LES MISÉRABLES

——11 级对外汉语 1 班 杨洋

The authorBackgroundsMain charactersSummaryValueThemeClassical songs in movieMy thoughts

Victor Hugo was a French poet, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist .

In France, his literary reputation rests primarily on his poems and dramas and only secondarily on his novels.

He is sometimes identified as the greatest French poet. Outside France, his best-known works are the novels Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris.

Backgrounds

Hugo began planning a major novel about social misery and injustice as early as the 1830s, but it took a full 17 years for his most popular work, Les Misérables, to be realized and finally published in 1862.

Jean Valjeanthe prisoner. Javertthe policeman. Cosette Fantine’s daughter. MariusCosette’s lover Fantinea woman cheated by a dissolute manage.

Thénardiersthe couple raise Cosette at first, Marius’s

father’s lifesaver. Éponine elder daughter,love Marius very much .

Jean Valjean was convicted for stealing a loaf of bread, he is punished in prison for nineteen years. Rejected as former convict, Bishop Myriel turns his life around. He assumes a new identity to pursue an honest life, becomes a factory owner and a mayor. He adopts and raises Fantine's daughter, Cosette, and dies at an old age.

Javert An obsessive

police inspector who continuously hunts, tracks down, and loses Jean Valjean. He goes undercover behind the barricade, but is unmasked. Jean Valjean has the chance to kill Javert, but lets him go. Later Javert allows Jean Valjean to escape. Javert is in a situation in which to act lawfully is immoral. His inner conflict leads him to jumping into the River Seine.

Fantine

A beautiful girl abandoned by her lover, she leaves her daughter

Cosette in the care of the Thénardiers. She finds work at

the factory runned by Jean Valjean, but is fired by a woman

because she is an unmarried mother. To meet the demands for money from the Thénardiers, she sells her hair, then her front teeth, and finally turns to prostitution.

Jean Valjean learns of her situation when Javert arrests her. She dies before Jean Valjean is

able to reunite her with Cosette.

Cosette The daughter of Fantine, she is raised by Jean Val jean after her mother dies.

For the first few years she is raised, she is used as a worker and beaten by the Thénardiers. She falls in love with Marius , and marries him at the end of the novel.

Marius An aristocrat who fell out with his royalist grandfather after discovering his father was an officer under Napoleon. He studies law, joins the revolutionary ABC students and later falls in love with Cosette.

Thénardiers

They take in Cosette in her first years, mistreating and abusing her. They end up losing the inn and move to Paris. Thénardier is later the head of a criminal gang called the Patron-Minette. The family also live next door to Marius, who recognizes Thénardier as the man who saved his father at Waterloo.

Éponine The Thénardiers' elder

daughter. She participates in her father's crimes to obtain money. She is also in love with Marius. At Marius' request, she finds Cosette's address for him and leads him to her. She dies at the barricades when she reaches out her hand to stop a soldier's bullet heading for Marius: she is mortally wounded as the bullet goes through her back and dies. Her final request is that once she has passed, Marius will kiss her on the forehead. Of course ,he does.

Summary

The novel basic plot is Jean Valjean’s pitiful

life. He once is a poor background worker, because the incomes can’t be enough for the family members’ life, once upon a time , he stole the bread and was arrested, which makes him pass 19 years firm bitter service life.

After the punishments , he uses an alias

Madland, works as the entrepreneur, and ispushed for mayor. But soon and further because

his exposing , he was arrested again , after another escape , he rescues the poor female worker -- Fantin‘s daughter --Cosette. Then , he and Cosette have the peaceful life . When Cosette grows up , she marries to a young man called Marius . At last ,this old man dies at an old age ,quiet， just like the angle .

The value

" Les Miserables " (1862) is the representative work of Victor Hugo, as one of the famous novels in the worldwide literature. It is the representative work of realism and romantic

Classical songs in the movie/opera

I dreamed a dream-Fantine

One day more

Those who fight for liberty prepare the courage to sacrifice.Lovers who are looking for meeting again are apprehensive （忐忑）Lonely girlIgnorant peopleOpportunistic coupleAcute contradiction between Jean and Javert

Not everyone’ sacrificing has returnBecause sacrificing itself is the valueLove others that is to prove the existence of GodWhat is the meaning of today? Fight for tomorrow selflessly.One Day More 。

Do you hear people sing?

The themeThis story tells us about kind.

Hugo hopes the society becomes clear and human.

All these stories have common that is the miserable life because of the persecution of the upper class. In facts, Hugo was raging of the present society.

My thoughts kind, tolerance…moved by Jean Valjean .In this novel, Hugo thinks that there are

two kinds of laws .One is the kindness, the other is the punishment. Jean comes out of the prison after about nineteenth-year’s hard life. Then there are two kinds of attitudes towards him . One is the kindness from Bishop Myriel which leads him to a peaceful life.Another is the persecution and punishment from the police—Javert leading him to a more serious life.At last, the police jumps into the river,just because of the awareness of the kind heart.