After the fifth day Étienne never lighted up except to eat. He could not swallow in the dark. This complete and interminable night, always of the same blackness, was his chief torment. It was in vain that he was able to sleep in safety, that he was warm and provided with bread, the night had never weighed so heavily on his brain. It seemed to him even to crush his thoughts. Now he was living on thefts. In spite of his communistic theories, old scruples of education arose, and he contented himself with gnawing his share of dry bread. But what was to be done? One must live, and his task was not yet accomplished. Another shame overcame him: remorse for that savage drunkenness from the gin, drunk in the great cold on an empty stomach, which had thrown him, armed with a knife, on Chaval. This stirred in him the whole of that unknown terror, the hereditary ill, the long ancestry of drunkenness, no longer tolerating a drop of alcohol without falling into homicidal mania. Would he then end as a murderer? When he found himself in shelter, in this profound calm of the earth, seized by satiety of violence, he had slept for two days the sleep of a brute, gorged and overcome; and the depression continued, he lived in a bruised state with bitter mouth and aching head, as after some tremendous spree. A week passed by; the Maheus, who had been warned, were not able to send a candle; he had to give up the enjoyment of light, even when eating.

In this excerpt from Chapter 1 of Zola's Germinal, the narrator fills us in on Étienne's background. Étienne is the protagonist of Zola's novel. And—surprise, surprise—he's none too happy.

Étienne is a perfect example of a Naturalist character who can't escape his heredity. The dude's dad was an alcoholic. And guess what? Étienne is also an alcoholic. He's very aware, in fact, that he is the recipient of a "hereditary ill, the long ancestry of drunkenness."

Zola's depiction of Étienne's character, and specifically of his alcoholism, reflects Naturalist writers' interest in heredity and human nature. We not only inherit a big nose from our mom or dad, we also inherit personality traits from them.

Be forewarned: to read a Naturalist novel is to have a minor identity crisis. We end up lying awake at night thinking, "Oh dang, I'm going to end up eating toast as noisily as Grandma?!" But maybe that's just us.

According to Naturalist writers, everything about who we are can be explained by our background and by who our parents are. So it's not surprising that in this excerpt from Zola's novel, we learn a whole lot about Étienne's background: his background is also his future.

We learn that he's poor. We also learn that he comes from a background of alcoholism. Zola conveys all of this information to us because, as a Naturalist, he believes it's crucial for us readers to understand where Étienne is coming from in order to understand who he is as a person.

No, this doesn't mean that you'll definitely end up in Poughkeepsie, NY or Palatine, IL or Pasadena, CA just like your folks before you. But it means that there's a better-than-average chance of it.