opposite Faust? - something to think about

If anyone is interested in some really deep thinking:

At the end of chapter XII: L'évêque travaille (the Bishop works), where Jean Valjean stole the silverware, escaped, got caught by the police and then gets brought back and then the bishop gives him the chandeliers. At the end bishop Myriel says: 'Do not forget, never forget that you have promised me to use that money to become an honest man.' and then 'Jean Valjean, my brother, you don't belong to badness anymore, but to goodness. It is your soul I buy from you; I take it away from dark thoughts and from perdition, and I return it to God.' So in other words he bought his soul to return to God for eternal servitude, like Mephisto bought Faust's soul to return to the Devil for eternal servitude.
After that Jean Valjean cannot do anything wrong, not even keep it a secret that he’s been in prison (when he is mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer he absolutely has to help Fauchelevant, thus revealing is superhuman strength that only old prisoners have and that in front of his old prison guard Javert. When he tells Marius, although he knows that he will get expelled from the house and never see Cosette again and so die from loneliness and sadness), which had been in his own interest. He cannot let Marius die although he's deadly jealous of him. He cannot kill Javert although he probably wanted to take revenge.
So it is a force within him that obliges him to do so…
He tries to fight it in the beginning (Little Gervais, the court case at Arras...), but at a certain point he leaves it and just bears his cross, without knowing of course why.
The whole of his life he refuses himself to eat well (only eating dry bread and water), dress well (always dressed in black), in all, live well. He doesn't spend any money, but instead, buries it in the wood at Montfermeil, he doesn't even award himself pleasure, leaving Cosette and Marius' wedding before dinner has begun.
In the end God has mercy on him and wants to reward him for his life of repentance and gives him Cosette back by sending Thénardier (the bad miserable, against Valjean being the good miserable), to Marius, to make this one understand that Jean Valjean actually saved his life. When Marius asks him why he didn’t tell him the part of the sewers, but only the part of having been in prison, he says: ‘J’ai dis la vérité.’ (‘I told the truth’). Of course, as it was not really an accomplishment to be rewarded for, but just a normal thing to do, being ‘good man’.
In chapter V of book V (Jean Valjean): Nuit derrière laquelle il y a le jour (the night after which the day comes), when Jean is dying they ask him whether he wants a priest. He says: ‘I have one.’ And, with a finger, he seemed to indicate a point above his head where one would have said he saw someone. It is very probable that the bishop [Myriel] assisted, as a matter of fact, in this agony. ‘ So Hugo ends the book with the same character as he began it: with the bishop Myriel. The person who bought his soul in the beginning has now returned.
When Jean Valjean has died it says in the book: ‘La nuit était sans étoiles et profondément obscure. Sans doute, dans l’ombre, quelque ange immense était debout, les ailes déployées, attendant l’âme.’ (The night was without stars and deeply dark. Without doubt, in the darkness, there was one immense angel, with his wings unfolded, waiting for his soul.) So like for Faust, there is an angel that takes him up to heaven after death.
So maybe we can read the book as a story where there are no coincidences, but only things directed by a higher force, a kind of Opposite Faust, as it were. In this case not directed by the devil, but by God himself.

I wholehearedly agree that this is not a story of coincidence. In fact, this is one of Hugo's great charms in his writing. Hugo brilliantly stages a multitude of seemingly unconnected events that are inconsequential and supernatural at the same time. Think of the Thernadiers' encounters with Marius, or Javert's proximity to Valjean. Hugo connects all these loose ends to an ultimate conclusion that is equally grand and subtle. This is what gets me hooked on this book.

I enjoyed reading your comments!

Interesting concept, and altogether logical.

I do enjoy the thought, however i like to think of Valjean as simply a good man, and that the idea of the book is that man is ultimately good, not ultimately slave to some power beyond his comprehension. Valjean feels compelled to do as he promised, bound by his own covenants with God and the Bishop. Not because his soul was actually purchased. it was the Bishops kindness that bought his soul and ultimately transformed him into this man who seems to be "forced" to do the right thing.
I also feel that chapter number 13, Little Grevais is the key to seeing Valjeans Character. This chapter hints to Valjeans conscience destroying the beast within him, and shaping another creature, one ultimately better. And although it is true that Hugo hints to the supernatural for a good deal of things in this story, I do not believe he intended Valjean to be a slave to goodness. First, it isn’t so much fear of being caught or else Hugo wouldn’t have had Grevais and Valjean meet in an ultimately secluded area, it is guilt brought on by the memory of the Bishops good deed that causes him to wish to do good. "The spot was absolutely solitary. As far as the eye could see there was not a person on the plain or on the path. The only sound was the tiny, feeble cries of a flock of birds of passage, which was traversing the heavens at an immense height. The child was standing with his back to the sun, which cast threads of gold in his hair and empurpled with its blood-red gleam the savage face of Jean Valjean." Also, before he was the devils slave, but if he was Gods slave his heart wouldnt have burst in this chapter "Then his heart burst, and he began to cry. It was the first time that he had wept in nineteen years."

oh that is fascinating! I'm only about 175 pages into the book, but already I'm seeing so much in it, even down to the extensive character backgrounding he's done on M. Myriel, Fantine, and Valjean. The idea of it being an antithesis to the Faust legend...WOW!! I'm definitely going to keep an eye out for more parallels to that idea as I go on reading.