Les Miserables

 

Published 1/04/07

 

Safeguard your right to be your own master.

 

Jean Valjean, the leading character in Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables,” lives an honorable life serving his fellow citizens in spite of the fact that during his early adult years he’d suffered numerous injustices at the hands of society.

 

Throughout most of the story he expends great effort protecting a little girl and raising her to adulthood, honoring a pledge he made to the girl’s mother on her deathbed.  All the while, he’s moving about France dodging a police detective who has followed him since his completion of a prison term he’d served for stealing bread to feed his family.

 

Valjean encounters numerous situations that require decisive, just action, and in each case does what’s right, at times even at great risk to his own welfare.  At one point, he even risks his own life to save that of the detective who has been dogging him.

 

In the end, he suffers rejection by the young woman he has spent so much effort in protecting and raising.  Even then, he shows no bitterness or regret for the way he has lived.

 

The main theme of this wonderful story is, to me, that we should ALWAYS do what is right, simply because and ONLY because it is the right thing to do.

 

We should all be a “clear spring of sweet water,” as Marcus Aurelius described: “A man may stand by a clear spring of sweet water and heap abusive words upon it, yet it still goes on welling up fresh and wholesome; he may even cast in mire and filth, but it will quickly dissolve them and wash them away, and show no stain.  How be lord yourself of such a perennial fountain?  By safeguarding the right to be your own master every hour of the day, in all charity, simplicity, and modesty.”