The Beast Within (1890)

This is a story about steam engines and murder. Not a single murder where the unmasking of the culprit brings complete resolution as in Agatha Christie, but murder in general.
Murder almost as a diabolical beast that stalks the characters in much the way that the powerful steam engines they all work around dominate their lives.

It is one of Zola’s finest novels. It displays all his strengths and few of his weaknesses.

First, there is the immaculately detailed description of the workings of an elaborate institution – in this instance the French railway system in its nineteenth century heyday. Then there are the characters who make their lives within the institution – not as appendages to it, but as believable individuals that mould themselves to their conditions but all have an individual inner life. Then – and I do regard this as a strength, the hint of madness that lies always just beneath the surface of Zola’s novels. If nothing else, it makes them difficult to forget.

Sometimes Zola’s novels seem rather too immense for their subjects – are we really that much interested in the workings of a department store as in Au Bonheur des Dames? (Perhaps we should be, but I have to say that I was not!) But those super-human engines that had transformed society n fifty years or less – remember that steam was described as the conqueror of Time –are a fully worthy subject.

I will not give away the ending. I will just say that it is one of the most haunting in literature.

ספר עז יצרים ותשוקות. כמו ציור של דלקרוא. רציחות ו​תשוקות של עובדים על קו רכבת מפריז למערב. כמעט רומן​ ( )

What a dark and depressing tale about the most evil things mankind can get itself involved in. This is truly a story that depicts the most evil and hidden aspects of peoples mind. Or were they all beasts after all?This is the first Zola I ever read, but it has certainly sparked my interest. (Although I think it'll be a while before I will venture into another one of his novels. I need something that is a little more on the brighter side of life after this! :D ) ( )

La Bete Humaine, or The Human Beast, is one of Zola’s more violent novels, illustrating his increasing belief later in his career that ‘love and death, possessing and killing, are the dark foundations of the human soul.’

There are many who have bloodlust in this book. As Leonard Tancock writes in the Introduction to this edition, Zola lets the reader watch “several quite different types of murder: the man who kills in a blind rage of sexual jealousy, the cold, slow, poisoner after his victim’s money, the psychopath whose decent, reasonable side struggles in vain against his hereditary predisposition, and various sub-species such as the woman maddened by passion or jealousy or the man with a grievance turned into a brute by alcohol.”

It’s often over the top, e.g. “At last, at last! He had satisfied himself, he had killed! Yes, he had done it. Boundless joy and an awful exultation bore him aloft in the complete contentment of his eternal desire.” And: “…the only thought in his mind being to get dressed quickly, take the knife and go and kill some other woman in the street.” However, the slow poisoning in a house near a train crossing is memorable, as are the hazy opening scene in the train station which evokes the Impressionists who Zola was a friend of, and the closing scene, with a runaway train that will blindly destroy, a symbol for mankind.

On a somewhat random side note, the ending and overall feel of the novel reminded me of the movie “Runaway Train” with Jon Voigt.

Quotes:
On the railroad, likened to the human beast:
“The crowd again, the endless crowd amid the roar of trains, whistling of engines, buzzing of telegraphs and ringing of bells. It was like a huge body, a gigantic creature lying across the land, with its head in Paris and joints all along the line, limbs spreading out into branch lines, feet and hands at Le Havre and other terminal towns. On and on it went, soulless and triumphant, on to the future with a mathematical straightness and deliberate ignorance of the rest of human life on either side, unseen but always tenaciously alive – eternal passion and eternal crime.”

Also this one, on the progress the railroad represented:
“It seemed funny being buried in this wilderness, without a soul to confide in, when day and night, all the time, so many men and women were rushing past in the thunder of trains shaking the house, and then tearing away at full speed. It was a fact that all the world went by, not only French people but foreigners too, people from the most distant lands, since nowadays nobody could stay at home and all the nations, it was said, would soon be only one. That was progress, all brothers together, all going along to some Better Land!”

On suffering, and the bleakness of life:
“It was just suffering without end, and no possibility of forgetting or being forgiven. They wept together, conscious of the blind forces of life weighing them down, life which consists of struggle and death.”

On sex:
“…there was a little toolshed in which a heap of empty sacks would have made a soft bed. But one Saturday when a sudden downpour of rain forced them to take shelter there she obstinately remained standing, only giving him her lips in endless kisses. Her modesty did not extend as far as these kisses, for she greedily gave him all her mouth, as if merely in friendship. And when, roused to fever-pitch by this passion, he tried to take her, she defended herself tearfully, every time giving the same reasons. Why did he want to make her unhappy? It seemed so nice just to love each other without all that dirty business of sex! Defiled at sixteen by the lusts of that old man whose bleeding spectre haunted her, violated later by the brutal appetites of her husband, she had kept a childlike purity, a virginity with all the charming modesty of passion unaware of itself. What so appealed to her in Jacques was his gentleness, his obedience in not letting his hands wander all over her as soon as she simply took them in her own hands, weak though they were. She was in love for the first time, and she did not give herself for the very reason that it would have spoiled her love to belong to this man straight away, as she had to the two others. Unconsciously she wanted to prolong indefinitely this delicious sensation, become a young girl again like she was before she was defiled, and have a sweetheart like you have at fifteen, and kiss him shamelessly behind doors.” ( )

Rougon-Macquart has to be the greatest series of novels ever written and selecting a personal favourite amongst them is supremely difficult. I have read La Bete Humaine, Germinal, La Terre, Nana, L'Assommoir, Pot Bouille, L'Oeuvre, La Debacle and Money and place The Beast Within as the best amongst them. Possibly this is because it is the first read. Revolves around the murderous intentions of a train driver and is a wonderful read.