Germinal

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1885

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Part 7, Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 7, Chapter 1 Summary

News of the conflict at Le Voreux reaches Paris. Levaque, still a prisoner, is considered a hero. Three Board members go to Montsou to inform the people that they intend to fire the Belgian workers and remove the gendarmes from the mines. The Company aims “to take the heat out of the situation,” thinking it best not “to acknowledge their powerlessness” (444). The Company posts notices inviting people to resume work. Only a dozen workers, including Pierron, return; the rest feel “[i]t was all a bit fishy” (445).

Since Maheu’s death, La Maheude has not spoken. She allows Étienne to bring Catherine home and is surprised to find that Catherine has her first period. La Maheude laments that now Catherine can “make babies for gendarmes to slaughter in their turn” (445). Étienne lives once again with the Maheus, frightened of the darkness of Réquillart. La Maheude wishes death would take them all.

One day Étienne finds La Maheude yelling at Catherine, who wants to go back to work. La Maheude refuses to let the Company “kill the father and then go on exploiting the children just like before” (447). Étienne is heartbroken for La Maheude and also for the loss of his ambitions. La Maheude accuses Étienne of bringing this suffering upon them, telling him she would “have died of shame long ago for having brought so much harm on my friends” (449).

When Étienne goes for a walk, miners accost him; they yell at him and pelt him with bricks. He is disgusted “by their primitiveness,” seeing them as “little better than dumb animals” (450). At Rasseneur’s invitation, Étienne takes refuge in the Advantage and listens with fury as Rasseneur tells the people they should have listened to him. The people cheer him. Étienne is annoyed that they blame him, as they took their violence much further than he wanted. When Rasseneur goes back inside, he and Étienne have a drink together.

The Grégoires are having a party to celebrate Cécile and Négrel’s engagement. The partygoers, including M. Hennebeau, who is to be appointed Officer in the Legion of Honour, are also celebrating the Company’s victory and lamenting that the people “had had to be taught a lesson” (454). They are also pleased to learn of Father Ranvier’s transfer.

Deneulin has agreed to sell Vandame. His concession “sounded the death-knell for the small, private company,” for “the insatiable ogre of capital” (455) cannot be stopped. Their celebration at his expense hurts him. M. Grégoire tells him that if he had kept his share in Montsou, he would also be able to live a life of comfort.

Part 7, Chapter 2 Summary

Étienne takes a walk along the canal and is surprised to see Souvarine. Étienne asks if Souvarine has heard of a successful meeting Pluchart had in Paris; Souvarine says he hates “silver-tongued” (456) politicians. The two men argue over Darwin, who Étienne recently studied: Étienne sees “revolution in terms of the struggle for survival,” whereas Souvarine believes natural selection “might as well be the philosophy of an aristocrat” (457). Étienne wonders if new orders that wipe out old societies “would slowly be corrupted by the same injustices” (457). Souvarine, offended by the idea of “everlasting poverty,” replies that people will have to kill each other “until the last human being had been exterminated” (457).

Souvarine has an uncharacteristically candid moment in which he explains that in Russia, they planned to blow up the Tsar’s train but destroyed a civilian train instead. In the mayhem, officers apprehended his girlfriend. Souvarine watched the execution, and the two locked eyes until she died. He believes “[h]eroes will be born out of the blood she shed” (458) and that it left him with no ties so he will have an easier time sacrificing people’s lives.

When Étienne asks Souvarine what he thinks of the notices put up by the Company, Souvarine says the people will return to work because they are cowards. Étienne says he will never reenter Le Voreux but that he does not blame those who do. Étienne mentions a rumor that lack of maintenance in Le Voreux has resulted in damage to the tubbing. Souvarine confirms that this is so.

Eventually Étienne says he is going to bed, and Souvarine tells him he is leaving for good. Étienne is sad that they will never see each other again. As Étienne goes to the village, Souvarine sneaks into the shaft of Le Voreux, where he finds the damage to the tubbing. Risking his own death, he exacerbates the damage to kill Le Voreux, “with its ever-gaping maw that had devoured so much human fodder” (463). Having “wounded” the pit “in its belly” (463), he returns to the surface to wait.

At the Maheus’, Catherine rises to go to work. Étienne insists on joining her, and they sneak out together. Souvarine, watching miners enter the pit, is unnerved to see Étienne. He orders him return home. However, he lets him go when he sees Catherine, believing that “[o]nce a woman had got under a man’s skin, he was done for, he might as well die” (467).

Part 7, Chapter 3 Summary

At Le Voreux, Chaval harasses Catherine. As they descend into the pit, damage is apparent by the water pouring from the shaft. At the bottom, Chaval ensures he is on Catherine and Étienne’s team working in the most remote part of the mine. When they learn everyone has fled, they drop their tools and run toward the pit bottom as water quickly rises. Étienne is sure the tubbing has burst.

Pierron tries to tell Dansaert he was concerned about water leaking in the shaft, but Dansaert does take him seriously. At the pit bottom, water comes down in sluices, and pieces of tubbing fall on those below. Dansaert gives the order to abandon the mine. Miners shove each other to get into the cages, but one cage is too damaged. Falling debris strikes and kills several men. At first, Dansaert insists Pierron, as an onsetter (one who manages the cages), wait to leave until all the men are out. However, as conditions grow worse, Dansaert and Pierron climb into a cage and ascend.

Étienne’s team is terrified to see the cage leaving. The shaft is now fully blocked. Realizing there is no hope for escape, they scream at the bottom of the shaft. Négrel is angry that Dansaert left with workers still down there. People rush from the villages demanding to know who is trapped, but it is impossible to determine.

Négrel goes to inspect the damage. He has the men lower him into the pit in a tub and is horrified by the extent of the damage. He can hear people screaming and is devastated when he sees the blocked shaft. He then notices that the tubbing has been deliberately damaged. The “awestruck dread of evil” (476) chills his blood. As he ascends, he sees that the pit is beginning to cave.

At the surface, deeply shaken, he pulls Hennebeau aside and tells him someone has deliberately sabotaged the tubbing. Stunned, he and Hennebeau are almost unable to believe it.

Thousands of people gather around, including La Maheude; Zacharie is sobbing over Catherine. Five men emerge from the old pit at Réquillart and inform the crowd that the floods have trapped others. For hours, people wait for the pit to collapse. Suddenly, tremors shake the ground, and buildings surrounding the pit are “swallowed up in a kind of whirlpool” (482). Fissures appear from Rasseneur’s pub to the canal, which floods the pit until “where once Le Voreux had been, there now lay an expanse of muddy water” (483). Souvarine stands and walks away.

Part 7, Chapters 1-3 Analysis

Étienne feels lost as his careful self-education and planning have not brought his dreams to fruition. Shunned by the people, a pain made worse by the fact that their loyalty has switched back to his political nemesis Rasseneur, Étienne is “irritated by their primitiveness and the lack of intelligence” (451). He tries to use reason to appeal to them, using his “old speeches, which had previously been so warmly acclaimed” (451), but to no avail; his pleas are ignored, suggesting once again Étienne’s inability to predict events not on the pages of his books. Étienne leaves the scene feeling his “comrades little better than dumb animals” (450), and “his more refined tastes” make him yearn for “membership of a higher class” (454). Throughout the novel, as he rises in both knowledge and status, Étienne becomes more disturbed about the people’s ignorance and submission. While his sympathies do not lie with the bourgeois, he is increasingly envious of their lifestyle.

However, Étienne’s study of Darwin marks a turning point in his educational journey. Although his understanding is rudimentary, he is drawn to the idea that revolution is a “struggle for survival, with the have-nots eating the haves, a strong people devouring a worn-out bourgeoisie” (457). Étienne demonstrates growth in thinking in that he is able to transfer Darwin’s teachings about the animal world—in his On the Origin of Species, English biologist Charles Darwin argues that the strongest, most adaptable species survive—to political theory. Étienne wonders if there is a risk “that the new order” that replaced the bourgeoisie “would slowly be corrupted by the same injustices” (457). Although Étienne has not yet worked out his theory, he is not daunted by Souvarine’s argument that a Darwinian approach to revolution would mean “everlasting poverty” and that human beings must be “exterminated” (457) for justice to be achieved. For the first time, Étienne stands firm against Souvarine, insisting the idea is worth exploring.

Although Souvarine appears dismissive of the strike, his sabotaging Le Voreux demonstrates that he is invested in the success of the strike, despite his evident nonchalance. He is as disappointed with the failure of the French miners’ revolution as he is with the revolution back in Russia. Souvarine frequently espouses the belief that for justice to prevail, destruction will need to occur, even at the expense of people’s lives. He avoids human connections that hamper his commitment to violence. Without hope in the strikes’ success, Souvarine makes good on his promise to destroy to enable a new order. It is notable that, despite his affected indifference to Étienne—he says goodbye to him without fanfare, seemingly unconcerned that they will never meet again—he is alarmed by Étienne’s entering the pit and shoves him back toward the village. Even in his display of caring he refuses to demonstrate softness. It is only when he realizes that Étienne is beholden to love that Souvarine decides Étienne is not worth saving.

Germinal offers a vision of people’s greed and callousness, but it also demonstrates industriousness and the will to survive. In the climax of the novel, Germinal presents depictions of bravery and nobility, in which former antagonists band together in a common cause. Négrel, heretofore sarcastic and subtly contemptuous, risks his life to descend the shaft, furious with Dansaert for abandoning the workers. He and M. Hennebeau speak together with awe of the “monstrousness” of whoever destroyed Le Voreux, unable to believe this evil is possible, “despite the evidence” (477). Their horror at the collapsing of the pit—M. Hennebeau weeps—is a reminder that even the most seemingly inaccessible of people may possess compassion and shared humanity.

Le Voreux’s swallowing the entire mine and the surrounding landscape is its final act of consumption before dying. To the end, it is a vicious beast with an insatiable appetite. Souvarine wounds Le Voreux “in its belly” (463); Négrel tells Hennebeau that “the pit had had its throat slit and was now breathing its last” (477). True to form, the pit does not die without bringing everything with it—the buildings, the land, and the people who have been feeding it for generations. The quickness with which nature reclaims the pit demonstrates the people’s insignificance: After endless shoring up of the timbering, the pit collapses after only one day. Once again, Germinal shows how people are at the mercy of greater forces, both within and without.