106 pages • 3 hours read

Germinal

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1885

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Part 4, Chapters 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 4, Chapter 3 Summary

Two weeks later, the strike spreads to other pits. The Prefect and gendarmes are sent to the village but leave because the strikers were “perfectly calm,” having committed to making “no trouble” (227). Étienne distributes the money from the provident fund to “the most needy families” (227). However, money is running out, and Maigrat, presumably on the Company’s orders, does not offer credit. Everyone is hungry, yet they do not complain, having “absolute confidence in the outcome” and “ready to suffer in the pursuit of universal happiness” (228).

Étienne is “the undisputed leader” (228). He reads constantly and has subscribed to a socialist newspaper. He grows “more and more intoxicated with his growing popularity” (229) and is amazed at how far he has come. However, he has moments of insecurity in which he is self-conscious about his lack of formal education and his inability to fully understand what he reads. Despite these fears, he imagines himself giving “the first parliamentary speech ever made by a working man” (229). He has been grappling with whether to accept Pluchart’s offer to help motivate the strikers and encourage them join the International.

One day, Étienne and La Maheude sit in the house discussing the strike, which La Maheude now supports, believing they “should not return until justice was theirs” (230). Just then, Catherine comes in bearing coffee and sugar. She has felt guilty continuing to work in another mine during the strike. At her mother’s condemnation at her having run off, Catherine says it was not her decision and that Chaval is “stronger than me” (232). Catherine is embarrassed to be in front of Étienne, “whose presence overwhelmed her” (233). Chaval enters and violently kicks her, calling her a “slut” and accusing her and La Maheude of having sex with Étienne.

After Chaval and Catherine leave, Étienne walks toward Le Voreux. He thinks of the starving people in the village and how they are “straining to keep up the struggle on an empty stomach” (235). He ponders the magnitude of his responsibility and worries that if the Company wins, he “would have brought disaster upon his comrades” (236). Looking at Le Voreux, he feels “a fierce desire to put an end to their wretched poverty once and for all, even at the price of death” (236). He is motivated by the vision of himself bringing them to victory. He goes to the Advantage to tell Rasseneur he is going to invite Pluchart to visit.

Part 4, Chapter 4 Summary

The meeting with Pluchart is to take place at the Jolly Fellow, the bar owned by Widow Desire, who “was outraged by the suffering” (237) of the miners. The day of the meeting at the Jolly Fellow, Étienne is concerned because Pluchart has not yet arrived. Souvarine and Rasseneur enter. When Rasseneur tells Étienne he wrote to Pluchart and told him not to come, citing the fact that “it was just plain daft to think you could change the world overnight” (240) and that the strike would only make the miners’ conditions worse, Étienne is furious. The two have a heated argument in which Rasseneur accuses Étienne of exploiting the workers just to “play the educated gentleman” (243). Étienne, whose “ideas had matured” (241) in his readings, clumsily explains the progress of his beliefs but is as of yet unsure how to implement many of the ideas he’s read about. Rasseneur leaves, saying he will return to speak with his friends.

Étienne ask Souvarine what he would do. Souvarine thinks joining the International is “nonsense” but that it’s “better than nothing” (244). Étienne is interested to hear about Souvarine’s “cult of destruction” (245). Souvarine tells him he wants to “destroy everything,” to use “fire, sword and poison” so that there are “[n]o more nations, no more governments, no more property” (245). Étienne watches him in awe. Although there is “something in his blood that made him reject” (245) these dark ideas, he wants to know more. Souvarine, bored, soon leaves.

As strikers from neighboring mines arrive, Étienne grows more worried until Widow Desire informs him that Pluchart has arrived. Pluchart, who has been busying himself speaking in town after town, brings International membership cards with him. Rasseneur speaks to the crowd, which quickly votes to prevent him from speaking. However, Pluchart inspires the crowd; he tells the gathered workers about the International and how every time workers have joined, “companies started running scared” (251). He passes out membership cards, telling them they can pay membership later because they are striking. Widow Desire comes in to inform them that the local superintendent, along with four gendarmes, has arrived to break up the group. The miners take a quick vote to join the International, then escape though a back door. As they run home, Étienne and Maheu “laughed happily, certain now of victory” (253).

Part 4, Chapters 3-4 Analysis

These chapters, while on the surface focus on the early stages of the strike, are more deeply about Étienne’s growth and transformation. Étienne absorbs as much information as he can to make well-informed decisions. Étienne’s thirst for knowledge is insatiable, and his mind becomes like a sponge that soaks in as much information as it can, moving from one theory to the next as he exhausts its usefulness or encounters a more sophisticated idea. His focus lands on Pluchart’s “collectivism, which called for the means of production to be returned into the ownership of the collective” (242).

Étienne’s growth is evident in his break with Rasseneur over whether to bring in Pluchart to entice the miners to join the International. When he first planted the seeds of revolt, Étienne deferred to Rasseneur, who had a reputation as a leader. As the two argue at the Jolly Fellow over Rasseneur’s letter to Pluchart, Étienne tells him he’s “always consulted” him because he’d “been involved in the struggle” (243). However, Étienne’s self-education has given him new ideas that are beyond Rasseneur’s comfort, and he finds that Rasseneur’s guidance is no longer sufficient. The confrontation with Rasseneur has him musing on “his earlier idealism, his schoolboy vision” (241) of unity among men. Since the early days of his planning, he has “read things, studied things” (241); his views have “matured now” (241). With the stakes now higher, Étienne moves on to Souvarine, whose visions are darker and more enigmatic. After Rasseneur storms out, Étienne turns to the anarchist and listens, enraptured, as he advocates “destroy[ing] everything” so that there are “[n]o more nations, no more governments, no more property, no more God or religion” (245). They must implement this vision with “fire, sword and poison” in order to create “a new world order” (245).

Despite his pride in his newfound knowledge, Étienne suffers moments of self-doubt as a result of his “lack of a formal education” (229), and sometimes fails to understand more complex ideas. Souvarine’s philosophies, for example, prove to be beyond Étienne; he “didn’t understand” them, and “something in his blood […] made him reject this dark prospect of global destruction” (245). Although he is informed about many ideas, he struggles to determine how to put them into practice; they remain “somewhat vague,” and he “couldn’t quite see how to achieve” (242) them. This gap between book knowledge and practical use is criticized by Souvarine, who tells him “these intellectuals of yours with all their talk of gradual change are just cowards” (244).

Rasseneur’s accusations that Étienne is motivated not by belief in the International but by his own ambition is not unfounded. While genuinely concerned about the miners—he fears that if the Company wins, “he would have brought disaster upon his comrades” (236)—Étienne is spurred by the vision of “men and women ready to sacrifice themselves in the execution of his orders” (237). He takes pride that he, a mere ex-mechanic and coal worker, has “become the centre of things” with “the world revolving around him” (229). His “vanity” is stroked when he imagines himself elected to the Chamber of Deputies, giving “the first parliamentary speech ever made by a working man” (229). Readers should take note that he begins “to enjoy the pleasures of the intellect and the comforts of easy living” as he becomes “one of the detested bourgeois” (229). In leading the miners against the privileged, Étienne risks becoming that which they seek to destroy.

At the heart of these chapters is the theme of hope. Despite the miners’ hunger, they hope to reach “the ideal city of their dreams,” a place “where all men were brothers, living and working in the common cause” (228). This hope, to which they cling like “zealots blindly offering up the gift of their own selves” (228), sustains them in their suffering. They are willing “to suffer in the pursuit of universal happiness” (228). Thus, the crowd chases out Rasseneur while embracing Pluchart, who promises one day that they will be the masters.