Individualism and Collectivism in "Les Misérables"
"If I speak, they are condemned - if I stay silent, I am damned."
Philip Roth once wrote that, “Politics is the great generalizer and literature is the great particularizer, and not only are they in an inverse relationship with one another – they are in an antagonist relationship.” Roth is too modern a writer for me to be a huge fan of his work, but I agree 100% with this assessment, and it’s one of the reasons I believe that great literature is not and cannot be political. We can have great political books of their time, but if something is going to endure through the centuries and touch humanity no matter when they exist, it has to go beyond politics – it has to address the heart of human nature.
In our own time, we have somehow mixed-up politics with human nature – politicians, intellectuals, and the media seem to see it as their duty to tweak and manipulate human nature, to make us “better people” by censoring our speech and trying to control our thoughts. We have decided that there are certain taboo topics and taboo ideas, and that we should all “be kind” and not express these if they might make someone uncomfortable or hurt their feelings. We have neutered our own art and literature so that it repeats banal platitudes, and we have tried to neuter that of the past by changing words and censoring books and movies if we feel they might offend people today. I did a whole lecture on this last year regarding censorship of horror entertainment – how people have always seen this particular genre as something dangerous and something that could corrupt people, with literally zero evidence for this belief. And yet in our “be kind” days, we don’t stand up to people who believe in nonsensical things – we just let them continue to censor other people under the banner of bland, insipid “niceness.”
If I were to write a great political novel of our time, this would be my setting – a society in which being nice and kind is the cardinal virtue, and how that leads to all kinds of horrors not being talked about or addressed or even admitted into existence since it might disturb someone’s peace of mind. Where people are punished for pointing out crimes rather than the people committing them. But I’m not particularly interested in writing a political novel – maybe if I get bored someday. For now, I’d like to focus on a novel that can certainly be described as political, and certainly was at the time it was written, but which has since become a classic because it speaks to something deeper than the politics of mid-19th century France. I am speaking, of course, of Les Misérables.
Confession: I have not read the novel, but I can quote every line and song from the musical, so this will be an analysis of that rather than the novel. I doubt many people today have read the novel, but many people today have seen the musical, so when I speak of contemporary relevance, I find it more useful to examine this. I had the great privilege on my latest trip to England of seeing Alfie Boe and Michael Ball perform the roles of Jean Valjean and Javert respectively at the Newcastle Arena. It was one of the most magnificent shows I have ever seen, and on the train ride back, I got to thinking about some of the themes that had struck me this time around.
Les Misérables is clearly advocating for a more just, equal, and fair society, which is certainly a reasonable ask in 19th century France. No country is so fond of their revolutions as France (I expect another one any day now!) but this story involves the failed revolution of 1832, known as the Paris Uprising or the June Rebellion, a two-day insurrection which was swiftly and violently put down by the authorities. The causes of this rebellion were generally economic and political, and the musical does not really get into the politics of the time, only the difficult circumstances the people of Paris suffer under, economic inequality and an uncaring leadership class, circumstances which all people in every age can see around them. In some ways the politics of the time doesn’t matter, since this state of affairs always exists and always will exist, because utopianism is a lie. Humanity is not perfectible, and the poor will always be with us, as Jesus said. And so as long as there are poor and wretched people ignored by those in power, Les Misérables is a show that resonates.
The protagonist of the show, Jean Valjean, is an exceptional man, who was imprisoned for 19 years after stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family, and whose time in prison made him callous and cruel. While out on parole, he steals from a bishop who offers him charity, and he is brought back by the authorities, but the bishop supports his lie that the silver he stole was a gift from him. In payment for not sending him back to prison, the bishop tells Valjean that he has bought his soul for God, and he must henceforth be a good man. Valjean is completely transformed by this act of kindness, breaks parole, and changes his identity to become a respectable citizen. But he is relentlessly pursued by the determined Inspector Javert throughout the years, who believes that all criminals are the same and that Valjean deserves to be imprisoned for breaking his parole, even though he has become a good, useful, and productive member of society.
It is interesting to contrast these two rivals, set up as foils in the show (indeed, in the arena tour, they are introduced on towers at opposite ends of the stage, reminiscent of two sides of a chess board.) Valjean is a man who did an unlawful thing, and is treated badly by the system of the law. He is punished for his individual action, even though his reason for breaking the law is a good one. He becomes hardened and cruel because of his treatment by that system, but repents and becomes a good man due to the actions of another good individual, the bishop. The bishop is arguably the product of the system of Christianity, but Christianity is a religion that almost uniquely prioritizes the individual over the collective – Jesus’s message is that even the poorest and humblest individual is loved by God.
Valjean’s hatred at the beginning of the show is directed towards “them” – “Never forget the years, the waste, nor forgive them for what they’ve done – they are the guilty, every one!” He externalizes the blame toward humanity itself – he believes “they” deserve his hatred until he is turned from this path by the bishop, and he begins to value individual human life, as the bishop valued his. But Valjean never returns to his collectivist blame of “them” – he always seeks to help individual people, such as asking God to “Bring Him Home,” regarding his future son-in-law Marius. He does not ask that God “Bring Them Home,” referring to all the people at the barricade - he only intercedes for one of them. He is no longer interested in generalizing groups of people as being deserving or undeserving, but rather helping individuals.
Javert is a product of the same system as Valjean (“You know nothing of Javert – I was born inside a jail. I was born with scum like you – I am from the gutter too.”) Javert’s reaction to this system is to become a devout agent of it, and to judge all those who fail that system as the worst of humanity. In the show, he is nominally a Christian (although this is a departure from the book, where Javert’s cynicism is motivated by legalism – the law is his God), but his version of Christianity is the hard and unforgiving one of the zealot, unmoved by the actual teachings of Christ involving forgiveness and repentance. He is more concerned with the letter of the law rather than its spirit. His collectivism is revealed in his hauntingly beautiful song “Stars” (my personal favorite song in the show), where he declares he admires these celestial objects for “filling the darkness with order and light…you know your place in the sky, you hold your course and your aim, and each in your season returns and returns, and is always the same.” Javert is inspired by the stars for being identical, for having no individuality but merely being parts of this great collective of heavenly order, with nothing to distinguish them from each other, because individuality in his mind leads to chaos. This is the system he reveres on heaven and earth – one led by conformity, and harsh consequences for breaking that conformity: “And so it must be, for so it is written, on the doorway to Paradise, that those who falter and those who fall must pay the price.”
You can see their differing perspectives also when dealing with the character of Fantine (played by the outstanding Katie Hall in the arena tour – probably the best portrayal I’ve ever seen in terms of vulnerability and righteous fury. And I’ll always applaud her for not visibly cringing while starring as Cosette opposite random Jonas Brother’s godawful Marius). Fantine was employed in Valjean’s factory – she was abandoned by the father of her child, Cosette, who she left in the care of the unscrupulous innkeepers, the Thenardiers, who fleece her for money by lying about her child being sick. The factory workers discover that Fantine has a child, and declare: “At the end of the day she’ll be nothing but trouble, and there’s trouble for all when there’s trouble for one. While we’re earning our daily bread, she’s the one with her hand in the butter – you can send the slut away or we’re all going to end in the gutter. It’s us who have to pay at the end of the day.” You can see very clearly the “us” vs. “her,” the collective versus the individual here – the individual made the mistake and so she must be punished by the collective before she taints them with her sin.
Fantine is summarily fired and is driven to prostitution to provide for Cosette. She makes an individual choice not to service a man (who is also a collectivist: “It is not for the harlot to pick or to choose or to lead me a dance!”), defends herself when he attacks her, and Javert is called. She pleads with him that if she goes to jail, her child will die, to which Javert responds, “I have heard such protestations every day for twenty years – let’s have no more explanations, save your breath and save your tears. Honest work, just reward, that’s the way to please the Lord.” Javert dismisses Fantine as just another law-breaker who should be punished, and is not interested in her individual situation. Valjean is the one who intercedes on Fantine’s behalf, asking how he can help her. Fantine blames him for her situation, saying he washed his hands of her and allowed her to be fired, and Valjean determines to make amends, even though others bear more responsibility for her situation. He takes individual responsibility for the actions of the mob, and determines to make it right by taking care of Cosette after Fantine’s death. He tells Javert this and asks him to let him go rescue Cosette, to which Javert replies, “You must think me mad – I have hunted you across the years. Men like you can never change.”
When Javert is proved wrong in his belief, when he sees that Valjean is an individual who can change, and not just another criminal or thief, he is unable to cope with this realization and commits suicide. He realizes that everything he believes has always been wrong, and his punishment for this is damnation in the eternal sense, since that is the traditional punishment for suicide in the Christian doctrine. When he mistakes another man for Valjean, he declares, “Well, of course he now denies it – you’d expect that of a con, but he couldn’t run forever, no, not even Jean Valjean.” His error was to view this particular con as “a con” – a type which he knows can never change, mistaking the individual for a collective of the worst kind of humanity who deserve to be punished. (Indeed, he cannot even recognize Valjean as the mayor until he confesses, because how could a thief be a respectable person?) The confession scene is also a perfect illustration of the individual versus collective belief – Valjean rightly sees himself as the master of hundreds of workers, and if he admits the truth of who he is, they will all suffer. Nevertheless, he makes the decision that one innocent life cannot be sacrificed no matter the cost to his employees. The life of the individual is more important than anything else – he cannot sacrifice it even for the collective good, possibly because Valjean knows he is not God and therefore cannot judge what the collective good is. He even spares Javert’s life knowing that Javert will continue to hunt him - even at the cost to himself, the life of the individual matters more. Javert cannot understand this - he accuses Valjean: “Once a thief, forever a thief – what you want you always steal.” He only sees Valjean as a unique individual at the end of the show, and this breaks his mind: “As I stare into the void of a world that cannot hold.” (And nobody does the mind breaking better than Michael Ball!) He has had a collectivist view of the world for so long that to change this view costs him his life, but he is not the only main character in the show who errs on the side of the collective over the individual.
Enjolras, the leader of the revolution (played with fantastic intensity by James D. Gish in the arena tour), has the same kind of collective belief regarding the people of Paris – he believes “the people still must rise,” despite all odds. He believes in the “we” of the collective: “before we cut the fat ones down to size, before the barricades arise…they will come one and all, they will come when we call!” When his friend Marius tells him of his love for Cosette, he sneers, “Marius, you’re no longer a child – I have no doubt you mean it well, but now there is a higher call. Who cares about your lonely soul? We strive toward a larger goal. Our little lives don’t count at all.” This is the core of Enjolras’s error – he overestimates the collective of “the people” as a force for good, and devalues the “little life” of his friend. But the story of Les Misérables illustrates the importance of the “little life” of each of its characters – indeed, that is what all stories do because they focus on individual people. It’s why group analysis of literature is a stupid task, and why generalizations disguised as literary analysis are doomed to fail. Stories are based around individual characters, and so collective analysis of the story as saying something about ALL groups involved is to misunderstand the nature of literature. But it is a very easy analysis, so I can see why people do it – thinking is hard, and group-based guilt is very in right now. Even intellectuals love to be fashionable. As usual, J.K. Rowling says it best:
Enjolras sees the world through the incorrect lens, the Marxist lens of the powerful versus the powerless. He believes, like Marx, that the proletariat will rise up when given enough provocation, and he is mistaken, like Marx. His punishment for being mistaken is to be slaughtered along with his friends. The show paints him as a sympathetic character, which he is – I would argue the show also has sympathy for Javert. It is sad when people are led astray by bad ideas, and when they have to die for them. The beautiful “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables” expresses this perfectly, and the Marius on the tour (Jac Yarrow doing a great job with a dull role!) sang it with an anger that I thought worked well: “Oh my friends, my friends, don’t ask me what your sacrifice was for!” It was a wasteful loss of life based on a mistaken belief, and that is the tragedy of the show. At the barricades, their friend Grantaire wonders, “Will the world remember you if you fall? Could it be your death means nothing at all? Is your life just one more life?” Enjolras glares disapprovingly at him for voicing this sentiment, but he is correct. His life was just one more life, both as lowly and as valuable as that, and it was a shame to waste it in pursuit of an unattainable ideal. Enjolras’s moving final words, “Let others rise to take our place until the earth is free!” is a naive cry that can never come true. The earth can never be free in the Marxist interpretation of liberation, which is mankind freed of its nature. It is a dangerous and deluded fantasy which has led many people to death and worse.
The show ends by restating the importance of the individual: “And remember the truth that once was spoken: to love another person is to see the face of God.” It is not “to love people” or “to love humanity,” – it is to love “another person,” another individual. The loved individual is the closest thing to God on earth – it is sacred. That is what the story of Les Misérables is about – the suffering and sacrifice done in the name of love, love for Valjean in the bishop’s case, love for Cosette in Valjean’s, Fantine’s, and Marius’s case, love for Marius in Eponine’s. It is no coincidence that Eponine returns at the end of the show to take Valjean to heaven – she sacrificed herself for the love of an individual, and is rewarded for that.
The conclusion of the show reveals the only way all the suffering expressed in it can end: “Do you hear the people sing, lost in the valley of the night? It is the music of a people who are climbing to the light. For the wretched of the earth there is a flame that never dies – even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise. They will live again in freedom in the garden of the Lord, they will walk behind the ploughshare, they will put away the sword – the chain will be broken and all men will have their reward. Will you join in our crusade, who will be strong and stand with me, somewhere beyond the barricade is there a world you long to see? Do you hear the people sing, say, do you hear the distant drums, it is the future that they bring when tomorrow comes!”
It doesn’t take a PhD in English to analyze this final verse – it is talking about the afterlife. The “valley of the night” is the world, and the “climbing to the light” is heaven, hence the living in freedom in the garden of the Lord. “Beyond the barricade” is beyond life, and after death “all men will have their reward.” It reiterates the Christian nature of one of the most Christian stories, of sin and suffering made glorious by pain and redemption. Christianity of course has a universal appeal, which is why so many people believe in it, and it is this same appeal which touches people when watching Les Misérables.
Victor Hugo was an odd man – he gave Valjean the prisoner number 24601 because that was the day of Hugo’s conception. But that’s the French for you. He was not a great political thinker, whatever he might be as a writer, as evidenced by this paragraph from the novel Les Misérables:
“Citizens, the nineteenth century is great, but the twentieth century will be happy. Then, there will be nothing more like the history of old, we shall no longer, as to-day, have to fear a conquest, an invasion, a usurpation, a rivalry of nations, arms in hand, an interruption of civilization depending on a marriage of kings, on a birth in hereditary tyrannies, a partition of peoples by a congress, a dismemberment because of the failure of a dynasty, a combat of two religions meeting face to face, like two bucks in the dark, on the bridge of the infinite; we shall no longer have to fear famine, farming out, prostitution arising from distress, misery from the failure of work and the scaffold and the sword, and battles and the ruffianism of chance in the forest of events. One might almost say: There will be no more events. We shall be happy. The human race will accomplish its law, as the terrestrial globe accomplishes its law; harmony will be re-established between the soul and the star; the soul will gravitate around the truth, as the planet around the light.”
It’s fair to say that he was way off in his predictions for the 20th century. This was, after all, the century that gave us the collectivist horrors of fascism and communism, and the murder of millions of individuals in their name. But Hugo’s story regarding the importance of one man doing the right thing, and changing himself and those around him, is more universally true than whatever political beliefs he might have had. He wrote Les Misérables to highlight the inequality and greed of the place and time he lived in, but he grounded his characters in the most basic and universal themes of human nature. And that is why, in whatever place and time this show is performed in, it moves people to tears. It is truthful, and truth moves us, particularly in a world of lies, which is always going to be the world we live in. But music and stories give us the ability to sense something of that other world beyond the barricade, whether we believe in it or not. In that way, they are truly divine.