Germinal, a story exclusively about a strike that occurs before and ultimately leads to the Paris Commune, is a warning to Zola's capitalist readers, who still remembered the tragic event and probably never wanted it to happen again. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get a custom essay To conclude, Germinal is a.