How Green Was My Valley Analysis

Following the seventeenth century, the political, economic, and social struggles that transformed the past into the present dealt with different peoples and cultures but originated from the same being: industrialization.  This powerful being caused romanticism in decreasing the value of human life, the Cold War with advances in military weapons technology, and new imperialism through global market competition.  Kagan explored industrialism’s effects by describing pre-industrialism, ancien regime, side-by-side with the drastically different industrialized societies.  In contrast, the film presents not only the two extremes but everything in-between.  How Green Was My Valley further illustrates the negative effects of industrialization while also revealing conflicted interests that existed within laborers, neglected by the survey.  Textbook history described systematic changes of society because of the rapid production of capital goods in the context of events and species of thought.  However, in the film, the change is more gradual and does not fully separate from the ideas of the ancien regime.  Because of industrialization’s disguises and change over time, the townspeople often did not realize its doom until it was too late.

            Darkness hidden in industrialism did not present itself overnight but resembled a great evil masked with an innocent face.  The opening scene of the film features a mass of exhausted but content men peacefully strolling home to a dinner table full of food.  This beginning shows the standards of life before the effects of industrialism set in on the Welsh town.  Kagan described pre-industrialist society, in which the economic unit was the household.  Fathers of each house controlled the money in their family and they depended on each other to survive, such as when Mr. Morgan hands out each child’s allowance after one day’s work.  Students infer that utter dependence upon a limited environment always changing based on wealth, death, or illness is unstable and undesirable.  The film emphasizes its slightly neglected effects: family unity.  At first, the emergence of mines and factories cooperated alongside community customs.  When jobs in the valley became rare, Huw Morgan, the protagonist, loses his brothers, Ianto and Davy, as they decide to move to America where they thought to find more career opportunities.  Industrialism un-specialized labor, defining “skilled worker” as anyone with physical strength.  Thus, industrialization ultimately pulled families apart, sneakily putting the blame on immigrants.

            Kagan stressed the distance industrialism spread families, all competing for the same jobs.  Driven by the need for financial support, Kagan doubted the ability of love to thrive in heavily industrialized areas.  Huw’s valley, in the efforts of avoiding industrial selfishness, continues to cooperate.  After Mrs. Morgan confronts the workers when they are unionizing, Huw falls into the river, crippling his legs.  The men that were previously against Mr. Morgan and his family all rush to save Huw.  Though the wage cuts and loss of power at work are firmly in their minds, the community still puts the well-being of others before conflicts at the mine.  Two drunken but clever friends of Mr. Morgan, Dai Bando and Cyfartha, avenge Huw’s savage beating at school by throwing a well-acted punch or two at his teacher.  This also demonstrates the village members’ surviving loyalty to each other.  A cave-in at the mine trapped Huw’s father, unable to be found as other workers evacuated.  Mr. Gruffydd, Dai Bando, and Huw make the dangerous descent in search for Mr. Morgan but cannot save him.  Their heroic attempt proved the strong love for their neighbors.  Pre-industrialist ideas continued to exist even after the initial impact of factories.

            Proletarianization was defined in the survey as the entry of workers into a wage economy and their gradual loss of significant ownership of the means of production.  The film demonstrated the significant loss of trust between the higher and lower classes due to proletarianization.  On August 3rd, the first wage cut of the mining company stirred controversy within the laborers and Morgan family.  Capitalism’s also gradual emergence because of private industrialization led to the success of some at the expense of others.   Their first wage cut also defined the new social contract between the laborers and the factory workers.  Discovering that they no longer held any power, the Morgan sons felt the need to “form a union of all the men” to fight back.  The film illustrates how angry workers first created labor unions as wages steadily depended on competition, when before there was none.  Conservatives, such as Mr. Morgan, regarded this fight against capitalism as “socialist nonsense” that would lead to more hurt than help.  Accustomed to following the orders of authority, conservatives could not accept their right to revolt but clung to their expectation to obey. Industrialism did not create new, robotic workers but tried to transform the ancien regime’s peoples to follow new rules, sometimes leaving behind those who could not keep up.  After Mr. Morgan finally goes to the factory owners about the wage cut, they indirectly punished him by ordering he stand in the rain “like a dog.”  Factory workers lost not only power over their equipment and products but their personal dignity and freedom.  At school, Huw was severely beaten by his teacher for fighting, while the other, richer student left unscathed.  This shows that the upper class acted increasingly disdainful towards the poor, with no concerns about their needs or challenges.  Industrialization not only weakened bonds between family members but the relationship of the elites and the workers. 

            With the increasing amount of discontent among the lower classes, rising in social status became the only way to free workers from their troubles.  Mr. Gruffydd rejected Angharad’s love, hoping for her a better life.  The intimate scene brings to reality the falling quality of life for townsfolk compared to the elite.  Of all the villagers in her time period, Angharad was one of a select few that had one rare opportunity to move up in social class, and the most important goal of the lower class was to get out.  Though doubtful of his education’s practicality, Mr. Morgan urged Huw to escape the life of a worker with his schooling, but Huw clings to his family values and becomes a miner.  To Huw, staying together as a family prioritizes over moving out of his dreaded lower class.  This perspective of a young child differs from the survey’s dismal portrayal of injustice cast upon the poor.  Unlike Kagan, Huw represents a participant of industrialism that does not immediately catch on to the all-powerful value of wealth and status as life’s main goal.  The other aspects of class movement were further explored when Huw visits Angharad in her mansion after she married the wealthy Iestyn Evans.  Her depression clarified the emotional distress of making a change history students would see as the luckiest event of a peasant’s life.  When only focusing on the financial and political benefits of upper class (wealth, free of labor, ability to vote) the personal values of the lower class are many times ignored.

            How Green Was My Valley additionally stressed the ruin of families and peace within social classes while also revealing the worker’s sincere efforts to avoid industrialization’s influence.  The film uncovered the gradual process of mines and factories by moving away from the general perspective and down to an individual family: the Morgans.  Each scene presented challenges in the transition from pre to industrial era.  Unfortunately, no matter how hard the Morgans and other villagers fought, the end result remained the same: an obliterated community.  Industrialization was neither a blink-of-an-eye shift completely conforming everyone with its flood of factories nor a heavenly blessing of innovative production methods but a stealthy movement whose chaos crept upon the working class at first undetected but then plaguing them relentlessly.