Prof. Brophy
History 102

Essay Questions  for Germinal

            Choose one of the questions below.  The essay is to be between three and five printed pages.  Please note that attribution and accuracy of quotation is an important part of historical argument.  Be sure to give the page number of any specific references made to Zola and any other sources that you use.  The paper is due the day you discuss Germinal in your discussion section, hence, October 27th, 28th, or 29th.

1.  Industrialization had many social costs, especially the effect it had on the lives of the working class.  Discuss Zola's portrayal of coalminers in Montsou over the course of the entire novel and show how industrial labor affected their overall lives.  Does Zola believe that the condition of the working class will improve or get worse?

2. Discuss the bourgeois classes portrayed in Germinal.  What is their social and political role in nineteenth-century France?  Is Zola sympathetic with his bourgeois characters?

3. The Communist Manifesto, written in 1848, first declared class conflict to be the principal motor for political struggle and social change.  Does Germinal, written during a period of social-democratic agitation, support Marx's notion of industrial class society and class struggle? Does Zola’s novel also emphasize the inevitable and impending clash of rival classes? Support your answer (which may be yes and/or no) with examples from the text.

4.  Compare the lives of bourgeois and working-class characters in Germinal.  What are the essential differences between the outlooks of these two classes?  In what way do bourgeois characters criticize the working class, and how do workers criticized the middle classes?  Are their criticisms valid?

5.  Irving Howe, a literary critic, wrote: "Germinal releases one of the central myths of the modern era: the story of how the dumb acquire speech.  All those at the bottom of history, for centuries objects of manipulation and control, begin to transform themselves into active subjects, determined to create their own history."  Comment.

6.  Design your own question.  Please have it approved by me at least one week before the paper is due.