This episode is brought to you by that gosh darn hippie show featuring music from the days of vinyl It's the grievous thing to hear on your radio The one thing everyone knows about Les Misrab is that it's very long and crazy detailed Just about every named character is given a backstory and there are huge chunks of the book where the plot stops entirely for a dissertation on the Battle of Waterloo or the Parisian sewer system or StreetCant Why is that? After all authors write what they write for a reason even if their Charles Dickens And the reason is he promised his publishers 20 chapters and damn it. They're going to get them to answer that question We're going to dive into Les Misrab by Victor Hugo In the English speaking world Hugo is primarily known as a novelist Thanks to the popularity of both Les Misrab and the hunchback of Notre Dame in his home country He's first and foremost remembered as a poet, but both designations are only the tip of the iceberg He was also a dramatist artist social advocate statesman and all around revered figure But turn out for his funeral rivaled that of monarchs and to this day There are few authors so widely honored He's even venerated as a saint in the cow die religion of Vietnam beat that Shakespeare So here's how it originally went down Les Misrab the title is usually translated as the wretched ones or the wretched poor can be distilled down to three primary plot arcs and themes The first and most overarching is the story of Jean-Faillet Jean Sent to jail for stealing bread for his starving family He gets out after two decades bitter and hardened from the experience and the cold reception society gives a Perolled convict doesn't help He steals silver from a kindly bishop gets caught and is astonished when the bishop not only proclaims the silver a gift But also throws in a pair of candlesticks This act of mercy prompts Faljon to reform his life and work to benefit society Which he does despite being forever hounded by his past mostly in the form of the implacable policemen Javere The theme justice is critically flawed if it is incompatible with compassion The second plot arc begins with Fontine a working class woman seduced by a wealthy young man and Abandoned not long after he gets her pregnant She sends the child cosette to live with the inkeeper to Nadia and his family and does her best to support her daughter But a combination of society slutshaming her and the to Nadia's extorting her for increasing sums of money Eventually leave Fontine with no recourse but prostitution which soon results in her illness and death Veljon provides care for Fontine in her last days and adopts cosette Sparing her from the degradation that claimed her mother the theme the exploitation of women and the double standard Which punishes them while partening those who exploit them the third arc is a recounting of the June rebellion of 1832 which we experience through a group of idealistic students stylizing themselves the friends of the ABC one of whom Marius falls in love with the now adult cosette the theme We'll get to that suffice it to say the rebellion fails and nearly all the major characters die Except Marius and cosette who get married and Monsieur Tennardier who goes to America and becomes a slave trader because he's an asshole It goes without saying that a lot got left on the cutting room floor when Les Miserables adapted to the stage Including notable plot developments such as Valjon's second stint in prison Which he gets out of by faking his death Veljon and cosette hiding out in a convent for several years and Marius's strained relationship with his royalist grandfather Though these last two are alluded to in the 2012 film adaptation Hugo's lengthy descriptive passages also get left by the wayside as their extraneous to a dramatic production But not to the novel itself even though they feel that way sometimes The reason why Hugo spends so much time on French history and culture is because Les Miserables is ultimately a story of France itself And was written about and during a time of intense political conflict for the nation See a large portion of the 19th century in France was devoted to fighting over who should be running the country Between people who wanted to keep going with the Republic thing people who wanted a return to absolute monarchy and those who wanted Displit the difference with a constitutional monarchy Most of Les Miserables takes place during the restoration of the monarchy with the climax coming during the tumultuous early years of the reign of Louis Philippe Hugo a Republican who wrote most of Les Miserables in exile from the second Empire of Napoleon III is Obviously pretty critical of the state of affairs during this time But if Les Miserables is a story of political struggle Why is it named for a class of people with the least amount of political influence? That's the third and most important major theme of the novel Revolution is meaningless if it does not bring social reform all this fighting over who is on top of the social structure Doesn't matter because those on the bottom continue to suffer no matter what Hugo wasn't calling for a rebellion against kings and emperors But against the fundamental injustices and inequalities of the world itself and while the musical does touch on this idea In turning and the additional movie verse of Look Down it doesn't delve into it too deeply Probably because it's a bitter pill to swallow After all the fact that Hugo's embodiments of social injustice a former convict never fully able to escape his record a sexually exploited woman Children abandoned or allowed to slip through the cracks are still relevant shows how little progress We've made on that front But Hugo's message is ultimately one of hope rather than despair because if meaningful progress is difficult It's also the only cause truly worth fighting for food for thought for your election year You