The World Since Les Misérables

Victor Hugo’s revolutionary Les Misérables preached timeless themes of peace, love and hope for the future, but his brutal picture of a miserable, ignorant world is no different from ours today. What the world might have missed from the author’s message

Victor Hugo once said, “If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away.” With his masterpiece, Les Misérables, Hugo clearly wrote for an audience beyond his time. In 1862, his revolutionary novel echoed enduring themes – themes that were cures for the ills of his day. But these cures are no different from the ones needed to address the problems of our time. Did Hugo manage to accurately predict that the world would still be plagued with the same ills today? Or did his audience simply not get his message?The novel encapsulated immortal themes to overcome common human struggles, but a century has passed and learning from Hugo’s work is still pending.

Despite the massive changes brought by the tide of history, Hugo’s nineteenth century world strangely resembles ours. We may be endowed with more sophisticated technology like water filters, hybrid cars, iPods, the Internet and Japanese-made robots, but the state of the world is not without a Les Mis-esque brand of injustice, despair and carnage.

In the 20th century, history featured events that go beyond Hugo’s simple depiction of an 1832 bloody street revolution led by student activists. The major powers in the international system took up arms in 1919 and the clash that ensued was World War I. The failure of economic institutions led to the Great Depression in 1929 and World War II followed soon after in 1937. Facism and Nazism, two belief systems that sought to reorder a chaotic society, eventually claimed lives of millions.

Contemporary history is still not without Hugo’s original concepts of human struggles. The world is burdened with the War in Iraq, civil war and unrest, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, transnational terrorism and criminal networks, vast poverty and inequality, religious extremism and the diminishing sustainability of the planet. Human struggles have, needless to say, transcended the barriers of time.

Interwoven in Hugo’s work is a foundational truth – that overcoming ignorance and misery is possible, despite the obstacles that stand in the way. Hugo’s portrait of Jean Valjean, Les Misérables’ protagonist, embodies just that. Valjean’s conversion from Prisoner 24601 to a hero for others follows Hugo’s bold thesis that man is perfectible and able to overcome whatever challenges he encounters in life.

Hugo’s point was neither subliminal nor in fine print – his hero underwent a radical transformation. And it was this transformation that changed his life and the lives of many others in the story, for the better.

When the novel was published in 1862, it was said to cause a stir unrivaled by other published books in history. Were readers from 1862 to the present simply wowed by Hugo’s masterful story-telling? Did those who consume Les Misérables simply take in the story without seeking to apply its themes to redeem the world’s bleak state?

In a world where history is defined by the milestones of conflict, Hugo’s eternal truths are silenced. We may live in a miserable world, but Hugo told us in 1862 that we don’t have to. All we would need is a change of perspective – to open ourselves to a transformation and care for others before ourselves.

In the preface of Les Misérables, Hugo wrote, “so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless.” In a world plagued with problems that are as timeless as the themes that could solve them, Les Misérables is not a candidate for the far corner of the bookshelf. Since the novel is no stranger to the curriculum of educational systems around the world, maybe it’s about time we started seeking an application of Hugo’s timeless themes.

Then maybe, Hugo’s truths would be more than heard and understood, but revolutionary.