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?
Reply With Quote
