The Motivation Behind Stealing

“Stealing, of course, is a crime, and a very impolite thing to do. But like most impolite things, it is excusable under certain circumstances” (Handler). Could you excuse an armed robber if the circumstance was to feed his family? Could you excuse a thief who wanted to apologize afterward? All of these instances came from an extraordinary book that Victor Hugo wrote, Les Misérables. Although the incentive behind theft might be obvious to some, the main character, Jean Valjean, provides a great example of how different the reasons to steal can be. Encountering a thief is like getting cut off while driving. Your first reaction is most likely some form of anger, but in reality the person cutting you off could have been doing it for serious