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4.16 AVERAGE
4.16 AVERAGE
Hugo weaves a world like few others. He is one of the greatest writers, and among my most favorites right up there with Leo Tolstoy, Ayn Rand, Alexander Dumas, and J.R.R. Tolkien. He is truly magnificent in telling of this story, and bringing these characters to life.
The only part of the book that I did not enjoy is all the history behind the River Seine in France. I could have done with out that but alas, maybe he had to get it out of his system .... it was not as relevant to the story as I recall but then again, who am I to argue with Victor Hugo? I am sure I just couldn't appreciate the real meaning he was conveying....
Nonetheless, Les Miserables is the story of hope, love and new beginnings. It is the transformation of a horrible criminal to one of the most stand-up citizens of his country and it is about forgiveness of the self and redeeming oneself. It is about getting up and embracing life again even in your darkest moments. It is a classic that you will never regret picking up .....
I thought it would be a depressing classic that had transcended time because we love tragedy and often confuse depression with depth of spirit. I was excited to realize my mistake in the first few pages.
While this book explores the psychology of misery, moral degradation, and the contradictions of ethics (masterfully, I might add), it also highlights the value of kindness, redemption, and the light that penetrates the deepest darkness, reclaiming souls confused by misfortune and calamity.
The strong component of historical fiction that brings post-Waterloo France to life makes this book a masterpiece: beautiful and provocative.
The psychology of the characters is impeccable. I am grateful to myself for overcoming my preconceived notions and gifting myself this reading experience.
Victor Hugo stands before me as a man and a writer whose work and legacy we should appreciate as societies that aspire to be civilized. Precious.
When I first read this book, almost twenty years ago, I wasn't ready for it. Being, like most teenagers (well, like most people), dedicated to the idea that the pursuit of my happiness must be intrinsically good and meaningful, no matter at what cost, I was not only unappreciative of, but also morally opposed to, the idea that self-sacrifice made a person anything but a sucker. Now that I've grown up a bit, and developed a taste for ethical conflicts in my literature, I found Valjean's narrative riveting. It is the story of a man who does the right thing, over and over, with few rewards apart from the approval of his conscience.
Hugo spares no one in illustrating how hard it is--and how necessary--to do the right thing, acting against one's own happiness, with ever-diminishing returns. For example, in the first section of the book, the saintly Bishop of Digne, who eats only bread, sells nearly all his possessions, and sleeps without a fire to spare as much money as he can for the poor, has a single pleasure: eating his bread-and-water soup with a silver spoon. But he has to give up his silver to save Valjean from prison! Hugo's project is to show that The Right Thing is never just an abstraction, but the sacrifice of what you cherish most, with life and death consequences: if you do not sacrifice yourself, and sacrifice it all--your fortune, your comfort, your health, your happiness--an innocent man will be sentenced to the chain gang in your place; your child will sicken and die; your friends will be lined up and shot; more children will starve on the streets. So long as there is misery, Hugo says, every choice one makes is a choice between one's own happiness and the survival of others. Every choice. And it is true: we none of us do all that we can. And even for those who give nearly everything they have, it still is not enough.
There were many wonderful moments, many of which were wasted on me in my first reading, because back then I didn't actually take interest in anything (like most teenagers, and like most people in general). And here be some *spoilers*:
- The Battle of Waterloo. First time, I was so bored it took me two months to read eighty pages. This time, I Google-mapped the battle, and drew diagrams to follow troop movements....when I glanced at the topographical map, I cried "Oh no!" because I could see disaster coming! It was very, very exciting.
- Both times around, I loved the descriptions of clerical (the Bishop) and monastic (the nuns of the Petit-Picpus) life. But this time I was also interested in the descriptions of composting, the Paris sewers, and the Lifestyles of the Rich and Bourgeois.
- I've also spent about six weeks or so in Paris since reading the book, and it was a delight to follow the action on a map--more of a delight to say, We stayed in a hotel AT THE BARRICADE!
- The story of M. Maboeuf, the old man who loves his garden, his rare books, and the botanical book he wrote and published with woodcut illustrations--whose book sales drop, so he begins to starve, and no longer has the strength to water his precious plants--who joins the revolution when he must finally sell the plates for the woodcuts.... ooooooooh, I was bawling. That could have been me!
What was NOT a delight? Marius Pontmercy. What a prig! A law student who holds aloof from politics because he's in love.... I feel like I know too many people like that, and I'm sick to death of them all.
Lots of readers complain about Hugo's florid, long-winded prose. His writing is at its best when it carries the plot, or is whimsical and anecdotal--he does narrative really well. When he gets hold of an idea (liberty. God. The Century. The Sewer as the Butthole of Paris), he can't resist piling on learned metaphors, and classical citations, and every reference to such an idea in the Bible or in the memoirs of the Fathers of the French Revolution....pages and pages. But if he didn't go on like that, he wouldn't have given us truly amazing sentences like the following, describing a woman who's just learned that her lover has drowned in the sewer: "Mme. de Sourdis, when this death was described to her, called for her smelling salts, and forgot to weep through too much inhalation of salts. In such a case, there is no persisting love; the cloaca extinguishes it. Hero refuses to wash Leander's corpse. Thisbe stops her nose at sight of Pyramus."
