Verdict on Les Misérables

The thing that surprises me the most about Les Misérables is how much I can hate a book, and like it at the same time.

I've already covered all my reasons for hating this book in previous posts (e.g. here), so I won't bore you with that for now. I will spend a few moments explaining what I like about it.

In a previous posting (which I can't find atm), I had mentioned that I prefer books that challenge me and point me towards transcendence. This does in fact happen in Les Misérables. Although I spent a lot of time complaining that Jean Valjean is a dull bore (and for most of the novel he is), the last chapters and pages turn him about into someone far more sympathetic. The struggle he has with jealousy, the superhuman struggle he endures to rescue Marius, and the overwhelming, shame Valjean later feels in the presence of his son-in-law make for an excellent illustration of overcoming oneself. That shame also makes for an excellent indictment of the legal system of the novel. (Whether this accurately approached the legal system of contemporary France, I am not qualified to say, but I don't see any reason to believe otherwise.)

Javert's suicide is also well-executed. I have never seen Javert's death dwelt on for very long in film, and perhaps that's appropriate, since even in the novel his death occupies only ten pages of a 1260-page text. Yet these pages are filled with insight into Javert's character, which explain much better for me what I had in the past never understood very well. Elliott comented in the post above that Javert is justice without mercy. When he finally learns mercy, and he is convinced of the rightness of what he is done, he finds himself trapped and confused. This passage in particular tickled my imagination:

[Javert] had a superior, M. Gisquet; he had scarcely thought, until today, of that other superior, God.

This new chief, God, he felt unawares, and was perplexed thereat.

He had lost his bearings in this unexpected presence; he did not know what to do with this superior; he who was not ignorant that the subordinate is bound always to yield, that he ought neither to disobey, nor to blame, nor to discuss, and that, in presence of a superior who astonishes him too much, the inferior has no resource but resignation.

But how manage to send in his resignation to God?

How indeed? it explains a great deal.

The other aspect I enjoyed was the reconciliation between Marius and his grandfather, M. Gillenormand. One of the more entertaining parts is where M. Gillenormand has to run out of the room to shout at a serving lady his imprecations against the Revolution, because he is too afraid that Marius will leave him, if he says them in his presence.

So it is, in the end, an inspiring story.