Les Miserables is a novel published by French writer victor hugo in 1862, covering the Napoleonic Wars and more than ten years thereafter.
The main line of the story revolves around the personal experience of the protagonist Jean Valjean, a prisoner of Toulon, and integrates French history, revolution, war, moral philosophy, law, justice and religious belief. This work has been adapted and interpreted into film and television works many times.
Extended data
Theme of the work
The theme of Les Miserables is to write about the unremitting struggle between mankind and evil. Human nature is pure and kind, and they will go to happiness together, but they will go through a painful process. The book is interspersed with the background of the French Revolution and the description of Napoleon's Battle of Waterloo, as well as many details of French society at that time, such as slang, sewers, monasteries and so on.
Jean Valjean, the hero of the novel, has a rough life and almost all kinds of extraordinary vitality. He is a legendary hero with strong romanticism. The romanticism of this character is more important in his moral spirit, and his mental journey is as touching as an epic.
He was originally a kind worker. The cruelty of society, the punishment of law and the ruthlessness of reality made him "gradually become an animal" and blindly retaliated against society, so that he made a mistake that he really regretted for life. This regret led to a deeper consciousness, became the starting point of his spiritual development, and raised his spiritual personality to a lofty realm.
Jean Valjean is not an abstract man. From birth, experience, morality and habits, he is a laborer. He embodies all kinds of excellent qualities of the working people and is the representative of the oppressed, damaged and insulted working people.
All his experiences and fates are filled with lofty sadness and social representative significance, which makes Les Miserables a tragic epic of struggling people in a dark society.