Literary Discussion of Selected Passages

[BienvenuJDC]

I'd like to begin a thread discussing particular passages from the work, Les Miserables. Please provide some input about your favorite selections for discussion. We will choose a selection from suggestions and an appointed time to begin the discussion.

[jakobmuller]

I am currently reading the part when Jean (mayor Madeilene) is debating whether or not to turn himself in to save the man in Arras who was mistaken as him. I love this book so far, and I haven't ever read anything which descreibes everything so perfectly.

[BienvenuJDC]

I am currently reading the part when Jean (mayor Madeilene) is debating whether or not to turn himself in to save the man in Arras who was mistaken as him. I love this book so far, and I haven't ever read anything which descreibes everything so perfectly.

Oh...wow..I found that portion extremely intense. I've always described Hugo's writings as being with excruciating detail. I wouldn't mind going back to visit some of the intense life changing experiences in Valjean's life.
The description of his 19 year sentence
Billows and Shadows
The experience with Bienvenu
The meeting of petit Gervais
The Champmathieu Affair

Valjean shows that not only is he physically strong, but spiritually (not in a religious way...although that element is there too)

Intense!!

[Janine]

Bienvenu thanks for starting this thread. I love the book and I love the musical based on it. I have to admit I have not read the books in years, so my mind, no doubt will be a bit foggy when it comes to specifics. I should refresh my memory by perhaps looking up a list of the characters online. Otherwise my posting any comments will sound totally lame.

I agree with you last statement completely:


Valjean shows that not only is he physically strong, but spiritually (not in a religious way...although that element is there too)

Intense!!

I believe this is the very the essense/theme of the novel and also the idea of such unselfish love.

[BienvenuJDC]

I'd like to start with an examination of Billows and Shadows

http://www.online-literature.com/victor_hugo/les_miserables/22/

It's not a long passage. Due to busy schedules, this will be for this discussion all week.

[PoeticPassions]

Great thread, Bienvenu.... Also, this is a great passage. This passage really encapsulated what the novel is about... the idea that society suffocates the individual, it drowns it in its indifference, in the laws that supposedly seek "justice" but do not look for context. There is no mercy (the higher form of justice in the eyes of the bishop), only harsh punishment that looks not at society but only individual "sin." Yet it is the society one lives in that creates monsters of men or forces people into crime.

This is just teriffic:

"Oh, implacable march of human societies! Oh, losses of men and of souls on the way! Ocean into which falls all that the law lets slip! Disastrous absence of help! Oh, moral death!

The sea is the inexorable social night into which the penal laws fling their condemned. The sea is the immensity of wretchedness.

The soul, going down stream in this gulf, may become a corpse. Who shall resuscitate it?"


Who will resuscitate it? Will it be someone like Jean Valjean or the Bishop? Will it be love and kindness? Compassion? God? Or is God just the embodiment of love? Can individuals change society as society changes individuals? Or must there be a collective movement? A revolution of the soul and of the system in which we are enslaved? A moral englightenment? Knowledge or education?

and so on...

[jinjang]

That is a powerful passage. I read the book three times but I do not remeber that part. It must have been buried in my memory out of the great extensive book.

May I participate in? But, I will have to read where exactly it is in the book.
I am in...without neglecting Wintry Peacock.

[BienvenuJDC]

Sounds great!! :D

[jinjang]

I think this translation is a lot better than the one I have at home.


This passage really encapsulated what the novel is about... the idea that society suffocates the individual, it drowns it in its indifference, in the laws that supposedly seek "justice" but do not look for context. There is no mercy (the higher form of justice in the eyes of the bishop), only harsh punishment that looks not at society but only individual "sin." Yet it is the society one lives in that creates monsters of men or forces people into crime.

A great summary of it, PoeticPassions!

When he fell, he first felt apprehensive with disbelief and horror as described in the quote:"What a spectre is that retreating sail! He gazes and gazes at it frantically."

This part below describes how the population and society treat harshly the convicted person. Even the close relatives abandon him and treat him with shame or look away with shame and, eventually shun and forget him.

"He is in the tremendous sea. Under foot he has nothing but what flees and crumbles. The billows, torn and lashed by the wind, encompass him hideously; the tossings of the abyss bear him away; all the tongues of water dash over his head; a populace of waves spits upon him; confused openings half devour him; every time that he sinks, he catches glimpses of precipices filled with night; frightful and unknown vegetations seize him, knot about his feet, draw him to them; he is conscious that he is becoming an abyss, that he forms part of the foam; the waves toss him from one to another; he drinks in the bitterness; the cowardly ocean attacks him furiously, to drown him; the enormity plays with his agony. It seems as though all that water were hate."

Here the convict is trying to maintain some innocence and the part almost reminds me the time just before the Darth Vader's downfall to the dark side: "He tries to defend himself; he tries to sustain himself; he makes an effort; he swims. He, his petty strength all exhausted instantly, combats the inexhaustible."

Then, he looks up in the sky, seeking angels and God for help, who do not save him.

Did he see a glimpse of hope here?: "He feels himself buried in those two infinities, the ocean and the sky, at one and the same time: the one is a tomb; the other is a shroud."

Then, finally he travels to the dark side:"Around him darkness, fog, solitude, the stormy and nonsentient tumult, the undefined curling of those wild waters. In him horror and fatigue. Beneath him the depths. Not a point of support. He thinks of the gloomy adventures of the corpse in the limitless shadow. The bottomless cold paralyzes him. His hands contract convulsively; they close, and grasp nothingness. Winds, clouds, whirlwinds, gusts, useless stars! What is to be done? The desperate man gives up; he is weary, he chooses the alternative of death; he resists not; he lets himself go; he abandons his grip; and then he tosses forevermore in the lugubrious dreary depths of engulfment."

Jean was saved while Tenardier would never be saved. It is then our choice and will to save or resuscitate ourselves with an external light or help.

This passage may well describe what a great writer Victor Hugo is. He goes to the maximum and exhausts all his energy to describe what he wants to deliver to readers with minute details.

[jakobmuller]

I really enjoyed the part when he commented on the convent, and also what the convent meant for Jean Valjean; how it was at once the safest, but also the most dangerous place for him to hide in.

Great stuff, I'm about a third of the way in and it's definitely living up to my expectations and more lol

[BienvenuJDC]

A man overboard!

What matters it? The vessel does not halt. The wind blows. That sombre ship has a path which it is forced to pursue. It passes on.

A society stops for no individual. Do we live in such a society? Have you ever stood in the line of the Social Security office (for those Americans...or another type bureaucracy)? This is quite trivial compared to the situations that many of the characters of this novel are found. What is true desperation? Hugo depicts the sense of true desperation in this passage. The symbols that are seen in this passage carry through the storyline.

Let us examine each of these symbols:
The Vessel
The Crew
The Man
The Hurricane
The Tremendous Sea
The Vegetation
The Birds/Angels
The Sky/Ocean
The Darkness/Fog
The Stars

I wanted to get this out to you and I will be addressing each one at a time directly (as fast as I can get them out)...

[BienvenuJDC]

I really enjoyed the part when he commented on the convent, and also what the convent meant for Jean Valjean; how it was at once the safest, but also the most dangerous place for him to hide in.

Great stuff, I'm about a third of the way in and it's definitely living up to my expectations and more lol

Great comment...I thought it was great how his generosity came around to help him. Remember Fauchelevent?

[BienvenuJDC]

The Vessel

The vessel, I believe, represents the culmination of the society. We are not talking the people only, but all that which makes the society. These things are (and are seen as influences within the book): the laws, the customs, the economic system, the class system, the traditions of the culture, the religious beliefs, the moral beliefs, and the impending political circumstances that each individual and the whole have to deal with.

As the vessel travels in its path, is there any emotion directed toward it? I'm not lead to think so. The only emotion that I felt toward the vessel was its ability to provide the individual a sense of comfort (compared to the current circumstance). Had that individual remained on board the vessel, would there have been an animosity toward its accommodations? Do we find ourselves discontented in a society while we are safely in it, but long after what we don't have after we have lost it?

Here is a good exercise for us:
What things do we not like in our own societies?
What things do we take for granted in our own societies?
What positive attributes to I contribute to my society?
What negative attributes to I contribute to my society?
**remember a society can be as big or as small as we define it - we are even in a defined society here in LitNet**

[jinjang]

I agree with you on the meaning of a vessel to be a society with its laws, customs and the rest you listed.

Let me choose a suburban town of a big city with almost all artificially landscaped neighborhoods.

What things do I not like in this society?

It is too sheltered to give people the real view of the world. They revolve around sports and church activities. The big houses and big cars seem to be their status in the society.

What things do I take for granted in our own societies?

Safe environments and good public schools

What positive attributes do I contribute to my society?

I should have put this to the first question: It has almost everything for people's comfort and there is nothing much I can contribute to. Volunteering in poor neighboring town public schools is the only thing I can do.

What negative attributes do I contribute to my society?

I do not blend in and I go out of the town to make friends. I am not neighborly...

The bishop's influence on Jean Valjean was certainly one in a million. A person's life would be worth it, if he or she can give such a positive impact on anyone's life.

How about you?

[BienvenuJDC]

The Crew

The crew symbolizes the actual people. Just like a crew of a ship, society is full of people of different statuses. There are those who are the leaders, the Captain, the first mate, and so on. Each has there own position and/or duty. I would assume that if the first mate would have been the one who was swept overboard there would have been a bigger fuss about it. It is interesting how this passage begins, A man overboard! What matters it? I can almost see how it could've been...here is the conversation that could have been, "Whoops...that man was just swept overboard...shame...shame...let's go check out his bunk...what a waste, those were some nice boots on his feet!"

Does our society do things like this? I would say an absolute affirmative. I'm not saying that there are not good people...and I'm not saying that most of the people aren't good people, but there are quite a number of apathetic people. Not just UNcaring, but violent toward each other. Look at the Thenardiers, what might have been a good opportunity to help a young mother out. However, there are leeches in every society.

Consider how this scenario could have gone if M Myriel (Bienvenu) was near by...He would have raised the money that it would have cost...(or given of himself to pay) for the lost time to go back. What does it take to turn a society around for the individual? Bienvenu (a bishop of Christianity) might have quoted from Christ's parable where the shepherd left the 99 sheep to find the 1 sheep. What sacrifices are we willing to make in our society for the individual?

[PoeticPassions]

Quite an apt interpretation and commentary, Bien. Thanks.

Here is my small contribution to the symbols:

THE SEA (I cann only give a few brief commentaries, so I hope others will add on)

I see the sea as the actual environment one finds himself or herself in. The sea is the legal, social, and civil system in which we live in, and especially in which France is entagled in during the time that Hugo writes Les Miserables

"He is in the tremendous sea. Under foot he has nothing but what flees and crumbles. The billows, torn and lashed by the wind, encompass him hideously; the tossings of the abyss bear him away; all the tongues of water dash over his head; a populace of waves spits upon him; confused openings half devour him; every time that he sinks, he catches glimpses of precipices filled with night; frightful and unknown vegetations seize him, knot about his feet, draw him to them; he is conscious that he is becoming an abyss, that he forms part of the foam; the waves toss him from one to another; he drinks in the bitterness; the cowardly ocean attacks him furiously, to drown him; the enormity plays with his agony. It seems as though all that water were hate."

Interesting use of cowardly here... (more on that later)

But this system is devouring the man, yet he realizes that, at the same time, he is part of it--"he is conscious that he is becoming an abyss, that he forms part of the foam."

But he still struggles against it. The only way to change is struggle, resistance, passion. One must feel the grip of it to fight against it.

"He witnesses, amid his death-pangs, the immense madness of the sea. He is tortured by this madness; he hears noises strange to man, which seem to come from beyond the limits of the earth, and from one knows not what frightful region beyond."

Perhaps the madness is the inhuamnity in it all. The injustices, the lack of compassion. There is no mercy to the sea. There can be peace or there can be chaos.

The sea is the "misere"... the Les Miserables. One plunges into it. Does one come out of it stronger, better? Or does one come out weaker, broken? or does one not come out at all?

"He feels himself buried in those two infinities, the ocean and the sky, at one and the same time: the one is a tomb; the other is a shroud."

Which will prevail?

[PoeticPassions]

there is much more to be said about the sea, I hope someone else picks this up. Today I am quite exhausted and cannot really formulate my thoughts well, plus am constrained on time.

[BienvenuJDC]

Until I have more time to respond...
Excellent comments...PP you really followed through with the next item very well...;)

[jakobmuller]

Definitely great responses

It was great enough reading all this the first time, but all of the new viewpoints and interpretations make it all the more interesting and thought-provoking.:D

[BienvenuJDC]

I will try to add another section tomorrow...

[BienvenuJDC]

Okay...so the Hurricane has impeded my ability to reach tomorrow...

It is now tomorrow...

I am going to make some brief comments about what I think that the different symbols mean. I wanted to get a little more in depth, but I have too many distractions. I've had at least four since I started this paragraph.

The hurricane being a larger entity represents the social disorders and obstacles on a larger scale. I don't think that the systems (whatever the system of the certain society is) are the focus of this symbol, but the negative effects of the system. There are many systems that are good effective systems. I can say that there are good qualities in most every system, but the corruption of mankind perverts the effectiveness of every system. Greed, corruption, and the selfish desires of those who gain power...these are not the hurricane, but merely the front that brings the hurricane into fruition.

The winds are a representation of...for example: the neglected individual's needs, the disappearance of compassion in bureaucracy, etc... These things are that which keep us from success. The wind in our faces taking our breaths.

The vegetation is many little obstacles that impede us from doing the little everyday tasks. Any little vine or branch, the little leaves, as they are connected together begin to make the restrains that keep us down. As Valjean entered a little town, his fatigue and hunger were the things that he needed to vanquish. But the fear and prejudice in each person's heart were the vegetation. These were the things that tangled the man's legs that kept him from swimming. He had money...they had food...it was for sale...but it was not for sale to Valjean, due to the vines of fear.

Do you blame each individual? Is it the system's fault? It is not to place blame, but to realize that the vegetation is there.