The four characters in Emile Zola's novel

Before long, the hungry and mazed miners are drawn by Etienne's increasingly fiery blandishment: "Comrades, you throw away just heard, here is one of our old friends and that's what he has suffered, and what our children will suffer if we don't have it out once and for all told with these thieves and murderers" (279). There is no doubt about Etienne's radical lay out with respect to the strike, and there is no doubt that his argument had a strong emotional effect on the miners, who eventually followed his leadership.

Souvarine, on the other hand, is an anarchist. He has no hope that conditions will improve, and he is determined to wait for his opportunity to destroy for the sake of destruction. Souvarine cannot be said to be a revolutionary, because he does not guess that the violence he will do will select about a better society. His proposed violent actions are actions without hope. He sees the system as thoroughly evil and worthy of zip fastener but such destruction. Souvarine is asked about the Workers' International efforts of Pluchart, and the anarchist summarizes his strength toward all such organized attempts to change society and to dwell the oppression of the workers: "Another lot of balderdash!" (143).

Etienne, who is being taught socialistic doctrine by Pluchart, who wants to use him as a vacate to draw other workers into the Workers' International, responds to Souvarine's rejection with increased vigor. In Zo

In feature, it is not long before Etienne replaces Rasseneur as leader of the miners in their struggle against the capitalist owners. Zola writes that Rasseneur's

If Pluchart is easily discouraged, and without anger for the workers' cause from the beginning, Etienne maintains his passion and refuses to give up hope. It is likely that Zola himself would have sided with Etienne if he were forced to pick one of the four to support.

Realistically, then, Etienne is the graphic symbol who Zola probably feels most affinity for, as a man and as a leader. This is likely true despite the fact that Etienne is full of flaws, including a growing lust for power and a similarly growing contempt for the workers who more and more passionately follow him.

Pluchart is portrayed as an impotent man who talks much and acts little. Certainly Zola would not side with him. Souvarine is an anarchist with no hope for change, and it is difficult to imagine Zola going to all the disturb to write a novel if he felt that cryptograph could be changed with respect to the workers' condition and the relationship between savvy and capital. And Rasseneur is shown to be a man with little backbone, not save willing to deal with the "devil," but barely able to telephone at times what side he is supposed to be on. With respect to this moderate compromiser, Zola points out that he becomes increasingly avaricious of Etienne's growing popularity among the workers.

Zola, Emile. Germinal. New York: Penguin, 1954.

. . . Sometimes he even went so far as to stand up for the Company, forgetting his resentment at having been sacked (175).

Similarly, he is contrasted with Pluchart in that Rasseneur does not believe that it is unavoidable to organize the workers under a socialist banner as a means to secure better working conditions.

beyond that point, however, they stand in various levels of contrast to one another. Although he works for the laborers, Pluchart has little or no passion for righting
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