Les Mis

Why does the story of Les Miserables grip so many? I was trying to explain to my husband what i love about the story that became the musical that became the movie. For the past 3 days since seeing the movie, i can't get the songs out of my head. i tear up thinking of the story. i find a strange sort of comfort as i sing. but what is it that makes the story grip the heart so as to not let it go? For one, the triumph of good over evil is seen through different eyes. Who of the main characters can we truly see as evil? Can we really think of Javert as a villian? He can't understand. He gropes. He struggles to find meaning. He believes with all his heart "once a thief always a thief"... but is he really harder on anyone else than he is on himself? Isn't he just in torment over what he set his life mission to be and simply cannot reconcile that with what he sees in Jean Valjean? He is to be pitied. He is not the "bad guy." So what then of the triumph of good over evil... where do we see it? it's in no other place than the human heart. how is it brought about but through the kindness of one soul? We see this in the life of our hero but also in life of the afflicted and pitiable Fantine. Is it just a simple "do good and good will come back to you?" in the way one might think of karma? I don't believe so. I think to show kindness to one destitute of any hope is to be like Jesus who "demonstrated His own love for us in this 'while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." He loved the unlovely. We see the picture of mercy and compassion and we marvel yet still at the One who most clearly demonstrated these things toward a lost and fallen humanity. But what else do we see? We see that hope's resilience. We look at the young Cosette sweeping and singing of her dreams and loving arms to embrace her. We see a child who looks for hope and believes it will come even if all around her speaks otherwise. Hope keeps us soft and that's why we love Cozette. Juxtaposed to Cosette is the sure "other worldliness" of Eponine? She has selfish crooks for parents and somehow becomes a woman who will live deep and sacrificially in the face of that. The tragedy of unrequited love looms clearly in her but what of these other passions and demonstrations of care for others that seem to come in the face of what would make most bitter? At the end of the story, what i find most compelling is Jean Valjean offering his feeble attempts at goodness as just what they are. He knows he's fallen short of what he hoped to be. He knows that he would not have been half of what he was had he not been taught to love. He knows that at best he's strained and fallen short. I see the shadow of the cross over this final scene. For it's only through the transforming grace of Divine love that any man can be set free. Not only free when death comes but free to live without fear of what men might do to the one whose life is not his own. Jean Valjean was changed for a purpose far greater than his own good and avoidance of prison. And he knows it. The story itself moves me and the songs do even more to wring the heart of its last attempts at goodness apart from grace; of judgment apart from mercy; of "rightness" apart from compassion. These are just some of the reasons i linger with this story and so now, i linger on.