Pointless

[iamwhoiam1492]

I haven't read the entire book yet, so nobody give anything away, but didn't anyone find this book having so many pointless parts? I am on page 490 and so far there have been 210 pages completely irrelevant to the story. For instance: 1. The 50+ page history of the Bishop of Myriel(I kind of liked this but it still had no point). 2. The 30+ page background of Fantine had very little purpose, mainly just Tholymyes ranting on about indigestion(it was really 40 pages but it wasn't completely pointless). 3. The 57 page description of Waterloo. 4. The 35 page description of the convent of the Benedictine-Bernardines(and that's as far as I've gotten). That's not including the other pointless deviations from the plot(giving you backrgound in the origin of the street names the Jean Valjean is on).

[Bramblefox]

While reading the book the digressions seem rather pointless, but it all ties together and helps to create the huge tapestry of story, if you will. Back when the book was written there weren't movies to condense all the digressions, and readers had a much longer attention span than the more recent generations. So instead of barely glossing over parts like the battle of Waterloo Hugo goes into great detail in order to depict a very complicated situation. Would you prefer he give the bare details and leave much to be desired, or give more information than is perhaps necessary?

[LifeIsAWave]

Agree... these tangents are all very important. The Bishop is portrayed as the symbol of goodness... the background on him helps us to appreciate what he does for Val Jean... his sacrifices are almost christ-like.
Everything has a purpose in the story. Hugo is weaving together an arguement for the divine beauty in this entire time period. He is making sense of a generation.

[kiki1982]

You don't have to see the story as a mere story, but as Vistor Hugo's work about "the world" in general. Indeed, sometimes, he gets carried away, certainly in the part of Hougomont... Certainly after Waterloo, I had to remember what happened in the story before...
But Les Misérables is a very universal work and in that all 'the world' in it has a backround like in the real world, and is not merely put into the book without history.

[Shanardpinyard]

Piontless, isn't 2/3 of the day is piontless. If we maid a list of the things we do each day you will find that are lives our 2/3 piontless. It is in this piontless we find purpose and meaning. Piontless is mowing the grass knowing it will grow in a week. Piontless is driveing in a car day after day. It is the piontless that we find ourselves. As hugo would say the infinate. Karati Kid wax on wax off.

[Shya]

I agree with Kiki. Les Mis is more than just a story.

Victor Hugo wrote this during the French Revolution, and I think he was using this book to express his own political opinions too. For example, he does give his opinions on what the battle of Waterloo meant, and why he thinks that there should be no more Jacquerie, and what we should do with sewer... uh, water. This book probably helped to influence people's ideas about the revolution.

[kiki1982]

I have the chronology here of the manuscript of Les Misérables:
He started writing the manuscript in 1845 when he was caught red-handed being adulterous to his wife with a Léonie Biard. The scandal was suppressed: she was sent to prison and after to a convent and he locked himself in his house to write, they think the first manuscript of the book, then called Jean Tréjean.
He had already been busy with the story since 1824 when he went to infom himself in the prison of Toulon, where Jean Valjean would come from.
Hugo finished the book in 1861 from May 22nd to June 30th, in Mont-Saint-Jean, near Waterloo, Belgium. The same year he signed a contract with the publisher.
He sent it in parts to the publisher as it would be published in several volumes. He made a revision and wrote several additional parts to the work, one among them Waterloo. The thing was finally finished and the last volumes were published in 1862.

So he worked on it a fair amount of time and added through the times as well... All in all he did 38 years over it, from the idea to the publication. He didn't actually write it during the French Revolution as such, but he lived all through those times of barricades against the Bourbon kings in the 1830s when he was 28. He was a teenager when Napoleon was around and dissapeared again. All those things and the sheer misery in Paris of the poor must have made a profound impression on him and obviously he had a certain opinion on those as well, certainly on the result of it all.
So actually the book is 'a reminder to the ordre of a society that is too much in love with itself and doesn't think enough of the immortal law of fraternity, a pleed for the miserables (those who suffer misery and whom misery dishonours), spoken by the most eloquent mouth of the time.' This is what Baudelaire said about it and it should seen as such. Any less would be an insult to the writer of it.