Creative Writing Devices From Émile Zola
Around 100 years before we met the serial killer Dexter in the 9 season television hit, the French novelist Émile Zola gave us Jacques Lantier. Jacques dreams of blood and killing, but unlike Dexter, his psyche is grounded in something more ancient than a traumatic childhood experience.
La Bête Humaine, translated as ‘the beast in man’, explores the base animalistic instinct for destruction; something that lurks inside the human psyche; something ancient, wild and difficult to control.
Dexter manages his lust for killing through a moralistic system of only killing those who harm others. He justifies his approach as tidying up the disorder that society cannot contain. But, he is also part of the disorder.
In the introduction to the Oxford World Classic version of the novel, the translator Roger Pearson presents us with a theory of Zola’s idea about violence and society.
As Jacques sees the 6.30 pm Le Havre express fly past him, he witnesses a murder through one of the carriage windows. A man is pinned down and knifed by another while a third figure hovers in the background.
