Les Miserables

Just to set the tone, I loved this book. I loved how epic it was. I loved that Hugo gives us a detailed description of absolutely everything, so I feel like I know this Paris of the 1800's and the people that inhabited it. I think that is my favorite aspect of his writing. A lot of people aren't fans of the long digressions into nonessential things like the history of Waterloo, but I think it paints a more complete picture, and it makes Hugo unique. The only thing I really didn't like about the writing was the repitition of "there are times when..." or some permutation thereof. Perhaps it wouldn't be as noticable in 400 pages or so (in fact I think that I didn't really get annoyed with it until after that page mark), but after 1200 it can drive you quite insane. It is similar to my annoyance with Tolstoy always describing Vronsky's strong, white teeth in "Anna Karenina." Seriously, after the twelve millionth time, it gets a bit old.
But all in all, my rating of the writing is two thumbs up.

On a non-related note, I think the title is quite misleading. This is really a happy, powerful book about the resiliency of the human soul and the ability of the individual to rise triumphant despite terrible extenuating circumstances. It is written about those in poverty, both spiritual and monetarily, and there is one obscure reference towards the poor I think as being called "les miserables" somewhere in the middle of the book. It seems to me, however, that what Hugo is trying to get across is that circumstantial poverty doesn't matter, and that even poor people, given that they have a moral compass, can know the extent of happiness. Valjean is the embodiment of Horatio Alger monetarily, yet he faces conflict within. So it seems to me that "les miserables" aren't necessarily those made miserable by society, but those made miserable by their own depravity, which isn't always imposed by society.

As for the characters... well some of them were really annoying to me. Perhaps the most annoying was Cosette, maybe because of the way Hugo wrote her. It is obvious that she isn't a feminist character, but it seems Hugo is almost over-emphasizing her "womanly" characteristics (where "womanly" at the time meant oblivious of important things, innocently capricious, and stupidly obedient). An example of this is the line that says something like "Cosette thought Marius had gone insane, and so she obeyed him." Seriously, that line is in the book, towards the end. Watch out for it. So as compared to other writers of the time, Hugo doesn't really create many empowered female characters. However, my favorite character in the book was arguably an empowered female. Eponine's character is best displayed when she dresses up as a boy. Throughout the book (when she's alive anyway), she remains the sole female character with the strong qualities of Hugo's male characters.

Moving on though, Marius really annoyed me because he was so stupidly in love. I think he is supposed to be kind of the hero (next to Valjean), but he never proves himself to me. I think Hugo's young hero is perhaps meant to be contrasted to Valjean though. A central theme of the book is the contrast between youth and old age, and the contrast between Marius and Valjean most vividly shows this. Marius is young, disillusioned, passionately in love and lust, obsessed with idealistic symbolism rather than realities, while Valjean has seen reality as harsh as it can get, and he is very street smart so to say, bearing not passionate, idealistic love, but just a realistic devotion towards others and Cosette.

While the revolutionary insurrection seems to be cast in a positive light by Hugo, I find it interesitng that Marius and his friends, who are all young and caught up in ideas rather than realities, are implicated in such a senseless struggle whereas Valjean, who is largely nonpolitical, is the character with the most concrete and realistic conflict. Other characters have conflict with surrounding events, whether it is politics or circumstances preventing love affairs, but Valjean's sole conflict is his own soul, and I think that Hugo uses Valjean to show that true wisdom comes not from the solvency of external clashes, but rather from the annealing of the opposition in the heart (or at least a peace with the opposition).

I got from the book that you can have whatever circumstances in your life that you want, or even the most confusing moral storm in your heart, as long as you find what you love in life and morally dedicate yourself to it, you can be happy.

I know this post is very unorganized so maybe I will fix it later, but for now this will have to do.

Summation: awesome book.