The Grand Spirits of The Miserable
Javert and Valjean
The world is composed of light and dark. It is of evil and good, concrete and abstract, black and white, planes and curves, stark and subtle.
Like the faces of the coin, these opposing forces can never fully merge into the other, yet as separate entities, they make up a singular material which cannot do without one of the two missing.
This is Les Miserables, a never ending search for freedom which can only be the fruit of acceptance.
This is Les Miserables.
The obsessed law man and the saintly criminal.
The good who is not so good and the bad who is not all that bad.
The hunter versus the hunted.
Prey versus predator.
Two grand and similar spirits that cannot exist as one, bound by the constraints of misinterpreted honor and the chains of the past.
Javert, born in jail, saw himself as an ostracized adolescent with but two paths open to him. He could choose either to be a policeman or a criminal. He chose to be on the right side of the law. Valjean, a peasant, spent time in jail as a young man and came out of it hating society. He believed himself to be apart from it, and chose to live in hatred and crime. Fortunately, the action of a kindly old bishop prevented him from wasting the rest of his life. Valjean switched to tread the path of life on a more morally upright road. He became mayor, protector of society.
When certain events occured in Montreuil, both of them took similar actions. Javert, thinking he had unfairly denounced the mayor, revealed his actions to the latter and fully anticipated being removed from his position as police inspector and assigned to a lowly job. Valjert is also plagued by his conscience. He could not let an innocent man take the blame for his sins. Like Javert, he expected to lose everything. At the end of this particular episode Javert retains his position and Valjean lives in seclusion in a convent as gardener.
Both men become prisoners of the other at one time or another in the novel. Valjean becomes Javert’s prisoner in Paris. Then Javert becomes Valjean’s prisoner at the barricade in Rue de la Chanvrerie but is freed. Then when Javert catches Valjean by the sewers, he frees him in return.
In my point of view one of the most emotional and intellectual parts of the novel is Javert’s suicide.
Casy's jail mate assuages his condition by comparing it to the days of the French Revolution. During the Revolution, a group of radicals (the Jacobins) attempted to crush all opposition within France.
This was the strangest thing ever seen by any Glader because only boys appear in the Box and a new person was delivered in the Box every month. She was asleep and in a coma. She opened her eyes for three seconds and said, “Everything is going to change”, and held a paper in her hands saying, “She’s the last one ever.” The Gladers put her in the medical room until she became conscious. Thomas then met a Runner named Minho. Minho was laying on the ground breathing heavily. Thomas thought he was hurt and called Alby. However, when Alby got there, Minho said that he was just excited to find a dead Griever while running the Maze. Alby and Minho decided to take a look at the dead Griever. Unfortunately, when the doors were about to close, Thomas saw that Minho was dragging Alby who had been stung by the “dead” Griever and decided to go out and help him. Right after Thomas went out to offer a hand, the doors closed and he was stuck in the Maze with Alby and Minho. Thomas was able to stay alive during the night along with Minho and Alby. Because of this, Thomas, Alby, and Minho became well known since they became the first ones to live a day in the Maze. This lead to Thomas going to jail which is called the Slammer for one day since he broke the biggest rule in the Glade, never go out to the Maze after the doors closed. However, Minho selected Thomas to be a runner because of his bravery that helped him survive during that
Thomas and the Gladers get hunted by the grievers because the last person who arrived in the Glade changed things so the door to the maze stays open at night which allows the grievers to enter
I play for the Marist College water polo team. I practice five days a week, for about four hours a day (6:45 am to 11:00 am). We are a spring sport and dedicate the entire fall semester to getting ready for spring season. We even cut our winter break down two weeks shorter to get in extra practice. Winter break practice is a lot harder because there are no rules and regulations on the amount of time we are allowed to practice. If the coaches so please, they can keep us in the water the entire time without a break. Now a coach would never do that because they would not be receiving maximum efficiency from us. We would be too exhausted but the point was that there are no rules for them. Our practices start off with a morning lift in
Good, is portrayed by God, and evil seems to be what fate has in store for the
Jean Valjean understands the deep emotions felt when the desire to love others persists in one’s heart. Valjean originally felt this desire specifically within his own family. Though during his years in prison, he lost it. In striving to feed his starving family by stealing a loaf of bread, Valjean earned himself “nineteen years” in prison. “He entered in 1796 for having broken a pane of glass and taken a loaf of Bread” (Hugo 86) Valjean loved his family so dearly that he risked rotting in jail rather than seeing them starve. He demonstrates pure charity in this act, for no sane person, would risk his life for others, unless his motivations lie in love. Then love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Corinthians 13:7) Valjean perfectly demonstrates the infinite measures people will take out of l...
member of the family to admit to the fact she did wrong and is willing
it is a circumstances in which no answer seems completely suitable. Opposite courses of action may look similarly necessary. Ethical dilemmas are in the middle of the most difficult situations in medical practice.
"Everybody has good and evil within them. All we're trying to say is that people are not all good or all bad. People are more complicated than you think, and one has to be more knowledgeable about the complexities.." Everybody has good and evil within them. All we're trying to say is that people are not all good or all... N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Jan. 2014. .
Although, it would be a mistake to depict Valmont as anything but the monster that he is, there seems to be a small measure of actual ‘affection’ for Tourvel, however short-lived. Once Valmont shares this strange and unexpected interest in Madame de Tourvel, The Marquise de Merteuil is enraged, considering it an appalling sign of weakness. In order to save face, Valmont returns to his ruthless ways, thus completing the destruction of Madame de Tourvel, who had ultimately fallen madly in love with Valmont.
that lies within a person is good and love, others think evil and hate. No matter how much a
husband’s rules. But what she didn’t know is that her husband is still alive and came into
For Jaques is, in effect, the opposite of everything Rosalind stands for. He is a moody cynic, who likes to look at life and draw from it poetical contemplations at the generally unsatisfactory nature of the world. He is, in a sense, an initial Hamlet-like figure (the comparison is frequently made), someone without any motivating erotic joy, who compensates for his inadequacy by trying to drag everything down to the level of his empty emotions and by verbalizing at length in poetical images. He takes some pride in what he calls his very own brand of melancholy which can suck the joy out of life as a weasel sucks the protein out of an egg (an interesting image of the destruction of new living potential), and he spends his time wallowing in it. His own social desire seems to be to find someone else to wallow in the same emotional mud as he does. But the spirits of the other characters, especially of Rosalind and Orlando, are too vital and creative to respond favourably to Jaques's attempts to cut life down to fit his limited moods.
Many ethical dilemmas are philosophical in nature, an ethical issue can be described as a problem with no clear resolution. In order to solve the issue or dilemma a consensus between the parties involved must be reached. There are several reasons to come to an agreement over an ethical dilemma, it is the basis for all aspects of personal and professional dealings. Each one of us is part of a civilized society and as such it is our responsibility to be rational, honest and loyal in our dealings with others. (Alakavuklar, 2012) states that individuals make decisions for different situations in business life involving various ethical dilemmas. Each time either consciously or unconsciously individuals may follow some ethical approaches
The Absurdist notion that an individual needs no external value to survive is portrayed by Meursault’s lack of remorse shown toward his crime and lack of compassion shown toward Marie. Rather, he is an end to himself, his life being justified by his sole existence. Meursault does not view prison as a punishment for killing the Arab; ins...