In your opinion, is Inspector Javert a hero in Les Mis?

I think he is. He is a harsh, but fair, and does his duty, nothing more. He is deeply moral, as evidenced by the fact that [SPOILER ALERT]

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When he has to choose between arresting a man who saved his life or letting a convict go free, thus violating the oath he swore when he became a policeman, he instead jumps into a river to avoid acting immorally.

 

You must be barbecuing again

 

I'm not barbecuing tonight. Tonight was Taco Bell. Yum!
I'm 100% serious here. The true villains of Les Mis are the Thenardiers. Javert is a tragic hero, as is Valjean.

 

In the book, Victor Hugo portrays him as more tragic than villainous, but so monomaniacal regarding his strict and limited views of justice and authority that "he made them almost bad by dint of his exaggeration of them." His self-deprivation and virtue utterly lacks empathy. He commits suicide when he is presented with the ultimate dilemma: Valjean is both a criminal but incredibly good and moral -- an ethical paradox in which Javert recognizes the fatal flaw in his own belief system.

 

There is no real way out of Javert's conundrum. Let Valjean go, and he has violated a solemn oath. Arrest him, and he has arrested the man to whom he owes his life.

 

Sorry,the topic leaves me in a total quandary,it's out of my league ..this thread might be better in the visual arts forum

 

Les Mis is a musical, though, so shouldn't it be here with other music threads?

 

I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and not declare him a villain and just go with neither.

But we need to remember that Javert is a fictional character and he's there to play a part... in this case to represent the damage that can be done when laws are applied as absolutes, without humanity. Some may think that unwavering focus a moral virtue, but story clearly implies there is a higher virtue which is infinitely more important.

That Javert is so incapable of reconciling what he has always believed and made his life's calling with what he has come to understand in the face of its ultimate counterpoint... to the point that he takes his own life is the ultimate expression of the harm of blind adherence to dogma, even if codified in law.

No, he's definitely not a hero; heroes face the challenges life presents them, they do not just check out because it's more than they are willing to face.

 

Interesting perspective...another way to look at it is that Javert is a man who made the ultimate sacrifice to avoid doing something immoral.

 

From reading the book (so many times I've lost count), it's not Valjean saving him that causes Javert's demise (he could have easily rationalized the act as Valjean saving him to curry favor and escape justice), it's more that Javert recognizes Valjean's inherent and unimpeachable goodness, and that Javert realizes that he lacks the humanity and natural morality that is a façade surrounding Javert's empty virtue.

 

I've never read the book, I've only seen the musical...I haven't read a book that wasn't a graphic novel in over a decade, I think.

 

My favorite book of all time. Have also read it multiple times.

The unabridged version. It's wicked long.... and worth every last word.

 

(also I can't understand French). I'm generally not good with translated books. My pastor told me to read the Bible, I tried, but I gave up because there was too much "thee" "thou" and other confusing verbiage.

 

A good translation is definitely important.

 

Actually, Les Misérables is not my favorite Hugo book. That distinction would go to Notre Dame de Paris which is an absolutely sprawling epic, and far more a novel that recreates a living, breathing medieval Paris than just a story about the hunchback Quasimodo. Which it isn't.

 

I know the novelization of Les Mis is full of tangents and long sections about stuff like the sewers of Paris. What's nice about the musical is that all of that stuff is cut off, and there is beautiful music.

 

I'm not trolling, though. I'm 100% serious. I've always struggled with difficultly written texts. I barely made it through Shakespeare in high school with my sanity intact.

 

And how is this is a Music Forum thread?

 

I found a beautiful copy at Powell Books in Portland, OR. 1500 pages that included among other things, a vivid description of the Paris sewer system, a diatribe on why waste water should not be just dumped in the Sienne, etc. A sprawling book indeed. And just for fun, the last paragraph on the last page was in French.

 

Well done, now it's not.

 

it's a wonderful book, I wonder if they even read it in school these days? It would be in my curriculum without a doubt. i would not see Javert as a villain or a hero. Which is the point for me.

 

Because it is discussing a Broadway musical, which is a form of performance music.

 

Javert is a villain. Jean Valjean had served his sentence, and had not been arrested or charged in the theft of silver from the Abbe who forgave him his theft. Javert had no business trying to expose Valjean, he did it because he was apparently convinced that rehabilitation is impossible.

 

We get that Javert is a fictional character, as is Valjean, in a fictional work.

I'm just not understanding the importance of this?

Be it Hugo or Shakespeare, isn't the entire point of describing the human condition?

Sometimes, characters are composite that are made up of character traits of several individuals. That, to me would seem to be the point.

Even non-fiction works will often contain composite characters for the sake of story simplification. In a fictionalized setting, I don't see how things be any other way?