Blog Post #5 Ali Cepon Les Misérables

Ali Cepon

Ms.Molyneaux

H. English, Per.B

May 14, 2015

Les Misérables

            The title Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables reveals a lot about the novel, one example is the common theme of suffering. “A fatal word, Les Misérables” can be described as one who is “very depraved, very corrupt, very vile, very hateful, but… fall[s] without becoming degraded” (205). The main character Jean Valjean, is a very good example of this word. When Jean is young he loses his mother to “a milk fever” and “his father… was killed by a fall from a tree. Jean Valjean now had but one relative left, his sister, a widow with seven children” (22). He has no money, no food, and is left alone with eight hungry mouths to feed. He suffers to meet this goal, and he steals to in order to accomplish this goal. This puts him in more suffering because he now has to spend “nineteen years in the galleys” (16). Jean Valjean suffers in his life multiple times, but he isn’t the only one. Jean Valjean’s adopted daughter, Cosette, also suffers a lot through out her life. Her mother leaves her with a family that treats her like a charity case, she becomes “The Lark” of the town, and she ends up growing up without ever knowing her mother (47). Through out this book more and more characters are introduced. All of these characters suffer in their own way, but the strong one’s, like Cosette and Jean Valjean, never degrade when they fall. Everyone in the world suffers, even today. We all can be called Misérable, but we have to decide if that will change who we are.