So I started off reading the unabridged version, but it was 1400 pages and it just seemed like too much so I switched to the 400 page abridged version. Basically the first 200 pages of the full Les Mis are an account of the Bishop of Digne, Monseigneur Myriel. The narrator talks about how M. Myriel is kind and charitable and generous and nothing like all the other Bishops of that time. The narrator also states, by the way that everything we read about the Bishop we really don't need to know because it has nothing to do with the story. All that happened in the first 5 pages of the book and the subsequent 195 pages, I read grudgingly knowing that there was no point to them. Already this book had taught me about literature and any future writing I do. I will never ever, not in a million years, tell my readers that what they are going to read is pointless and has nothing to do with anything, but should be read none the less. Because, although I enjoyed reading about the Bishop and I thought he was a great character, I couldn't get passed the fact that what I was reading was completely and utterly pointless, even by the authors standards.
But anyway, after we hear about the Bishop of Digne, we are introduced to Jean Valjean, a convict who spent 19 years in prison just for stealing a loaf of bread because his family was literally starving to death. Jean goes to Digne and the Bishop is the only person who will allow him a place to stay. After prison Valjean had become a cold and hard man, but after a series of events in which the Bishop shows nothing but kindness to Jean, the Bishop sort of forces a promise onto Jean to be a kind and 'upright' man. Jean Valjean becomes this man, but under the name of Madeleine and in a different town (because he is still a wanted man).
I don't want to give a full summary of everything I've read because I think this blog post is supposed to be more of what I take from the book so far, but I just thought you should know about Jean Valjean and also about Cosette and Marius, who seem to be the characters in the book that are becoming more, shall we say, prominent. Cosette is the illegitimate child of Fantine, who leaver Cosette with the Thenardiers while she tries to make money for herself and her daughter. Fantine dies and Madeleine (Valjean) rescues Cosette and becomes a father to her. The police recognize him as Valjean and together Cosette and Jean run to Paris. There, when Cosette is 15 years old, a man named Marius see them and falls in love with Cosette after just seeing her. He lives next door to the Jondrettes and one day Cosette and Valjean go to donate food and money to them, but they turn out to be the Thenerdiers and try to rob them. Marius doesn't know what to do since he loves Cosette but owes his fathers life to the Thenerdiers. I stopped reading just a Valjean escapes from the Thenerdiers...We shall see what happens...
So far, at halfway through the book, I can really only think about two things. One, how much I like the book and want to see what happens to everyone,ant two, how much I hate it at the same time because of what keeps happening to everyone. It really is Les Miserables (The Wretched Poor or The Miserable Ones). Every main character in the book fully encapsulates 'The Wretched Poor'. They are all starving, just scraping by, poor, prostitutes, running from the law, or seeking some sort of revenge or all of the above. Already two people have died just when yout thought they were going to get better or right before something good happens to them. Jean was in prison for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread!! The kind and generous Bishop died. Seriously, no matter how many good things someone does in this book, the misery just follows them around. Justice is never done, even when you think it should be or will be.It just seems so unfair everything that happens to the people in the book but i love it all the same because I just cant help but want to see it all turn out with a happy ending. But I wouldn't at all be surprised if it turned out rotten, really. The injustice in the world is so much and you would think it would be a simple thing to solve, but as this book is showing me, injustice is one of the trickiest problems to solve of all. Every decision you make lends a hand to what someones life will become, to how justice will be played out. Thats really what this book portrays; that one litle thing that yu do can change the way someone will act throughout the erest of his life. You can make someone a better person or give them a better life through one small act of kindness or you can make them a terrible person becasue of something you said or did. But, on the other hand the book has so far showed that even if you are kind and make hundreds of people's lives better, you may not be rewarded. Even after everything Jean Valjean had done he still had to flee the town he made rich and live in fear of being sent to prison and leaving Cosette behind with no one.
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