Les Miserables

[Edmond]

My question is:
Is Javert a villain? I don't think so, what do you think?

Me personally think that Javert is only obeying the law, most people think he is cruel, but if he gave up on Valjean, he betrayed himself, in his entire life he obeyed the law, and that's how some people are, I have my principles, he has his, like to put every convict where he/she belongs. Therefore I think he did no wrong of chasing Valjean all his life. Until the last moment, he realized to kill Vajean is the same thing of betray his morality, there is only one way to go, perdition.

[sam]

i'm about 150 pages into this i'll get back to yo

sam

[Vronaqueen]

I think Javert is merely dealing with his own personal feelings of moral and judicial obligation and coming to terms with his own past. He is such a complex character that his villiany is generally left ambiguous. I think it all depends on the mindset of the reader and how they feel about the law in terms of how far it should go.

[rachel]

I have pondered Javert many times and my opinion is that yes he was a stickler for the law but I think it goes so very much deeper. I believe he hated the fact that he himself was flawed and sought to purge himself by his relentless pursuit of Valjean, a sort of warped self flagellation.
He seemed so full of bitterness and it occurs to me he saw God as having no heart or compassion but was just a big combat boot in the sky.
and then at the end it seemed he experienced some sort of epiphany and life and human kindness suddenly made sense. but he also knew that to embrace it meant for him death, for how could he live with himself and the ridicule of others if he changed.Although he made me despair and i was so angry at him, that one act of redemptive behaviour made him my brother and all else was forgotten.

"faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love" Holy Scripture

[TeenSpirit]

I think Javert is the bad guy. i mean look at it from Valjean's point of view if your nephew(?) was dying of hunger and you stole a loaf of bread to save their life then you were put into slavery for 19 years! you would think it was extremely unfair! 19 long years of punishment for saving a life. i think Javert should have let Valjean go, he was doing so much good! Someone i used to know always said to me "let the punishment fit the crime" and in this case the punishment was cruel compared to the crime.

[Archibald]

Javert is definitely the antagonist, but he's not the "bad guy". Javert's entire character is just Hugo trying to prove a point; that the system of law doesn't always work, and the punishment frequently doesn't fit the crime. He's so single minded that he only sees things in black and white, which is why he doesn't believe in Valjean as a good person; his first memory of Valjean is in the galleys as a convict, and that's who Valjean is to him from that point onwards, and all the good Valjean does doesn't matter because to Javert he is still a convict who just happens to be doing good deeds every now and then.

Javert is not an evil, or bad person; he's just mistaken in his beliefs. You see him as a decent person when he thinks of Valjean as Monsigneur Madeleine; he acts with humility and respect to someone who he thinks of as a kind, honest man. He's just too narrow-minded to believe that a convict like Valjean could ever be an honest man until the very end, and we all know what happens then.

[odysseus]

javerty is one of my favorite characters, along with cosette and jean valjean and grandpa gillnormand, and marius, and also along with eponine and fantine, and the friends of the abc, and the good bishop, and the thenardians

[gaytan]

While some think that Javert is not really the bad guy, I disagree. Yes he may be misinformed and only sees things in black and white. But the evil he represents is completely visible in several scenes of the book. Take for example when Fantine is dying and Jean Valjean, as the mayor, is trying to find some way of retrieving Fantine's daughter even though Javert has found him. In this terrible scene, Hugo says of Javert, "Nothing could be so poignant and so terrible as this face, wherein was displayed all that may be designated as the evil of the good." Hugo here describes how Javert believed he was on the side of righteousness but was in fact on the side of evil.

Javert then proceeds to not allow Valjean to help Fantine any longer. He calls Fantine a "creature", "hussy", and a "woman of the town"; all this after knowing the ridicule and suffering she went through when he first incarcerated her. Because Fantine realized she was now never going to see her "precious Cosette" she dies right there in front of Valjean and Javert. Javert showed no remorse after Valjean accused him of murdering Fantine. He was going to go straightway and lock up Valjean if it hadn't been for Valjean's threat, "I advise you not to touch me at this moment," which frightened Javert enough to allow Valjean to say his final goodbye to Fantine's dead corpse.

[Pen&Ink]

Javert was one of the antagonists, but he wasn't a villain or anything. If anyone was the "bad guy" of the story it was Thenardier. He did bad things for bad reasons, while javert did them for good. (to uphold the law, do his job ect.) I

[Wandering_Child]

I agree partly with Pen&Ink, and partly with gaytan. Javert did do some pretty disagreeable things, but in his eyes it was all for the good of the people. Like it says in the musical, "You've done your duty...nothing more." And I agree with Valjean when he's saying that Javert was doing things that were good in his eyes.

Unless you watch the 1998 version of Les Mis. Javert really is the bad guy in that movie. (I don't like that version. Cosette is a whiney brat, and I actually like Cosette.)

I agree with Pen&Ink that Thenardier was the real "bad guy." His deeds only profited himself. He was greedy, vile, and ruthless.

[wtwt5237]

It is not Javert to blame but the unfair and ruthless society to blame. A good cop Javert is enforcing a totally bad law.

[kiki1982]

It is not Javert to blame but the unfair and ruthless society to blame. A good cop Javert is enforcing a totally bad law.

Yes, I think that is rather the case. The book was meant as a book about french society at the time. Just after the revolution that was meant to overthrow the unfair society of before where clergy and nobility discriminated the rest because they didn't have a title. This organisation was overthrown but made room for a society that was just the same as before, but based on money. So the poor who were the worst off before, were now equally the worst off and stamped as bad people. Jean Valjean is followed by this policeman who eventually gets up high in the system, Javert, because he (Jean Valjean) happens to have a yellow identity card (special for ex-convicts). Javert has respect for the mayor Madeleine until he discovers that this Madeleine is Jean Valjean who he used to guard on the boats.
Javert is not the vilain as such, but stands for society as a whole, that judges people before they know them personally (wow, how true it is still today!!).
Thenardier is the portrait of a misérable who doesn't have the moral power to better himself against all odds unlike Jean Valjean who decides (because of the bishop in the beginning) to become a better person, despite all the setbacks by mainly Javert, but also by Marius, his yellow card, public opinion etc.

[Javert]

Javert is my favorite character of the book. Hugo did a good job showing his tragedy. Javert is surely an antagonist but he is not a "bad guy" at all. He just blindly follows his own principles which tell that something is either right or wrong, there is no third. Javert declares justice by following all the rules and laws and doesn't think that the laws themselves may be unjust. Laws cannot be perfect but for him they are definite, so he sees all the things in the world either white or black. However, behind the mask "I am the law and the law is not mock" there is his personal weakness: he seeks for satisfaction in pursuiting Valjean and does not want to see anything else. All his judgements are flat and simple.

[MadisonBluth]

Because France was just coming out of a war, Javert was still in war mode. Like when you have just seen a horror movie you are looking around everytime you here the smallest noise. Well Javert was still aware of ValJean's prescence somewhere close, so he was overly cautious. This does not make him a villian, yes he is definitely an antagonist, but in a few small ways, couldn't he be considered a protagonist. Not towards Valjean or Cossette or Fantine, but towards the people of France by trying to protect them......

[kiki1982]

In the beginning Javert is certainly the bad guy, but as time goes on, Hugo makes him evolve and doubt his own principles.

As a policeman, Javert was told that criminals are bad people. And, probably, that many of them never really became good again. They deserved one chance and if they did not take that, they ended up for ever in prison.

Javert goes through life with that and happiy climbs in the hierarchy... I think up to the barricades, Javert is convinced of the justness of those principles. When Jean Valjean lets him walk away instead of executing him in the alley and wanted to go and 'execute' him in order to let him go free; when he sees Jean Valjean go to great trouble to save Marius Javert starts doubting himself. Here is this ex-convict who escaped him, who should be in prison for life, yet when he has the chance to get rid of his pursuer, he lets him walk, tries to save the life of someone who is dying and that man should go again to prison for life?

Javert commits suicide... He cannot prossibly let Jean Valjean go free without guilt, yet he cannot admit to himself that Jean Valjean is a good person although ex-convict. Jean Valjean can reconcile himself with letting Javert get away, but Javert in turn cannot reconcile himself with letting Jean Valjean walk free... And as such it was either Jean Valjean or Javert, not both.