Zola

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how the author Emile Zola is most famous for the forceful nature of his realistic prose, found in his novels "Germinal", "La Bete Humaine" and "Therese Raquin". It examines how although Zola is noted for his work as a crusader for social justice during his lifetime, these novels are also marked by his reliance upon grotesque details, events and characterization. It looks at how a reader is invariably provoked to ask this long-deceased author why an author such as Zola, so intent upon using the artistic form for the purposes of social liberation be moved to use such tropes and narrative devices. It also evaluates why he was so committed in his narrative structure to not conform to, what on the surface might seem to be more "realistic" characters and events.

From the Paper:

"Perhaps the best way to analyze the use of the macabre in Zola is to grant that the events the author describes do not customarily transpire everyday, to everyday people and readers in their lives. These subjects gain a realistic force through naturalistic prose and because of the meaning invested in them by the author's narrative structure. Zola uses the macabre not in a sensationalistic fashion, although he acknowledges that a love of sensation is a part of human, daily life. Rather the macabre takes on both a metaphorical and realistic insight to provide a window into the base desires that afflict all individuals whom are part of the social structure and populace of a macabre and fraught society themselves. Zola holds up an apparently distorting glass in which the reader is forced to see the worst, yet a true side, of him or herself."

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