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Part 4, Chapter 13
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Out of This Furnace, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Immigration and American Identity
Industrialization and Destruction
The American Dream vs. Reality
Women’s Work
Capital vs. Labor
Summary
Analysis
Anna and John are the first to arrive for Kracha’s funeral, followed by Anna’s sons, Martin and Agnes with their new baby, Joe, Steve, Alice, Frank, Dorta, Steve Radilla, Andrej and Francka. Dobie is overwhelmed by “an endless stream of people for three exhausting days.” His brother, Mikie arrives from New York by train the morning of the funeral. It has been six years since the brothers have seen each other. On the way back from the train station, they discuss their jobs and lives up to that point. Mikie shows Dobie his expensive new camera and tells him that he has become fascinated with photography. Mikie now has a good job and makes more than Dobie does, and he does not have to worry about layoffs.
Kracha’s funeral demonstrates the still-strong family connections that have helped Braddock’s Slovak population endure generations of hardship. The funeral also brings Mikie back to Braddock for the first time in over five years, and his arrival sets up an extended conversation about the benefits and downsides of leaving the hardscrabble environment into which a person is born.
Themes
Mikie expresses disdain for the polluted environment of Braddock. “Even without the mills. I'd forgotten just how lousy this place really was,” he says. The brothers arrive home at Dobie’s house. Julie greets Mikie warmly and serves the guests food while they await the arrival of the priest. Francka’s two sons get into a drunken fight outside of the house, much to Dobie’s annoyance, although he surmises that since “Dzedo got stewed at more than one wake […] I guess he won't mind people getting stewed at his.” Dobie and Julie decide it is better if Mikie does not take pictures at the ceremony.
Bell uses Mikie’s disdain for returning to Braddock’s polluted environment to comment on the nature of place and the role it plays in shaping a person’s identity. More than anyone else in his family, Mikie works to sever himself, both physically and mentally, from Braddock, Pennsylvania. The presence of drunken fighting at a funeral for a man who was a functional alcoholic attests to some of the more unseemly aspects of the heritage that Mikie would like to leave behind.
Themes
The house is now full of guests. Food and dirty dishes litter the table and cigarette butts fill the sink. The guests carry on their own conversations. In the kitchen, Dorta talks in Slovak with a weathered old woman whom Dobie does not know. “Look at me, look at my hands, look at my feet. That is what America did for me,” she tells Dorta. “My husband sent for me and put me in a house and filled it with boarders, and for 30 years that's all I saw of America. Work, work, day and night.” In the Old Country, the woman’s relatives were excited for her to go to America. They told her she would live enough for two lives there. “I have, I have,” the woman sighs.
This conversation from an unnamed old Slovak woman succinctly summarizes the nightmarish reality of the American Dream as experienced by so many immigrant women. The mythos of the American Dream promises rewards in exchange for hard work, but this woman, along with Elena, Mary, and thousands of others like them, saw only the body- and soul-destroying misery of work without end. Here, Bell suggests that the dark side of the American reverence for work justifies deeply inhumane practices that view human beings as nothing more than labor vessels to be used and then discarded.
Themes
Someone then asks Dorta about the spring flooding. In March, the rains had come and turned Pittsburgh’s “Golden Triangle” and the surrounding mill towns into vast rivers. Dobie had looked down from his front porch to see the water rushing wider and wider. The flood shut down the mills and all essential services. Much of the First Ward was underwater. Those who could flee did so, while many others, mainly the Ward’s black residents, could not afford to flee. People paddled rowboats up and down Washington Street. The damage was immense. As Julie begins clearing the table, Father Kazincy arrives and starts the funeral ceremony.
Bell frequently discusses the environmental damage caused by American industry throughout the novel. In this passage, the loss of the thousands of trees felled to build the steel mills makes the topsoil vulnerable to heavy rains. The resulting floods devastate the First Ward and its poorest residents; those who have the most to lose are the ones who lose everything. American Industry touts its visions of progress, but the most vulnerable Americans must endure the downsides to this progress.
Themes
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The group buries Kracha beside Pauline. The burial reminds Dobie of the many times “he had stood on that hillside beside an open grave, listening to the voice of a priest and to women crying.” He had done so for his father, for his mother, and for Pauline. By late afternoon, all of the visitors have left. There is no food left for dinner, so Julie gives Dobie and Mikie money to go out for steak and French fries. As they walk, Mikie asks Dobie if he has any insurance on Kracha. Dobie responds that his mother, Elena, had purchased a $300 policy before she died, and Anna kept up the payments after Elena’s death. She gave it to Dobie when Kracha came to live with him and Julie.
In this section, Bell demonstrates how death defined so much of life in an American steel town. He highlights the importance of various types of life insurance, even for Slovak immigrants, a group of people who can scarcely afford insurance payments. To live in Braddock and the other steel towns is to expect death so frequently that residents pay for the right to deal with death’s financial hardships.
Themes
The conversation then turns to work, and Mikie wants to know about Dobie’s union activities and discusses how it feels to be a native returning to Braddock. While he admits that New York has its downsides, they do not compare to those of his hometown. “It's not only the dirt. It looks so damn poor and neglected, as though the people didn't give a damn what the place they lived in looked like,” Mikie adds, “it must be one of the ugliest places in God's creation.” Dobie agrees, but says he is just used to the surroundings. Plus, although he has a trade, it is largely limited to the steel mill, and he does not know where else he could live but Braddock. Even the threat of atomization does not really faze him. Most importantly, however, Dobie feels at home in Braddock.
Mikie and Dobie’s extended conversation about the costs and benefits of remaining in Braddock versus moving away is Bell’s way of conducting a dialogue with himself. Bell was born in Braddock but moved away in his early twenties. Mikie seems to be Bell’s way of justifying his move, because Braddock is polluted, dingy, poor, and the only opportunity it offers is a lifetime of poorly compensated, backbreaking labor in the blast furnaces. Dobie, on the other hand, is the part of Bell that cannot deny how much Braddock is a part of his identity. It may be an ugly, polluted, hopeless place, but Dobie hardly notices those downsides anymore because he is so used to them. For Dobie (and Bell), Braddock is simply home, and home is not an easy place to run from.
Themes
Dobie tells Mikie that the union still offers potential for a better future, and that he would someday like to move out of Braddock proper and into the new houses on the hills. Mikie agrees that wanting a better life is what keeps a man going. “I want too many things,” he says, including new clothes, extra money, the ability to see shows, and to practice photography more often. “You really ought to be allowed to pick your own place to be born in. Considering how it gets into you,” Mikie states. Dobie admits it is a nice idea.
Bell is both Mikie and Dobie: he is a part of his hometown, but he also left it to find better opportunities elsewhere. Yet whileBell left his hometown, Braddock never left him. This conversation between Dobie and Mikie is Bell’s way of coming to terms with how his place of birth in many ways defines his identity, both for good and for ill. The right to choose your own birthplace can never become a thing in reality, but Bell asks the question because so many people, both in real life and in his novel, let their birthplaces define and shape their lives. Whether they do this consciously or unconsciously, and whether they can break the cycle once they become aware of it, are essential questions Bell asks his readers to ponder. These questions shape the reality of the American Dream as different groups of people experience it. For the Dexters, for example, being born in America is a blessing. For many Slovaks, however, it is a curse.
Themes
Dobie and Mikie arrive back home and briefly talk about Dobie’s days in Detroit and the quality of the local Burlesque shows. Julie fixes the steak and potatoes and wonders what Kracha’s dog thinks about his master’s death. Mikie takes pictures of Dobie and Julie before he leaves for New York. He urges Julie to keep peeling the potatoes while he photographs her and to think of something pleasant. She thinks of her wedding day. As the day ends, the last light fades; “then it was dark on the hill where Kracha lay.” On the horizon’s rim, the flickering light of the Bessemer furnaces faintly illuminates the sky.
Mikie photographs Julie performing her housework as a way of capturing his subject in her natural element, which again underscores the extent to which work is a crucial aspects of women’s identities in this context. Despite his accumulated disdain for Braddock, Mikie still feels a deep connection to the people he left behind when he moved to New York. Mikie’s interest in photography allows him to preserve images of his birthplace as souvenirs to take with him when he leaves it again.
Themes
