LES MISERABLES
Two of the most important reasons for reading fiction is that we learn human nature, and we learn of the various kinds of human personalities. Victor Hugo's Les Miserables fulfills those requirements marvelously.
PLOT SUMMARY
The story is lengthy, 1200 pages, but worth reading. You can omit some of Hugo's tangents, such as the details of the Battle of Waterloo and the engineering details of the underground Paris sewer system. All very interesting, to be sure, they do not advance the plot. Read them if you wish, but don't feel guilty if you do not. However, do read the unabridged version, not the 400 page abridgement. Too much valuable material is omitted. The novel is easy to read. Hugo wrote in French, but I have always found that French translates easily into English.
Notwithstanding the length, the plot is easy to follow. For merely stealing a loaf of bread, the protagongist, Jean Valjean ends up serving 19 horrid years in the galleys. Upon release, his "yellow ticket-of-leave marks him as a social outcast. Only a bishop treats him kindly, but Valjean returns the favor be stealing his silver candlesticks. Caught again, he expects to return to the galleys, but the bishop saves him by telling the police that the candlesticks were not stolen, because "I gave them to him."
That is a famous scene and herewith an example of why, as T. S. Eliot said, we should all read some of the same books. When our third daughter was three years old, we visited a priest friend for a weekend. Upon return, my wife discovered a silver spoon in Cathy's belongings. We immediately returned it along with an apologetic note comparing Cathy to Jean Valjean. The priest, educated in the days when priests were well educated, wrote back to say that "Cathy did not steal the spoon, I gave it to her." Perfect response. Reading some of the same great works of literature does bring people together and makes communicating more delightful.
Valjean decides not to report to his parole officer, a criminal offense, but taking an assumed name, he becomes Monsiuer Madeleine, a highly successful businessman. Along the way, he adopts Cosette, a mistreated orphan girl. Unfortunately the local police official, Inspector Javert, suspects that Madeleine is actually Valjean. Jalvert is all justice, no mercy. Valjean and Cosette escape. After many adventures, Cosette falls in love with Marius, a student revolutionary. The climax is reached during the unsuccessful revolution of 1830. Javert is revealed to be a police spy. Valjean has an opporunity to kill him, but spares his life. Marius is shot. Valjean, who had compelled his daughter to leave Marius, saves the young man by carrying him through the sewers of Paris while being pursued by Javert. Valjean is eventually captured but Javert, makes an out of character decision. He gives Valjean his freedom. Tortured by guilt for doing the right thing, Javert ends his life by throwing himself into the River Seine.
That's the plot outline. Outline is right. To describe the entire plot would fill several pages. But we are dealing with more than a series of adventures. Hugo includes penetrating insights into human nature, perhaps more than I have ever read in a single novel. Herewith examples, along with my commentary:
"The first proof of a priest, above all a bishop, is poverty." Personally, I can understand the need for a priest or bishop to live in comfortable surroundings, one amendable to office work and for receiving visitors. But it can easily go too far. I recall Pope Pius XII in the 1950s cautioning Jesuits not to take expensive vacations. Priests should be careful not to give scandal by living too well.
"He was superiorly skeptical of all things, which gave him great authority with lesser souls." "Skepticism, that dry rot of the intellect, had left him without a whole thought in his head." As a former university professor, I know how easily skeptical professors corrupt students. A cautious suspicion is admirable but chronic skepticism is intellectually damaging. G. K. Chesterton said that if he had to chose between doubting everything and believing everything, he would choose belief. I concur.
"Fantine is wonderful, always amazed at ordinary things." Contrast that with the skeptic. God delights in ordinary things, and even the recurrence of everyday events such as a sunrise; I dare say it is a sign of goodness to do likewise.
When Madeleine funded several local institutions, "town gossips said, "He's simply out to make money." When it was found that he enriched the community before enriching himself, they said "He has political ambitions." Again, contrast those reactions with the skeptical attitude. The envious always find fault with charity.
"A man who is not loved preys like a vulture on the lives of other men." That explains a lot of jealousy.
"It is our belief that if the soul were visible to the eye every member of the human species would be seen to correspond to some species of the animal world and a truth scarcely perceived by the thinkers would be readily confirmed, namely that from the oyster to the eagle, from the swine to the tiger, all animals are found in men and each of them exists in some men, sometimes several at a time." That forces me to think of my particular animal self. Sorry, I'll keep that image private. I'm sure that my many adversaries could do a more honest job of it. I can't resist matching persons I have known to their animal likeness. My seventh grade school teacher is a rabid rhinoceros. I picture many former students as sloth hanging from trees. Jackals conduct business in Congress.
"Give a youngster what is superfluous, deprive him of what is needful, and you have an urchin." Numerous contemporary American youth speak to that truth. Personally, among the superfluous items I include video games.
Expanding on the above, Hugo wrote: "The well-to-do young man is offered a hundred dazzling and crude distractions--occupations for the baser nature at the expense of everything that is high-minded and sensitive." We know that the Holy Spirit speaks in "still, soft, whispers." That Holy voice is not likely to be heard by those engaged in noisy distractions. Furthermore, the Holy Spirit does not wait for us to be ready to hear Him speak. We must be alert in order to hear Him.
"Poverty is like everything else. In the end it becomes bearable." Marmaladov, in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, said about the same thing, "Men are scoundels; they can get used to anything." This is happening in our inner cities. A culture of poverty takes over. People become used to penury. They quit striving, and are willing to become wards of the state.
"Contemplation carried to this [excessive] point becomes a form of sloth." I like that. Even a good practice can become sinful.
END OF PART ONE
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