Final Writing: Literary Analysis Outline

Final Writing: Literary Analysis Outline

Title

Introduction

Opening sentence	October 11th, 1861; 106 miners perish in a deadly flood, among them: children, parents, entire generations.
Thesis statement	In Germinal, Émile Zola approches human misery using realistic descriptions and figurative language in the typical style of naturalism.
Evidence/citation/example	"The point of departure for Germinal is not, as so many critics have assumed, just his imagination but his imagination fortified by his own observation of, and sensitivity to, two periods in time, the 1860s and the 1880s, and his awareness of the struggles of proletarian man to achieve a place in the sun in his own lifetime." Zakarian, Richard H. Zola's "Germinal" : A Critical Study of Its Primary Sources. Library Droz Genève, 1972. Google Books, books.google.ca/books?id=vIGPsoq6H2cC&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=germinal literary analysis&source=bl&ots=YH80in3VIG&sig=bHuvEvwc8jOQdNabTC58-Bo6UxA&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjb0qf795jfAhXxw1kKHbjmD1cQ6AEwBHoECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q=germinal literary analysis&f=false.

Body Paragraph 1

Main idea 1	Zola, despite being a part of the upper-class, spent his career researching and writing about the working class. His most famous approach to the misery of workers is the novel Germinal.
Evidence/citation/example	“Germinal broke free from the series as a timeless cry of protest against oppression and the misery of the poor who never inherit the Earth.” Scurr, Ruth. “Rereading Zola's Germinal.” The Guardian, 19 June 2010, www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jun/19/emile-zola-germinal-ruth-scurr.

Body Paragraph 2

Main idea 1

Figurative language serves as the backbone of his novel.

Evidence/citation/example

“The cages slid up to the surface and then fell smoothly back down again like some nocturnal beast, swallowing more and more men, drinking them down the dark abyss of its throat.” p.32, PERSONIFICATION AND SIMILE “He didn’t want to stop cutting, and hacked away so furiously that he shook with the vibrations, wedged between his two levels of rock, like a greenfly caught between the pages of a book which threatened to slam suddenly shut.” p.39, SIMILE “But the engine, whose great steel limbs in their copper casing gleamed high above him in the shadows, had lost its fascination for him, as had the cables, swooping silently past like the black wings of some nocturnal bird of prey, and the cages rising and falling amid the chaos of signals ringing, orders shouted, and tubs shaking the iron flooring.” p.135, PERSONIFICATION and SIMILE “The cages slid up to the surface and then fell smoothly back down again like some nocturnal beast, swallowing more and more men, drinking them down the dark abyss of its throat.” p.32, PERSONIFICATION AND SIMILE

Body Paragraph 3

Main idea 1

His naturalist approach to writing about the miners is characterized by extensive descriptions of suffering, tainted by real-life events, things and people.

Evidence/citation/example

“Not a word was exchanged. They were all hacking away, their irregular blows setting up a dull, distant-sounding, but pervasive barrage of noise. The sound had a harsh timbre in the thick air, which stifled any echo at birth. And the darkness seemed to be coloured an unnatural black, with swirling waves of coal-dust, and vapours which hung heavy on the eyelids. The wicks of the lamps, beneath their gauze chimneys, failed to penetrate the gloom with their small red glow.” p.40 “The room was small and bare, but its white walls made it light; it was furnished with three tables, a dozen chairs, and a pine bar as big as a kitchen dresser. There were no more than a dozen mugs, three bottles of spirits, a carafe, a small zinc beer barrel with a tin tap; and nothing else, not a picture, not a shelf, not a game. In the glossily painted cast-iron stove a lump of coal burned softly. On the flagstones a fine layer of white sand soaked up the constant damp of this rainy country.” p.66 “In the naturalist novel generally, descriptions plays an important part ” J. H. Matthews (1962) The Art of Description in Zola's Germinal, Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures, 16:4, 267-274, DOI: 10.1080/00397709.1962.10732746 “For example, it was not enough for Zola simply to take all Bonnemort's bodily traits from a description of a typical old-style coal miner [...] he was compelled to adhere quite closely to [...] the details of his descriptions” Walker, Philip. 'Germinal' and Zola's Philosophical and Religious Thought. John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1984.

Conclusion

Main idea 1

Zola's novel about the struggle of miners, Germinal, can be summarized as a naturalist view of suffering.

Evidence/citation

“The author also captures the political and social unrest of a struggling working class in his novel Germinal, where starving miners rebel against the bourgeois class that exploits them.” Valente, Marie-Anne. “Le Naturalisme, Le Déterminisme Et l’Étude Du Milieu Dans Germinal d’Émile Zola Et Sub Terra De Baldomero Lillo.” Le Naturalisme, Le Déterminisme Et l’Étude Du Milieu Dans Germinal d’Émile Zola Et Sub Terra De Baldomero Lillo, Arizona State University, 2012, repository.asu.edu/attachments/93586/content//tmp/package-qpyBoS/Valente_asu_0010N_11596.pdf.