Germinal

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1885

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Part 6, Chapters 4-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 6, Chapter 4 Summary

Étienne wonders where Catherine should sleep, and the two contemplate their past attraction. She says being together would only cause more trouble; he laments that they “could have got on so well together” (414). She says he is “not missing much” (414). Étienne is broken-hearted when she suggests she’s at fault for not having gone through puberty yet and not being able to have a baby. They nearly kiss but lose their nerve. Catherine says she must return to Chaval or he will beat her, although most girls receive beatings. Dejected, Étienne walks her back to Montsou.

Back at Réquillart, Étienne sees a sentry on the spoil-heap. Suddenly Jeanlin, who had been crouching in wait, slits the sentry’s throat. Horrified, Étienne scrambles to the top to hit him and ask why he did that. Jeanlin says he “[j]ust felt like it” (418). Étienne is even more upset when he sees that the sentry was Jules; he remembers Jules staring at the horizon toward home and imagines his family waiting for him.

Étienne insists they bury the body in Réquillart; Jeanlin at first refuses, saying he’s meeting Lydie and Bébert, but eventually helps. They find a roadway that is barely held up by weak timbering; they lay the rifle beside the body, kick the timbering, and scramble out before the body is crushed. In their lair, Jeanlin falls asleep while Étienne lays in terror, hearing voices in the darkness and wondering why he was unable to kill Chaval while Jeanlin so easily killed the soldier.

Feeling stifled, Étienne returns to the surface and thinks that if the miners intend to attack the Belgians at Le Voreux, he’ll be on the front lines; he hopes to be shot so that he won’t have to worry any longer. He goes to Le Voreux, where there is commotion as guards try to determine what happened to the sentry. Étienne’s spirit revives as he once again hopes to convert the soldiers to their side. He ignores a greeting from Father Ranvier because he has seen Catherine.

Catherine has been kicked out of Chaval’s house and wanders around all night, resisting the urge to go to her parents’ house. Chaval tells her not to return to Le Voreux, and Catherine waits outside the pit and watches as he enters. Lydie and Bébert wait for Jeanlin all night and, fed up with his abuse, took comfort in each other, holding each other for warmth.

The guards take their weapons, Étienne approaches Catherine, and strikers from the village approach.

Part 6, Chapter 5 Summary

Soldiers guard the door to Le Voreux while striking miners approach. Although they plan not to let anyone in or out, they let in old Mouque because he cares for the stables. Inside, he finds the horse Trumpet dead. Trumpet never acclimated to life in the pit and died despite Battle’s attempts to cheer him. As the body emerges from the pit, the people are silent.

At Levaque’s call, the people rouse to protest the Belgians. Étienne appeals to the captain to join their side, for “[t]hey were all brothers” (428). Although this moves the captain, he remains firm and warns the strikers against making him use violence. Négrel and Dansaert watch from the office.

The captain grows nervous as more strikers appear. As the strikers shout insults at the soldiers, Étienne sees he cannot control the mob. The people implore the soldiers to leave so they can fight the Belgians. Catherine, watching, grows furious over her sad lot in life.

Maheu stands close to one of the soldiers and forces him to touch his bare chest with his bayonet, daring the soldiers to kill him. The soldiers, with orders “not to use their weapons except as a last resort” (431), stand firm but quiver under the intimidation. Richomme, an old Le Voreux deputy, pleads with the people to stop. Behind them, Zacharie, Philomène, and Mouquet watch the entertainment.

The captain orders the soldiers to load their rifles, a gesture to make the people stand back. La Mouquette lifts her skirt and shows her bottom to the soldiers, eliciting laughter from the crowd. The soldiers take Levaque and a few others prisoner.

The strikers begin throwing bricks at the soldiers. Catherine, having had enough abuse and starvation, is overwhelmed with “an absolute, desperate need to slaughter” (435) and also throws bricks. Maheu stands back watching until La Maheude taunts him to join in.

The bricks injure the soldiers, and they wonder how long they will have to tolerate the attacks. The captain is about to order them to fire when the soldiers fire on their own. Bébert, Lydie, La Brûlé, Richomme, Mouquet, and La Mouquette perish—the last having shielded Catherine with her own body. One last shot kills Maheu.

The captain sees this as “the greatest disaster of his life” but retains “his still, military bearing” (438). Négrel and Dansaert are “horrified” (438). Father Ranvier says God will punish the murderers and calls for “the dawn of a new age of justice and imminent extermination of the bourgeoisie” (439).

Part 6, Chapters 4-5 Analysis

Catherine’s acceptance of her subservience to Chaval is like the miners’ acceptance of their subservience to the Company. Just as the people believe it is their lot to toil until their deaths, Catherine believes women are destined to receive men’s abuse. Despite being in love with Étienne, Catherine accepts with “resignation” that she belongs to Chaval, telling herself “by way of consolation that eight out of ten girls ended up no better off than she was” (415). The comparison between the people’s subservience to the Company and her own subservience to Chaval is reinforced by her blaming herself for the late onset of her puberty. In telling Étienne he is “not missing much” because she “a useless specimen,” Catherine speaks of her inability to have children “as if it were her own fault” (414). Catherine’s taking responsibility for defects caused by working in the mine as well as for the abuse she suffers from Chaval illustrates how poor women suffer especially hard, having less power even than poor men.

In Chapter 4, Zola again describes how Étienne is afraid of the darkness of his lair in Réquillart. This fear of darkness reflects Étienne’s recoiling from the darkness within people. Étienne consistently fails to anticipate the people’s savagery, and he demonstrates idealism regarding people’s motivations and honor. Outside Le Voreux, Étienne once again finds himself unable to control the mob: He “gesture[s] helplessly” (432) when reason fails to calm them, and he shrinks back with “dismay” (429) when they call for the death of the Belgian workers. He is stunned to find that Catherine, tired of “this filthy bloody existence” that always “only got worse” (435), throws bricks at the soldiers like the rest of the mob. He also has seriously misjudged the captain, whom he tries to win over to their side. Based solely on Jules the sentry’s offhand comment that the captain has republican sympathies (422), Étienne naively believes the honor of their cause is enough to turn the captain’s allegiance. That the captain “maintained his stiff, military bearing” (438) even after the guards shoot the miners suggests Étienne never had a chance in winning him to his side.

When happiness is possible, it is tinged with grief. Lydie and Bébert finally submit to their affections and, while awaiting the Belgians at Le Voreux, hold each other for warmth, “so happy in their remote hideaway that they could not remember ever having felt happier” (425). Only hours later, soldiers at Le Voreux shoot them, and they die in each other’s arms. La Mouquette, “with her characteristic generosity of spirit” (438), is shot saving Catherine; upon dying, she smiles at Catherine and Étienne “as though she were happy to see them together now that she was taking her leave” (438). The intermingling of joy and loss characterizes the lives of the poor, for whom true happiness and comfort are elusive, even unattainable.

The death of Trumpet, the young horse who never was able to adjust to life in the pit, is a metaphor for the tragedy of the people. That Trumpet, “tormented by longing for the daylight he had lost” (426), dies without ever seeing the light again is an ominous indication that the people will meet the same fate. After the shooting at Le Voreux, the people’s “tiny, wretched human corpses” (439) lie beside Trumpet’s, reiterating the smallness of the people and dehumanizing them even in death.