Les Miserables question

[Hermione]

@Cayuga

Clearly his suicide stems from his realization that the world is filled with shades of gray, and that good people can do bad things and bad people can do good things.

More specifically, though, my wife says he kills himself because he can’t handle the realization that the world view he’d been living with his whole life was not, in fact, true. I believe that he kills himself because he does not want to/cannot live in a world that is not black and white, good and evil. (There is at least one line in his final song that supports this interpretation, but I can’t look it up right now.)

Right in one. On the original French concept album, Javert’s suicide soliloquy was actually called “Noir Ou Blanc” (Black Or White).

[Hermione]

@midnight-dreary

Javert and Valjean were both presented with an existential crisis. (Valjean saw that he was able to be more than a petty criminal for the rest of his life. Javert saw that people can change, and that criminals can be good people.)

When you have an existential crisis you can either progress, revert or be unable to deal with it (which leaves you in turmoil or you end up killing yourself)

Valjean progressed and became more than a petty criminal.
Javert was unable to deal with his crisis, so he killed himself.

At least that’s what I’ve gotten from both movies.

It’s no mistake that both soliloquies are to the same melody. Valjean’s epiphany leads to renewed life; Javert’s leads to death.

In fact, you can make a pretty good case that both men are mirror images of each other (just look at the reversed “J” and “V” sounds in their surnames). Both men are good in their ways, both devoted to ideals, but Valjean’s morality allows for the ideas of mercy and redemption, which Javert’s leaves out of the equation.

[interface2x]

@Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela

Javert lets Valjean go, and in the subsequent musical number, tries (and fails) to come to terms with this act of mercy toward a criminal.

Correct - the scene in the movie is almost exactly as in the stage show:

Valjean:
It’s you, Javert! I knew you wouldn’t wait too long
The faithful servant at his post once more!
This man’s done no wrong,
And he needs a doctor’s care.

Snip

Valjean:
Another hour yet
And then I’m yours
And all our debts are paid.

Snip

Javert:
Take him Valjean,
Before I change my mind
I will be waiting
24601.
Instead of waiting for him to return, Javert commits suicide.

[friedo]

@Hermione

It’s no mistake that both soliloquies are to the same melody. Valjean’s epiphany leads to renewed life; Javert’s leads to death.

Indeed, unfortunately, I think the best part of Javert’s version is cut out of the movie. Here are the lyrics for Valjean’s soliloquy after being bailed out by the Bishop, and here is Javert’s version, sung to the same intense melody.

Their stories are quite parallel, and so are the songs. Both are confounded by another’s actions which seem to go against their view of the world. Valjean chooses to deal with this by becoming a better man. Javert can’t deal with it, so he kills himself.

Les Mis is full of this kinda stuff, and the musical makes much use of leitmotif and theme (both melodically and lyrically) to convey related and parallel stories. It is really quite operatic. (Although plenty of people have criticized it for having songs that all “sound the same.” But I think it’s one of the few musicals where the music is as much a part of the story as the story.)

Anyway, I was a bit upset by the movie version, which understandably cut a lot of stuff for time, but left the musical aspect of the show somewhat confused.

[MovieMogul]

I’m surprised that nobody has mentioned the very obvious opposition between the two men, in that Javert is Old Testament and Valjean is New Testament.

Old Testament is about The Law, with (generally speaking) zero tolerance for any actions deviating from a strict code of rules. Holiness is through actions and adherence to that code.

New Testament is about Grace and Redemption. Valjean isn’t a good person because of his actions, but because of his self-awareness, his confession, and his humility.

The New supplants the Old, and Javert can’t wrap his head around a criminal being “saved”. Confession doesn’t matter, all that matters is guilt and punishment. That Valjean’s actions are not out of self-interest, but selflessness, upends Javert’s entire worldview.

This new world has no place for him, because he sees everything in black & white and not on a moral continuum. This breaks him, and so he escapes from this world he can’t comprehend.

[Enright3]

The women factory workers don’t like Fantine because they discovered that the child she is supporting is her illegitimate child; which is scandalous at that time.

Javert is caught in the ultimate conflict because of his absolute commitment to his profession and the debt he owes Valjean for saving his life. He realized that he cannot continue to be true to his profession any longer in regards to Valjean and therefore decides the only solution is to kill himself (as opposed to admitting he broke the law by letting Valjean go; and going to prison himself). Remember he has believed up until then that people don’t change. Everything in his life now had different meaning. It was huge change for him that he just couldn’t accept.

[KayLovesPurple]

Here’s the bit from the book that I think best describes J’s moral crisis (bolding mine) :

A convict was his benefactor!

But then, why had he permitted that man to leave him alive? He had the right to be killed in that barricade. He should have asserted that right. It would have been better to summon the other insurgents to his succor against Jean Valjean, to get himself shot by force.

His supreme anguish was the loss of certainty. He felt that he had been uprooted. The code was no longer anything more than a stump in his hand. He had to deal with scruples of an unknown species. There had taken place within him a sentimental revelation entirely distinct from legal affirmation, his only standard of measurement hitherto. To remain in his former uprightness did not suffice. A whole order of unexpected facts had cropped up and subjugated him. A whole new world was dawning on his soul: kindness accepted and repaid, devotion, mercy, indulgence, violences committed by pity on austerity, respect for persons, no more definitive condemnation, no more conviction, the possibility of a tear in the eye of the law, no one knows what justice according to God, running in inverse sense to justice according to men. He perceived amid the shadows the terrible rising of an unknown moral sun; it horrified and dazzled him. An owl forced to the gaze of an eagle.

He said to himself that it was true that there were exceptional cases, that authority might be put out of countenance, that the rule might be inadequate in the presence of a fact, that everything could not be framed within the text of the code, that the unforeseen compelled obedience, that the virtue of a convict might set a snare for the virtue of the functionary, that destiny did indulge in such ambushes, and he reflected with despair that he himself had not even been fortified against a surprise.

He was forced to acknowledge that goodness did exist. This convict had been good. And he himself, unprecedented circumstance, had just been good also. So he was becoming depraved.

He found that he was a coward. He conceived a horror of himself.

Javert’s ideal, was not to be human, to be grand, to be sublime; it was to be irreproachable.

Now, he had just failed in this.

I read this book as a teenager and for a long while I couldn’t decide whether I like this idea of the author’s (having a main character have such an intense crisis of conscience, and kill himself as a result) or not. After reading this thread, I am leaning towards finding it a brilliant idea, as I seem to have missed many nuances back when.