the miserable

[Editor's note: This was my post from yesterday, started right before midnight. I was having problems keeping the post from being too heavy handed. It was not my intent to be all 'change the world, feed the poor' etc. Not that that is a bad thing! I just am not so good at that myself, and I didn't want it to appear as if I was. I've left the post unfinished, as my thoughts are, too, still unfinished. I have a nagging suspicion that the reading of Les Mis shall inspire more heavy handed ponderings, though. You have been warned!]

Do you ever not read on in a book, because you have a pretty good idea what is going to happen? And, perhaps, if you don't carry on with the story, it never happened?

Jean Valjean just stole from the little boy; Fantine is about to believe she must do whatever her 'lover' says.

GAH.

Don't they know that their one choice will badly effect the rest if their lives?

I was chatting about the book today, and mention Victor Hugo's introduction:
I badly paraphrased it, saying, as long as there is inequality, books like[Les Miserables] must exist. Hugo puts it much more eloquently.

So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation which, in the midst of civilization, artificially creates a hell on earth, and complicates with human fatality a destiny that is divine; so long as the three problems of the century - the degredation of man by the exploitation of his labor, the ruin of woman by starvation, and the atrophy of childhood by physical and spiritual night - are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a still broader point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on the earth, there should be need for books such as this. Victor Hugo; Hauteville House, 1862

Perhaps someday Les Miserables will be not be needed. At least as nothing more than a reminder of what used to be. In this someday, we will be judged for the entirety of our self, instead small individual moments of our lives. That others will give us time to change, and grow. To accept the consequences of our actions

, without being defined by our actions.

Such change as Hugo demands, seems quite daunting.

I have this theory. If everyone were to pray for world peace, no one would know if their prayer was answered. We are not aware of the neighbors across the world that have decided to stop quarreling! We never see the results of our actions. And we give up.

Instead, we should look at the Bishop of Digne. Through the simple act of calling the man Valjean, Monsiuer, Valjean began to believe he was more than his yellow passport.

'Monsieur Curé,' said the man, 'you are truly good. You don't despise me. You take me into your house. You light your candles for me, and I haven't hidden from you where I come from, and bow miserable I am.' (76)