'I wanted to depict the inevitable downfall of the working-class family in the polluted atmosphere of our urban areas'. So Zola wrote od :'Assommoir (1872) which some critics rate as the greatest of his Rougon-Macquart novels. In the result the book triumphantly surmounts the author's moral and social intentions to become, perhaps, the first 'classical tragedy' of working-class peple living in the slums of a city - Paris. Vividly, without romantic illusion, Zola uses the coarse argot of the back-streets to plot the descent od the easy-going Gervaise through idleness, drunkenness, promiscuity, filth and starvation. The effect is at once humorous and pathetic.