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
Dobie walks home from work across the scraggly hill towards his home. It is ugly terrain, scarred by lost topsoil, pitted with holes from desperate people scratching for coal, and caved in at the side thanks to a collapsed mine from the previous century. Yet Dobie’s neighbor, Old Peg-Leg Cassidy, claims he can remember “when the hill was lovely with trees, when there was a picnic grove on its top with tables and benches under the trees and a pavilion for dancing.” Dobie himself even remembers the beautiful hawthorn and elderberry bushes that dotted the hill in his youth. The hill’s transformation from a place of life and beauty into barren scrubland reminds Dobie that industry and progress are destructive forces. He likens industry to the destructive “giants’ of mythology and workers to the “dwarves” who actually built things.
In this passage, Bell comments on the paradoxical nature of both American industrialization and the American Dream itself. The scars of American industry have left the hill near Dobie’s home scarred and ugly, yet that industry employed people and gave them life. The Depression further scarred the hill when it drove people to pick it to pieces searching for coal. Bell suggests that the beauty of the land is nearly incompatible with human thriving, at least under the nation’s current economic systems. He struggles with this contradiction throughout the novel.
Themes
As Dobie approaches his house on the hillside, he sees his neighbors, the noisy Cassidy clan, led by the cantankerous patriarch, Peg-Leg, who is named after the peg that replaced a leg he lost in the steel mill years ago. Cassidy is perched on his porch and waves at Dobie. Dobie’s house is built into the hillside and offers fine views of Braddock, North Braddock, the river and hills, and Kennywood Park on clear days. Kracha and his dog are brooding on the hillside while Julie waits in the kitchen.
The presence of the next-door Cassidy clan is another contrast to the Braddock of years past, when Irish and Slovak residents chose to live apart from each other in different parts of the city. This section points to how the passage of time can have a liberalizing effect on social attitudes. Similarly, the passage of time has also allowed an immigrant steelworkers’ grandson to live in a home on a hillside with a beautiful view.
Themes
When Dobie enters the kitchen, Julie tells him that he got a letter from Agnes. As he fishes for the letter opener, Dobie gazes at Julie, freshly bathed and wearing a clean dress. “Mrs. Dobrejcak, you are not only the prettiest girl in North Braddock,” he tells her, “but you are also the smartest.” They kiss and then Dobie reads Agnes’s letter. She plans to marry a widower named Martin in December, while Anna is having a get-together in a few weekends and asks Dobie and Julie to come along with Kracha. Agnes is also planning to make tomato butter and says that if Dobie wants some, she will get extra tomatoes. Dobie is somewhat skeptical that Agnes’s marriage to Martin will work out, but he is willing to give them the benefit of doubt.
Dobie and Julie’s domestic life is by far the most stable of all of the couples Bell features in the novel. Much of this is due to the mutual respect they have for each other, in particular the fact that Dobie values Julie’s work and intelligence. In addition, their family connections continue to be strong, some strains notwithstanding, and they still provide a supportive social network through good and bad times.
Themes
Soon, Kracha enters into the kitchen, and Dobie asks how his day went. He grumbles that Julie keeps him on a short leash. Julie claims that the house would be a constant mess is she did not keep an eye on him and his “flounder-footed dog.” These occasional squabbles aside, Kracha has proved to be no real trouble. Having lived with people most of his adult life, Kracha largely keeps to himself. He spends his days “contemplating his garden's superiority to Peg-Leg Cassidy's miserable patch of clay and weeds,” yelling at his hens for not laying enough eggs, and, on pension paydays, treating himself to moonshine. His pension averaged about $78, or three months’ pension. Dobie charges him $20 a month in rent.
Though he is still cantankerous, Kracha largely resigns himself to his status as a dependent who nonetheless contributes to Dobie and Julie’s wellbeing through his pension payments. His vices remain intact (he continues to drink, for example), but Kracha’s life with Julie and Dobie marks the moment in the novel where he is finally “tamed” and becomes a manageable boarder. Having grown calmer with age, he finds a level of peace with himself and his family members.
Themes
Get the entire Out of This Furnace LitChart as a printable PDF.
Kracha also grows to like talking with Julie, and over time she learns about the various events and people that have passed through his life over the years, including his years on the railroad, working in the mills and the butcher shop, Zuska, and Dobie’s parents. He also enjoys observing the neighboring Cassidy girls, who fight constantly. On one occasion, one sister threw the other out the house for fifteen minutes wearing nothing but her underwear. Kracha “pitied Dobie for having been at work and missing that.” He evens befriends Old Peg-Leg, despite his long antipathy for the Irish. Julie lets him own chickens and a dog (whom he names Hussar) but balks at his desire to bring in a pig and a goat.
Kracha’s relationship with Julie marks a turning point for him, in which he finally treats a woman who cares for him with the respect that she deserves. With Mary gone, Julie becomes a sort of surrogate daughter for Kracha, and he develops a relationship with her that, while not without conflict, is tenderer than his relationship ever was with his own daughters. Kracha’s budding friendship with Peg-Leg is also a symbolic gesture of unity from a man who endured disrespect from Irish foremen throughout his working life.
Themes
