New customers were crowding toward the counter. It was the usual rush between twelve and one: a few neighborhood working men in heavy drill; store clerks from Notre Dame Street with white collars and small felt hats which they tossed on the counter; two social service nuns in grey cloaks; and a taxi-driver and several housewives who, between shopping trips, came to perk themselves up with a cup of scalding coffee or a plate of French fries.
The hubbub of daily French-Canadian working class life is represented in the early section of the novel through a tapestry of character each going about their business. It is Canada as microcosm, a symbolic narrowing down of the national character looked at with an objective scientific eye as through a microscope. The imagery is an expression of the idea that folks are folks, people are people and though coming from different backgrounds and standing in opposition and conflict with each other on a variety of social levels, as a collective unit they are the epitome of cohesion and shared purpose. At this point they are all living under the conditions of economic depression in state of ignorance of the coming specter global warfare not exactly under conditions of bliss, but a contented sense of lived-in distraction.
A crowd of ragged children were playing on the sidewalk among the litter. Women, thin and sad, stood in evil-smelling doorways, astonished by the sunlight. Others, indoors, set their babies on the windowsill and stared out aimlessly. Everywhere you saw windows plugged with rags or oiled paper. Everywhere you heard shrill voices, children crying, cries of misery coming from the depths of this house or that, doors and shutters closed, dead, walled up against the light as if it were a tomb.
As the story unfurls and the view through the microscope continues to tighten and push forward for closer scrutiny, the opportunity for bliss fades away almost entirely. A portrait of the misery of working-class life when the work is hard and miserable or there is no work at all is brought into sharper and sharper focus. It is a glimpse of life on the edge where every day becomes a struggle and the value of compassion and brotherhood increases exponentially.
The neighborhood was waking up. She heard wheels bumping along the rough street and bottles rattling in a basket as the milkman passed, then a happy whistled tune and the cheerful sound of trotting hooves. In her heart the need to live in spite of everything found its expression in a stubborn defiance. This was not the end. Because she couldn't have what she wanted, she refused whatever was offered: but there must be miracles, she thought, for people like herself, bold and self-sufficient. Her eyes, heavy with sleep, were fixed on the thin ray of sunlight growing stronger in the room.
The brotherhood of the community is the important thing; it is what binds the folks together and keeps them trudging on through setback and failures. The language throughout the novel is symbolic in an easygoing fashion that doesn’t overwhelm with hyperbole and the sense of calling attention to itself. This passage perfectly encapsulates the overarching thematic construction of the story through its subtle implication of symbolism. Every single day the neighborhood wakes up anew to sunlight streaming throughout windows, the gradual illumination of the darkness becoming a metaphor for the hope that each new dawn brings that today will be the day that luck, fortunes and circumstances change for the better. But, for most, the day will end just as it ended the day before with those hopes and dreams temporarily dashed until the next morning’s rays of sun awaken them anew.
