Beginning of Essay
Zola’s La Débâcle, first planned in 1868, was the penultimate chapter in Les Rougon-Macquart. Warfare was something Zola had always meant to give full play in Les Rougon-Macquart, and his 1868 scheme had provided for "a novel that will have th ....

Middle of Essay
.... he felt that at the Commune was merely "the rising of a city under exceptional conditions and its majority was in no wise socialist nor could it be." However Marx emphasised that its "great social measure…was its own existence." In this essay I will discuss La Débâcle, and Zola’s apparent lecturing tone. For while Zola exposed many social sores he had never previously attempted to put forward ideas for healing them. I will discuss how Zola felt that it was not the Prussians who brought down the Second Empire, but the corrupt society of France, and its epicentre, Paris. This will bring me onto the Paris Co ....