In the early hours of the morning, in pitch blackness, a young man braves the searing wind and cold to walk along a highway in northern France. All that he owns is in a small tied-up handkerchief. He notices three fires in the distance and turns to follow them. As other shapes form in the darkness, he realizes he’s walking through a coal-mine. He decides to ask for work, though he is not optimistic that there will be any.

Approaching an old driver with a crippling cough that produces black phlegm, he introduces himself as Étienne Lantier, a mechanic. The driver tells him the pit before them is Le Voreux. As Étienne looks around, he ponders “the vagrant life he had been living for the past week in search of work” (7), ever since he was fired from the railway workshop for hitting his boss. The driver tells him there are many factories around but that most of them are laying off men for lack of work and that “[t]hings are in a bad way” (8). Étienne has been to most of the factories, all of which turned him away.