Writers often highlight the values of a
culture/society by using characters who are alienated from that culture/society
due to gender/race/class/creed. Choose a play or novel in which such a
character plays a significant role and show how that character’s alienation
reveals the surrounding society’s assumptions/moral values.
In
the book Les Miserables by Victor
Hugo, Jean Valjean, an ex-convict, was
just trying to get through his unfortunate life. Nineteen years he was in
prison, for one measly little act of unselfish desperation; Valjean attempted
to steal a loaf of bread from a bakery to feed his sister and her seven
starving children. Finally, he was set free, but his past was like a cloud
always hanging over him. Valjean’s yellow passport was the only way people knew
who he was, but that passport was always inquired wherever he went. Society
recoiled from him, and he felt eternally dejected.
This
alienation was what shaped Jean Valjean throughout his life. He always had to
pretend he was someone else for people to actually accept him. When seen as a
convict, Valjean was thrown out of taverns and rejected from restaurants. He
was a homeless, helpless wanderer detested by society. But by change of name
and establishment of himself, he became a very loved and successful man, the
most generous and kind-hearted anyone knew.
This
act shows one simple thing: the judgemental, subjective mind of society.
Referring to society in a whole, as one single body, it jumps to conclusions
about the way things look or appear to be. Naturally, one would retract from a ragged
old convict and be drawn toward this wealthy, charitable man. But they are the
same person; it’s all in the way things appear to be. Don’t judge a book by its
cover? Don’t judge a man by his dress.
Choose a complex/important character in a novel/play
of recognized literary merit who might be considered evil or immoral. Explain
both how and why the full presentation of the character in the work makes us
react more sympathetically than we otherwise might.
Jean
Valjean, in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables,
as first perceived seemed to be the bad guy: he stole bread from a baker, he
stole silver from a bishop, he stole money from a child. But as Valjean evolved
and grew and developed as a character, he only wanted to run from that life. It
was his past, he longed for his future – a new future, to escape from his
darkness. He flourished into an implausibly generous and forgiving man, beyond
the extent of the average man. Nevertheless he could never fully escape his
murky past.
Javert,
the police inspector, caused the most trouble for Jean Valjean. From the very
beginning in the galleys at Toulon, Javert had been a guard, and upon Valjean’s
numerous efforts of escape, Javert had grown to loathe him. Upon discharge of
the galleys, with still a cloudy mind, Valjean inconsequently fell back into
his old ways. Evidently, Javert was right on top of this. As Valjean’s life
progressed, Inspector Javert seemed to be part of the police force in every
town Jean Valjean hid in; he continued to hunt Valjean down, even after becoming
a clean new man. Disguised name or not, Javert knew his face anywhere, and the
endless game of hide and seek kept Valjean on his toes.
As
the reader, we begin to sympathize for poor Jean Valjean. Everywhere he went,
he started a new life for himself, and everywhere he went, his past tracked him
down. Jean Valjean redeemed himself time and time again: he rescued an old man
from underneath a fallen carriage, he took in and raised poor frozen Cosette –
an orphan servant of but eight years old – and he saved the life of Marius
Pontmercy – Cosette’s subsequent lover –who Valjean looked upon only with
hatred. We, the readers, love Jean Valjean, for he is a good man with only a regrettable
past.
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