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“The supreme happiness of our lives is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves--say rather, loved in spite of ourselves.”
Victor Hugo was enthusiastic to illustrate this belief by writing Les Miserables – a novel spanning generations of readers with its universal appeal and authenticity. Jean Valjean, a man convicted for a numerous crimes, finds life and love in the arms of Cosette, the daughter of a destroyed woman named Fantine. The lives of these characters are intertwined by fateful events that eventually lead to a somber ending while it began with a bishop’s effort to redeem Valjean’s soul. Besides giving light to the humanity behind a criminal’s face, he succeeded, too, in tackling issues relevant to society – both of that time and ours.
Valjean epitomizes the two facets of a man: his struggling soul and his tired heart. He was a man who was wronged even before he wronged others; this only aggravated his already weary spirit. After having spent almost two decades in prison for trying to feed his nieces and nephews, he was welcomed gruffly to the world by scornful stares and reluctance. It was not hard for him then, to submit to the wills of his body – to steal even from those who do him good like Bishop Myriel. The moment he received forgiveness and generosity from the bishop, he is moved to change the course of his life. He led a life of goodness under pseudonyms to hide his true identity but in the end, his ghosts caught up with him in the form of an Inspector Javert.
Inspector Javert was another unforgettable character contained in the novel. If Valjean was a man unparalleled in his petty crimes and heroic exploits, he was man who could contend for his desire to do right and at the same time, destroy himself. He could be a man who became a victim of a life of misery and ended up causing misery on another’s life. His devotion to doing his duty clouded the real objective of his being a man of authority: providing a...