by Victor Hugo, 1862, translated by Norman Denny
1200 pages. What a great book!!! Recommended by Sandy Calhoun.
Jean Val Jean – ex-convict, imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread for his starving nephews, who changes into a saint after Bishop Digne gives him his silver candlesticks too, rather than having him arrested for stealing his silver. Jean Val Jean becomes Monsieur Madelaine and makes black glass ornaments and becomes wealthy but kind and benevolent to all, giving to the poor, treating his employees well and building hospitals and schools.
Javert – the rigid perfectionist policeman recognizes Madelaine as the ex-convict, Jean Val Jean, when he lifts a heavy cart off a man who was under it. He is going to turn him in, but the precinct says they have caught Jean Val Jean in another city. Jean Val Jean can choose to let an innocent man go to jail for him so he can continue on doing good, or he can turn himself in during the court proceedings.
He spent a whole evening in torment struggling with what to do:
Thus he strove in torment as another man had striven eighteen hundred years before him, the mysterious Being in whom were embodied all the saintliness and suffering of mankind. He too while the olive-leaves quivered around him, had again and again refused the terrible cup of darkness urged upon him beneath a sky filled with stars.
He decides to turn himself in and makes a long difficult journey to the other city and presents himself as Jean Val Jean in the nick of time and saves the innocent man. He is imprisoned but escapes after saving a sailor hanging from a mast. He journeys to find Cosette at the Thenardier’s inn, the wicked family that Fantine left her little daughter with to care for her while she went to look for work. Fantine gave up her teeth and became a prostitute in order to send Thenardier’s money to care for her. They weren’t caring for her – they treated her as a slave. Jean had promised Fantine he would get Cosette. He did – he saved her and brought her to Paris where they lived in a tenement at first and then a convent. After a few years, they leave the convent and life in Paris.
Marius, a wealthy, young man, falls in love with Cosette.
The Thenardier’s have also moved to Paris and are living in the tenement. They have disowned their 3 sons; one is Gavroche, a happy-go-lucky sweet street urchin, who at one time saves 2 little boys who are his little brothers and he didn’t even know it. He finds food for them and lets them sleep in his elephant statue in the park. The Thenardier’s are petty, evil criminals.
Jean Val Jean saves Marius’ life during the revolution of 1832. He lifts him up from the street, escapes into the Paris sewer system and carries him on his back for miles until he is safe. Javert catches them once they are out of the sewer. But Jean Val Jean had the chance to kill Javert as a spy during the battle and he let him go, so Javert lets Jean Val Jean go also, after delivering Marius safely to his grandfather’s house. Javert cannot reconcile what he’s done by letting Jean Val Jean go, so he commits suicide by jumping into the river Seine.
Marius’ grandfather forgives him for being anti-royalist and lets him marry Cosette. Marius and Cosette tell Jean Val Jean they want him to live with them. He refuses. He tells Marius he is an ex-convict. Marius does not know the whole story, he does not know who saved him. Jean Val Jean doesn’t tell him. Marius doesn’t want Cosette to see him so makes it more and more difficult. Marius is visited by Thenardier who thinks he can extort great sums from Marius by telling him what he knows about Jean Val Jean. Thenardier ends up telling Marius that 1., Javert committed suicide (Marius thought Jean Val Jan killed him), 2., Jean Val Jean and Monsieur Madelaine are one in the same. He even has newspaper articles to prove it. Thenardier thinks Jean Val Jean murdered a man and carried him through the sewer to dump his body in the Seine. Thenardier thought this was the way Val Jean was able to get 600,000 francs to give to Cosette. He shows Marius a piece of the cloth he cut from the man Val Jean was carrying in the sewer. (Thenardier was the one who had a key to the grate. He was hiding in the sewer to escape from Javert, and he let Val Jean out, thinking the man he was carrying was dead, not knowing it was Marius.) So Marius realizes that Val Jean is the most benevolent of men and he grabs Cosette and they race to see Val Jean. He is close to death from a broken heart. He dies happy though, with Cosette and Marius kneeling at his sides. All is forgiven, all is love.
Beautiful story! Interspersed among the tale is history of Waterloo, French politics, Parisian sewer system, convents. Sometimes I got bogged down but it was worth it.
Here are some of my favorite parts:
To the question, was it possible for Napoleon to win this battle, our answer is, No. Because of Wellington? Because of Blucher? No. Because of God.
For Napoleon to have won Waterloo would have been counter to the tide of the nineteenth century. Other events were preparing in which he had no part to play, and their opposition to himself had long been apparent.
It was time for that great man to fall.
His excessive weight in human affairs was upsetting the balance; his huge stature overtopped mankind. That there should be so great a concentration of vitality, so large a world contained within the mind of a single man, must in the end have been fatal to civilization. The time had come for the Supreme Arbiter to decide. Probably a murmur of complaint had come from those principles and elements on which the ordering of all things, moral and material, depends. The reek of blood, the over-filled grave yard, the weeping mother, these are powerful arguments. When the earth is overcharged with suffering, a mysterious lament rising from the shadows is heard in the heights.
Napoleon had been impeached in Heaven, and his fall decreed; he was troublesome to God.
Waterloo was not a battle but a change in the direction of the world.
In “The Broken Shackle,” (22-gun salutes when ships come in):
It has been estimated that in ceremonial of this kind, salutes to royalty and other distinguished personages, the opening and closing of harbours, guns fired at daybreak and sunset from ships and fortresses throughout the civilized world, some 150,000 cannons are uselessly discharged every 24 hours. At six francs a time this amounts to 900,000 francs a day, or 300 millions a year. A detail in passing. Meanwhile the poor continue to die of hunger.
Gavroche was one of the most inspiring characters. He had every reason to be mean, bitter and evil; abandoned and unloved by the evil Thenardier’s (his parents!); forced to live on the streets, going days without food. He wasn’t though – he was happy, loving, caring, charming, witty – helpful – sacrificially so. He let his little brothers, who he didn’t know were his brothers (the evil Thernardier only liked her 2 daughters – no one else – and she had sold the 2 youngest boys) – he let them have his food after he took them under his wing on the streets. He gave a freezing street girl his muffler and he went cold. He saved his Dad from getting caught escaping from prison – by climbing up a drain pipe to the prison wall where he was stuck – and didn’t even get a thank you. He gives a bag of money Jean Val Jean gives to a street criminal he laid out who had attacked him – Gavroche throws it over a hedge to a poor old man. It was enough money he could have never been hungry. He helps someone lift up their horse who had fallen. He helps wherever he can. He walks and sings. He died at the battle in the revolution-he had gone outside the barricade to gather up ammunition from the dead men. (“They fired again and again at him and missed.”) When he was finally hit, a cry went up from the barricade:
A Paris urchin touching the pavement is a giant drawing strength from his mother earth. Gavroche had fallen only to rise again. He sat upright with blood streaming down his face, and raising his arms above his head and gazing in the direction of the shot, he began to sing:
I have fallen, I swear
It’s the fault of Voltaire,
or else this hard blow,
Has been dealt by –
He did not finish the verse. A second ball from the same musket cut him short. This time he fell face down and moved no more. His gallant soul had fled.
When Val Jean is carrying Marius through the sewer:
The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.
Wayne’s version of this:
As the eye dilates to admit more light in the darkness, so the soul dilates to admit more God in suffering.
Wayne’s version of the above quote, which I like even better. Wayne hasn’t read the book, but he still quotes this line as above even though it has been 12 years since I told him the original quote. (I’m actually typing this on 3/17/21, from by book report notebook.)
When Val Jean is dying and blessing Marius and Cosette, he says:
Love one another always. There is nothing else that matters in this world except love.
Before that:
He walked steadily to the wall, brushing aside Marius and the doctor, who sought to help him, and took down the little copper crucifix which was hanging there. Then he returned to his chair, moving like a man in the fullness of health, and, putting the crucifix on the table, said in a clear voice: ‘He is the great martyr.’
Victor Hugo is a genius!! This book was written in 1862 and covers the time period from 1815 until 1832. Historical fiction.