Jason's Reviews > The Beast in Man

Okay folks, my first 5-star rating in 2009. I'm stingy with 5-stars, but Emile Zola delivered, again, after about 25 other books this year. When I enjoy classic writers like Thoreau, Dickens, Hawthorne or playwrights like Shakespeare or Whitman, I sometimes overlook nuances or miss the unexpected metaphor or misinterpret the character flaw that destroys the protagonist. Not so with Zola. No way! His themes and messages come at you like an over-steamed locomotive. Zola's characters wield their Shakespearian flaws with brute force. There's no time or space for nuance, for subtleties, for guesswork. Instead, Zola bangs the reader over the head with attributes that can only be described as beastly. The actors in The Beast in Man are absolutely spring-loaded from the first 2 chapters. Jealousy, rage, spousal abuse, murder, poisoning, and a perverse, australopithecine compulsion to kill women.

Zola's greatest gift as a writer is dredging up the most repugnant, atavistic urges in man—-urges about which your own superego may have had unintentional, fleeting, nightmarish thoughts, but never told anyone, and then hid safely away from your id—-and carrying them out to their mesmerizing conclusion. I was drawn to the story like a lurid onlooker at a street fight before the cops arrive, afraid to intervene, but overcome by an unexplainable need to watch the beating, punch for punch, busted nose for broken rib, and shaking afterward with an overload of adrenalin.

Zola is a naturalist. Wikipedia defines Naturalism as a literary movement that began in mid-nineteenth century France and, in the introductory paragraph, specifically affirms Zola's contributions, later declaring that the word 'naturalism' actually came from Zola himself, describing the departure his writing took from the overused literature of Realism. Wikipedia states that Naturalistic works:

“often include uncouth or sordid subject matter... a frankness about sexuality along with a pervasive pessimism...exposed the dark harshness of life, including poverty, racism, sex, prejudice, disease, prostitution, and filth...as a result, naturalistic writers were frequently criticized for being too blunt...another characteristic of naturalism is determinism...basically the opposite of the notion of free will...a character's fate has been pre-determined, usually by environmental factors, and that he/she can do nothing about it...there tends to be in naturalist novels a strong sense that nature is indifferent to human struggle.”

The Beast in Man takes place on, near, and around trains. The movement of these heavy, belching transports is an awesome milieu, as it seems each character is inexorably moved, equally without the power of immediate brakes, toward their final destination. And the destination for these characters is adultery, homicide, suicide, and prison. The actors challenge their fates, but are relentlessly tormented to act on impulse, to act as if they were scripted to do this (and only this) from birth. In the case of X___X, his compulsions are so overwhelming and his tendencies written so convincingly that readers want him to kill—need him to kill—to comprehend the universal question, can man live after satisfying such beastly urges? How does society deal with such a creature? The naturalist's answer: by accusing the wrong man, thus ascribing a fate 'by environmental factors...that [the accused] can do nothing about.”

The Beast in Man is not a mass market paperback, so don't expect a story like the current page-turners on sale at your large grocery store book aisle. Zola takes his time to build characters, but his delivery is outstanding. His writing is beautiful, powerful, mellifluous. Some scenes are shocking and graphic, all the more testament to his break from Realistic literature. Two examples of his writing that I especially liked:

While beating his wife: ”There was no abating Y___Y's fury. The moment it did seem to have begun to wane, it would flare up again, like a sort of intoxication, wave on wave of it, increasing and carrying him away in fits of dizziness. He was no longer master of himself fighting empty space, tossed by every gust of the hurricane of violence which lashed him, till he was reduced to the utter depths of all-absorbing need to assuage the howling beast deep within him. It was an immediate physical need, a starvation of a body which hungered for vengeance, a force contorting him and giving him no respite till he should satisfy his need. Still striding up and down, he began to thump his temples with his fists, crying in agonized tones: 'Oh, whatever shall I do, whatever shall I do?' Since he had not killed this woman at once, now he could not kill her at all. His poltroonery in letting her live made him itch with rage."

While fighting on the small engine platform of a speeding train: ”He had managed to catch hold of the side of the tender. They both slithered on their constricted deck, the steel plates dancing dangerously under their feet as they wrestled silently, their teeth grinding, each trying to heave the other through the narrow cab doorway, which as only protection had a single bar across. It was no easy task. Fed to the full, the locomotive rushed on and on. They swept through Barentin and plunged into Malaunay tunnel, still at death grips, backs straining against the coals, heads banging against the water-cistern, trying to avoid the red-hot firebox door, which scorched their legs every time they stretched out. For a moment, X___X thought he might be able to raise himself up enough to shut off steam, to bring help and get free from this lunatic, out of his mind through drink and jealousy. For, being the smaller man, he was beginning to lose strength, knew there was already no hope of throwing Z___Z off. He was already beaten. He felt his hair rise on his head as the fear of falling swept through him. But as he made a supreme effort, and felt out with one hand, the other guessed what he was at and with iron grip on X___X's haunches, suddenly lifted him off the ground as if he had been a little child. The locomotive rushed on and on. The train burst noisily out of the tunnel and swept through the grim, bleak countryside. They dashed through Malaunay station at such speed that the A.S.M on the platform there did not even see the two men destroying each other on the moving thunderbolt. Then, with a final effort, Z___Z flung X___X out, but, just as X___X felt space round him, in his desperation he succeeded in clutching at Z___Z's neck, so convulsively that he dragged his murderer down with him. A double wild cry, voices of murderer and murdered confused in one, broke against the wind and was dispersed into nothingness. They fell together and as these two men, who so long had been like two brothers, went down, the draught of the train drew them in under the wheels, to be cut up, chopped to pieces, still laced together in a terrible embrace. Their bodies were afterwards found headless, legless, two bleeding trunks, with arms still enlaced one about the other, in suffocating grasp.”

A friend says that Zola's writing is a bit overwrought. I disagree. That's why I read Zola, to be shocked. To see a side of humanity that you know exists, but rarely see. How many movies have you seen in the last couple years where there was a discharge of gunfire? Quite a few. How many times in your real life have you seen a discharge of gunfire in public? Probably none. The comparison works for Zola. I know man can be a beast, but I don't see it that often, so I read Zola for an up-close view.