How Does Les Miserables Use Of Kindness

American lawyer and political leader, Robert Green Ingersoll, once said that “kindness is the sunshine in which virtue grows.” In book one, “Fantine,” in the novel Les Miserables, author Victor Hugo uses the helpless and beast-like character of Jean Valjean to demonstrate that when an individual, at his lowest point of being, is exposed to kindness, he may rise up and become virtuous, so that he may help others achieve this virtue in return. A helpless individual in the midst of a radically unequal society, Jean Valjean begins his journey without virtue and compassion, and until he meets a person who offers him the help and affection he requires, he struggles to find himself, since his previous persona is buried deep within the court system of the state. After spending nearly nineteen years in the galleys of Toulon, for a measly crime of stealing a mouthful of bread to feed him and his family, Jean Valjean is put on parole with a yellow passport, labeling him as a convict. This piece of paper defines him, and when he returns to town in the
In his lonely and gruesome endeavor for shelter and food, the earth around him “[is] then lighter than the sky, which produces a peculiarly sinister effect, and the hill, poor and mean in contour, loom[s] out dim and pale upon the gloomy horizon; the whole prospect [is] hideous, mean, lugubrious, and insignificant” (Hugo 11). Here, Hugo’s narrative description of the environment is a parallel representation of Jean Valjean’s situation. Simply by viewing Hugo’s use of personification and adjectives, there is an overall negative connotation associated with Jean Valjean’s current placement in society. The hill is a metaphorical hill which Jean Valjean must climb in order to become a true and honest man, and the notion that there is still some light on earth displays that not all hope is lost for