Degradation and self-destruction (allegory)
This story presents an ode to degradation and self-destruction, directing people towards success or to the very bottom. The washerwoman Gervaise - a kind, decent, but absolutely weak-willed woman - dreamed of little. What a simple person needs for happiness is stable work, honest earnings, a comfortable home, family. All this can be gained, or it can be lost. Dullness from a gray monotonous life, lack of education, unwillingness to measure opportunities with needs, inability to find other entertainments besides gluttony and drunkenness, debauchery, corruption of society, terrible heredity. Gervaise herself is to blame for her fall. She could have a different attitude towards her capital when work went uphill, she could be less lazy during the crisis that had begun, she could take the chance for a happy life. However, she gave up, did not want to even try.
Lali (symbol)
Of the secondary storylines, the story of the little Lali was most painful and heartbreaking. The image of this girl saves the entire novel from a constant feeling of darkness, hopelessness, laziness, drunkenness, prostitution. How different can be the attitude to poverty and family hardships of two women. One can say that the eight-year-old Lali had an Old soul, and an inner child lived in the thirty-year-old Gervaise. As long as there are such people and similar stories, there will definitely be no end to the world. Lali becomes a symbol of hope that people are not all evil. There is inner goodness and generosity, and all these and many other values are embodied in little Lali.
The tavern (allegory)
The title of the novel is the same as the name of the tavern, where all workers are gathering to have a drink after a hard day, but this place enslaves them, and hard drinking follows. The name of the tavern could be translated as “Trap”, and as a result it becomes an insidious trap, which is almost impossible to get out of. Only hardworking might help the characters to get out of the trap, but they do not even think of it. The tavern becomes an allegory of a trap without an exit. But it also becomes a symbol of Parisian labor districts, the city of disasters and poverty.
