VALJEAN OR JAVERT: Who is the Hero? The Murky Morality of Les Misérables

I may have tackled something too complex for me... we'll see how it goes.

Les Misérables is an 1862 novel written by Victor Hugo and it was later adapted into a musical theatre production in 1980 by Claude-Michel Schönberg which was then adapted into a 2012 film directed by Tom Hooper. Les Misérables chronicles the life of Jean Valjean, a man arrested for stealing bread whose life was turned around by the kind and loving Bishop Myriel who sets Valjean on a path of redemption through his interactions with the cold, law-abiding Inspector Javert, the tragic yet strong Fantine and her daughter Cosette (who he eventually adopts after Fantine's death), the romantic young revolutionary Marius Pontmercy, among many others. While the story clearly focuses on Valjean as the "hero" of the story and Javert as the "villain", the reality is not as black and white as many might believe. What if Javert was the real hero of the story, chasing Valjean, a dangerous criminal?

The one misconception I want to address is this: "Because Valjean is the 'protagonist', or the 'hero' of the story, Javert has to be the 'antagonist', or the 'villain' of the story". This is a common misconception; you cannot equalize "protagonist" and "hero", and you cannot equalize "antagonist" and "villain". A PROTAGONIST is defined as "the leading character or one of the major characters in a drama, movie, novel, or other fictional text" while a HERO is defined as "a person who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities". On the other hand, an ANTAGONIST is defined as "a person who actively opposes or is hostile to someone or something; an adversary" and a VILLAIN as "a character whose evil actions or motives are important to the plot". From these definitions, you can clearly see that a protagonist is not always a hero and an antagonist is therefore not always the villain.

So in Les Mis, because the story focuses on Valjean, we can say that he is the protagonist and that Javert, his adversary, is the antagonist. But when it comes to the hero and the villain, it is not as simple and clear-cut as you may think. While Valjean is definitely a heroic character (he is selfless, brave, and forgiving), he also portrays villainous characteristics; after all, it is his stealing of the silver goods from Bishop Myriel that sets him on the right path, and Valjean is a criminal. On the other hand, Javert is also undoubtedly a heroic character: he is simply a lawman diligently doing his duty to the country by persevering after the dangerous convict Valjean. Despite this, Javert's unwavering devotion to the law blinds him to see the world as either black or white; in Javert's mind, one is either good or evil and no one is morally middle (although Javert is very much a "morally middle" character). Javert's villainous characteristics show however, during the Les Amis de l'ABC's (the student revolutionary group with Marius) rebellion; Javert actively attempts to thwart the revolt and purposefully lead the students to their deaths by posing as a Les Amis spy and feeding them false information, and his clear blindness of (or perhaps a refusal to accept) the corrupt and faulty monarchy and the fanatical devotion to the government and the law leads him to make the choice to lead students to their deaths.

Interestingly, his disdain for the rebellion is actually understandable if we look at Javert's early life. Javert was born in 1780 and dies in 1832. This means that Javert would have been around 9 years old when the French Revolution began (1789) and puts him in his early to mid twenties (about 23 years old) when the Napoleonic Wars began in 1803, meaning that he would most likely have fought in those wars. This puts Javert in an interesting situation: from what we know of his character, it wouldn't be far-fetched to assume he was a militaryman for almost all of his life, and as a child, he firsthand witnessed the horrors that revolution could bring and the radical changes that took place in government (the Revolution began in the rule of the monarch and eventually reverted back to a monarchy).
     If we are to make the educated guess that Javert has always been a firm believer (almost to the degree of being a fanatic) in the government and the law, it is not difficult to believe that Javert saw monarchy as the most ideal form of government (after all, the revolution did fail to bring a significant change in government as it basically reverted to a monarchy). And because Javert finds no fault in the law, and by extension, the government, it is entirely logical that he wouldn't have supported the movement of the Les Amis as even if he saw issues within the government, he would have known the atrocities associated with rebellions (which would have put him off of the idea completely, experiencing all of that as a child) and would have eventually seen resistance against the monarchy as being futile, and he was technically right as the Les Amis' rebellion ended up failing quite horribly.
     While all of this is more or less speculation on my part, if one were to try and explain Javert's fanaticism to the law to the point of becoming blind by his faith towards it, it would be possible to explain his character as a result of being shown the atrocities of (and eventually the failures of) revolutions at the very young and impressionable age of 9 or 10, which than paints a picture of Javert as someone who is merely trying to keep the peace because he has (or at least believes he has) learnt the lesson. And you have to admit that growing up during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars COULD NOT have been a very pleasant experience for Javert
     Additionally, Valjean was already 20 by the time the French Revolution took place (born in 1769) and began his prison sentence in 1796 and got out in 1815, meaning that he was significantly old enough by his arrest to know that there were serious issues with the monarchy, a wisdom and knowledge that the younger Javert did not have (but Javert WAS apparently a prison guard at age 16).

So there are two big ways to view the morality of Les Mis:

1. Jean Valjean is reformed man trying to do good in the world while Javert is the soulless devotee to a corrupt government whose goal is to rid the world of any good and ensure that the tyrannical regime stays.
2. Inspector Javert is a just lawman doing his duty to capture Jean Valjean, a dangerous criminal, and put him behind bars because he is a danger to society.

It's a conundrum, isn't it? You can't definitively say that neither Valjean or Javert is good or bad. They're both heroes of their own story, and the villains of the others'; because the story is told generally from Valjean's POV, Javert is portrayed as being more villainous than he actually is.
Here, I have a third option that I really think summarizes the situation of morality in Les Mis perfectly:

Neither Javert nor Valjean is the hero or the villain: They are morally grey characters struggling to survive with what they are given and try to do what they believe to be the right thing.

So, is there a hero and a villain in Les Mis? If so, who are they? 
     I believe that the answer is YES. There actually are three characters who can be summed up as the true hero and the villains of this story: Bishop Myriel and the Thénardiers.
     Bishop Myriel is truly a faultless character: he is selfless and noble through and through. He is a man who lives with the philosophy of kindness and love. He helps Valjean when he is in need without question and without caring Valjean's criminal status (I'm not quite sure if he knew Valjean was a criminal or not but even if he did know, he wouldn't have cared). Furthermore, when Valjean runs off in the night with his precious silver and is arrested the next day, the Bishop lies to the soldiers that the silver was a gift to Valjean from himself and actually chastises Valjean for forgetting to take the silver candlesticks with him. After the police leave, the Bishop tells Valjean to use the silver to become an honest man. Although the Bishop does not appear in the story afterwards, his kindness and love towards Valjean is the turning point of his character: Valjean cannot comprehend the compassion he had been given because he was hardened into a man knowing nothing but hate during his (arguably too long) time in prison. He begins to realize how horrible he was, betraying the trust of the one person who had been kind to him, and feels shame. It is at this point that Valjean vows to become a man of light, doing nothing but good, and the entirety of Valjean's character for the rest of the story is the result of Bishop Myriel's love and compassion.
     Next are the villains of Les Mis, the Thénardiers. I genuinely cannot think of a SINGLE redeeming qualities of these characters. They do nothing but cheat and swindle and rob people out of their money, and their first song in the musical, "Master of the House" is solely dedicated to their crimes and the glee they get from it. They are abusive to young Cosette, cheats Fantine out of money (lies to her they need money for a sick Cosette), and after they lose their inn, they essentially become con artists and cheap pickpockets. One of the worst things their characters ever do in the musical is this particular line they sing during "One Day More": "Watch 'em run amuck, catch 'em as they fall, never know your luck when there's a free for all. Here a little 'dip', there a little 'touch', most of them are goners so they won't miss much!". It is meant to be seen as being more comedic than anything, but I just found the idea of these two not caring about the lives of schoolboys who are essentially fighting for a better life for all (something that's going to positively affect the Thénardiers). It gets even worse as in the novel, they steal from the corpses of killed students. I cannot stress enough how much I HATE these two. As a small consolation, Madame Thénardier dies in prison after being arrested by Javert (go Javert!), but Monsieur Thénardier scams some money from Marius and goes to America to be a slave trader. Apparently Monsieur Thénardier is protected from karmic punishment, although I guess having punishment come to Madame Thénardier in the novel is at least better than both of them surviving and still running cons in the musical.

Although Hugo liked making his characters morally grey, it seems like there were at least three who were indisputably good or evil.

Well, that was a long rant. I honestly really love Les Misérables as a story, and it's probably because I'm crazy for history and this has some historical elements in it. But I really loved the fact that Victor Hugo managed to make nearly every character be morally grey and not explicitly good or evil (even Marius is like this as he is actually a Bonapartist in the novel) which makes reading about their actions just so much more interesting because having a morally grey character means that it is much more . Even though I haven't actually read the novel yet, I'm in love with the musical itself and all of these songs (and I'm going to go watch it live for the first time this June!) and I think it's just written beautifully. Victor Hugo's creative genius also must be given praise to: he writes his character so well that I was so deeply invested in their well-beings even in their much more stripped-down musical counterparts (Javert in particular is my favourite because he shows some great character conflicts). I seriously love Les Misérables and I truly recommend everyone to at least give some of the songs a listen or watch the full 10th Anniversary performance with the Dream Cast, you won't regret it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG-gojr493E.

My next post will be a review of a Stephen King book/novella (I'm not quite sure what to call it), from his collection, Four Past Midnight. As always, thank you for reading my blog, and I always will enjoy hearing from all of you, so if you have any comments, feedbacks, opinions, suggestions, etc., please feel free to comment, and I WILL respond to ALL comments!

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The Connoisseur