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| When I say Les Miserables, you think |
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comrade acrimony
Committee Member
Post #41180
Joined: 09 Jun 2006
Posts: 350
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Posted: Wed 2007-04-25 03:57
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| Politics: Nihilism |
Country: Oceania |
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| The one and only Les Misérables |
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Goddamn, I don't even know how to approach this. I think I'll start by giving it a 1984 reading; the whole political and philosophical treatment is far too broad for just one post.
I trust that no one on here is completely unfamiliar with Hugo's sprawling epic, so I won't say anything about the plot.
Please note that I am not drawing parallels between 1984 and Les Mis (I feel weird using that abbreviation, like I'm talking about the musical and not the venerable book, but eh). I am analyzing it in terms of the psychological and sociological mechanisms outlined by Orwell.
The dystopian aspects of the novel, especially the parts set in Paris, bear little to no resemblance to Oceania, except for the prole areas. It is the perennial dystopia of poverty, not totalitarianism. The students attempt to wage a war on the reactionaries and the monarchy they serve and create a utopia. They are battling oppression and abandonment in a post-Napoleonic era of stagnant malaise. However, there is no omnipresent government that enforces its will upon the people; yes, there is a draconian legal system that unjustly packs people off to joycamps (i.e. the bagnes--galley slave) but it is due to an inability to remedy social problems, not because it wants to keep people in line for the sake of power, at least not to the extent of a totalitarian society.
However, it is in the characters that some insights can be made. Jean Valjean and Inspector Javert are based on the same person, Eugene François Vidocq, but they're quite different.
Valjean, to me, seems like a prole who became conscious due to injustice and mistreatment. He himself makes this insight: "Before going to the galleys, I was a poor peasant, with very little intelligence, a sort of idiot; the galleys wrought a change in me. I was stupid; I became vicious: I was a block of wood; I became a firebrand." His positive change he attributes to the transformative effects of humane treatment and kindness. But as important a social insight the latter is, I find the effects of his experience as a forçat in Toulon to be much more congruous with the plight of the proles. The proles are ignorant and unconscious, mired in poverty and knowing nothing else; Winston thinks that if they were to become conscious, they could show great power. Hopefully, the end result of that awakening and inheritance of power would be a better society. Jean Valjean's rehabilitation, which happened not in the place where he was subjected to forced labor for 19 years (well, duh!) but in the catalytic selflessness and goodwill of M. Myriel, the bishop of Digne. But without being sentenced to the galleys, none of this awakening would ever have taken place; Valjean would never have become a hero, a savior, a champion of justice, an all-around transcendently nice guy. He would have stayed a prole, a tree-pruner in a small village who gave up everything to feed his sister's children, but not in a conscious way, in a way that reflected his affectionate nature. He was kind to begin with, but his potential was not realized until he was wronged by society and then righted by an individual.
Javert, on the other hand, is an Inner Party member who has engaged in mild crimestop and was orthodox (but not unconscious, sort of like Syme) all his life. He was born into ignominy--unlike Valjean, he wasn't born a peasant, but a child of criminals. He rejected his family, much like the Junior Spies (I'm not comparing French criminals to crimethinkers or oldthinkers, but the mindset of the rejector is the same) and decided to semi-blindly serve the state and the somewhat murky principles of law and order. There is no nuance and no shades of gray in Ingsoc. For a lifetime, Javert used crimsetop to completely suppress the notion that perhaps goodness and evil are not always what the state says they are. The state says Valjean is evil because he stole a loaf of bread, broke his parole, was recidivist for a short period--therefore Javert believes that Valjean cannot be good. There is a difference between Javert and a member of the Inner Party, however--IP members simply want power for its own sake, while Javert honestly cares about law and order (albeit in a blind way).
When Javert's crimestop wall is shattered upon having his life spared by the man he believes to be evil, incapable of change, simply a bad apple--Valjean--he suffers from extreme cognitive dissonance and finds that he can only reconcile the situation through suicide. This suggests that Javert may have relied entirely on crimestop and been incapable of doublethink. If he had been well versed in doublethink, perhaps he would have been able to resolve the situation merely by forgetting the Valjean had ever saved his life. The data does not square with what Ingsoc and Big Brother say--it is nil, it never happened, it is not reality. Having Valjean kill him by asserting his goodness and challenging the orthodoxy of the state is akin to Winston showing O'Brien a newspaper clipping, saying "Look! This man was awarded a merit of a very high order!" and having O'Brien actually disbelieve in Ingsoc.
The reason Javert may not have engaged in doublethink is probably to do with the difference between Inner Party members and himself; they lust for power, and so have the drive and the incentive to lie to themselves. Javert, however, believes in the ideals he serves, and thus has neither the motive nor the capacity to falsify his own reality.
What think you?
Edit: In the absence of stimulating discussion I've decided to expound on this topic. 
I'm sorta stretching now but it's fun so hey si tu n'en aimes pas, alors je dis va te faire foutre. 
The plight of the idealistic students battling it out at a makeshift barricade, comitting semi-atrocities here and there, only to find that they have no support network, no centralizing force and no hope of not being completely crushed, is strongly reminiscent of the state of the "Brotherhood" (if it exists), as well as the isolated state of the insurgents/crimethinkers. I understand that some of these themes are universal, but it's still fun to draw parallels. O'Brien's inquiry conerning Julia and Winston's willingess to commit murder, die, throw acid in a child's face, forgo one another's company, etc., reflects the behavior of many of the revolutionaries, especially Enjolras. Enjolras could fairly be said to be more than a little bit on the unbalanced side. His frigid asexuality is strangely orthodox; Bossuet comments how strange it is that Enjolras can be so passionate, so "intrepid" and temerarious, without having the "fire" of sexuality to drive him. Of course, as Julia observed, sexual activity can often actually be inversely proportionate to political activity. Sex, however, does not necessarily sap energy or breed apathy, just if your heart was never really in it anyway. Enjolras is a fanatic, which is why he doesn't have a mistress. But if I he were to get laid now and then, it's not like he'd stop caring about the Republic. This rigid, puritanical orthodoxy is just in his nature. Unlike Valjean and Javert, he doesn't come from two clearly different strata in Ingsoc social structure, but rather combines elements from both the Anti-Sex League and the Brotherhood.
Enjolras' psycho side comes through when he's killing prisoners. He's a complex character, though--he's no sociopath, and he regrets taking people's lives. He's also not inhumane; yes, he leaves Javert tied to a pillar all night, but he remembers him in the morning, asks him if he wants anything, gives him a requested drink of water, and then transfers him to a table when Javert asks for that, too. Enjolras has every intention of killing Javert--he considered swapping him for Prouvaire when Prouvaire was taken prisoner, but had that plan dashed when the National Guard shot Prouvaire before the negotiation could be proposed. Thus, although he feels nothing but contempt for Javert, he makes the effort to impress upon Javert his civility. He considers himself a "judge, not an assassin."
He does not consider his own people above justice, either. When a volunteer, who turns out to be a homicidal career criminal with poor impulse control, shoots ("assassinates") a civilian bystander who refuses to give him and some other revolutionaries entry to his house, Enjolras summarily shoots him (after awarding him a minute to collect himself). He then explains to the students that he had to do that to maintain order and establish justice among the small community he believed would be the founders of the Republic; he goes on to swear that there will be no more killing once the Republic is established. So it is that everyone thinks...
It's noteworthy and fitting that the figurehead of the Revolution--an effeminate, asexual 20-year-old-, no less--contains in him both the seeds of Ingsoc and the Anti-Sex League, and the Brotherhood and the crimethinker.
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 Wolf Wajsbrot ("Un attentat, trois déraillements")
 Tristan Tzara (Dadaïste)
As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.
-L'Étranger |
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