

Les Misérables points out that people like Jean Valjean will always be the exception to the rule.

After all, that's exactly what Jean Valjean does. To be fair, Hugo never says that a poor person can't work their way out of poverty. Victor Hugo couldn't stand the idea that so many people had fought and died for nothing, and he was determined to use art to do what war couldn't – create real social change.īy the time you get through this novel, you'll see just how much a society can work against its poorest and most vulnerable members. The poor continued to starve in the streets and the rich kept getting richer. (Guillotine.) Sure, they took care of that pesky monarchy-but only temporarily. The French Revolution of 1789 was supposed to take care of all that by bringing liberty and equality for all the people of France, but we all know how that ended. Published in 1862, it's a platform for Victor Hugo to rant against the injustice that's committed against the poorest and most vulnerable members of modern society. That's because Les Misérables isn't your everyday ex-con story There's practically no way to sum up this massive, gorgeous, breathtaking novel in a nutshell. And some rumination of the nature of mercy and justice.
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Plus there's a whole thing about some revolution. Along the way, he gets super rich, adopts a child named Cosette, and spends nearly his entire adult life trying to elude a tenacious policeman named Inspector Javert.

But hey! That's our job, so here goes: the novel is about how an ex-con named Jean Valjean tries to live a good life and help the people around him, even while he struggles to escape his criminal past. It's not easy to put Les Misérablesin a nutshell, considering that it's one of the longest novels ever written.
