Zola strongly claimed that Naturalist literature is an experimental analysis of human psychology. Considering this claim, many critics, such as György Lukács,[51] find Zola strangely poor at creating lifelike and memorable characters in the manner of Honoré de Balzac or Charles Dickens, despite his ability to evoke powerful crowd scenes. It was important to Zola that no character should appear larger than life;[52] but the criticism that his characters are "cardboard" is substantially more damaging. Zola, by refusing to make any of his characters larger than life (if that is what he has indeed done), did not inhibit himself from also achieving verisimilitude.
Although Zola found it scientifically and artistically unjustifiable to create larger-than-life characters, his work presents some larger-than-life symbols which, like the mine Le Voreux in Germinal, take on the nature of a surrogate human life. The mine, the still in L'Assommoir and the locomotive La Lison in La Bête humaine impress the reader with the vivid reality of human beings. The great natural processes of seedtime and harvest, death and renewal in La Terre are instinct with a vitality which is not human but is the elemental energy of life.[53] Human life is raised to the level of the mythical as the hammerblows of Titans are seemingly heard underground at Le Voreux, or as in La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret, the walled park of Le Paradou encloses a re-enactment—and restatement—of the Book of Genesis.
