Last night DW and I saw Les Mis and loved it. When I got home I skimmed through the book that I read 20 years ago which was also during the early stages of my defection from the church.
I had marked a number of passages but this one caught my attention because it made me think of the TSCC.
"Probity,sincerity,candor,conviction,the idea of duty,are things that, when in error, can turn hideous, but- even though hideous-great; their majesty, peculiar to human conscience, persists in horror. They are virtues with a single vice - error. The pitiless, sincere joy of a fanatic in an act of atrocity preserves some mournful radiance that inspires veneration. Without suspecting it, Javert, in his dreadful happiness, was pitiful, like every ignorant man in triumph. Nothing could be more poignant and terrible than this face, which revealed what might be called all the evil of good."

Of course, this describes Javert, but I have TBM friends(and they are good friends) who seem to be good people, that is they are dependable, hard working, helpful, loving, etc. but their is something missing, like these traits are a bit mechanical. If they went to an R movie with sexual content they would see the nastiness of the sex scenes and probably miss the relationships and emotions conveyed in those same scenes.
When I was TBM there were times when I didn't feel quite human and now without the church to guide me there are times when I simply think how I love being a human being.

"Little evil would be done in the world if evil never could be done in the name of good. " -- Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach,1830 - 1916 austrian novelist

Javert is the single saddest, most tragic character to me in Les Mis, because he is so single-minded in his belief that he's right that he fails to see how he's sinking. Born in the gutter and having spent much of his time in the bagne, like ValJean (but for entirely different reasons, as a guard or warder), he never fails to see that he's headed back to the gutter by his own hand. His parents are both criminals, thus he must rise above what they've done (much like a brother-in-law of mine whose father never learned to write, thus he spent years working and working on multiple degrees to escape that legacy). Everything Javert does is applied by the narrowness of law--of justice without mercy. He sees everything in abstraction, always a dangerous way of looking at life, because one never knows then how to put actual ideas into practice. He finds the young men and their silly barricade as just so much noise, even after they, and even young children, are slaughtered. He has a hand in Fantine's death when he accepts thily-veiled excuses for her arrest (and illness in prison)--little does he care as he sees her as a prostitute (as does ValJean by doing nothing when he's mayor, but, o/c, years atones with his promise to her on her deathbed to save Cosette).

But Javert isn't without principle; it's that he sees nothing but the rigid application of law--which "is not mocked," as he sings (the law as sacrosanct)--as the only way to rise out of one's circumstances. That's why, to me, he and ValJean are the two most fascinating characters in the novel. They are not polar opposites as many people erroneously claim; Javert is not a horrible man. He's a very sad man who realizes his mistakes far too late to change what he's allowed to happen and how he's failed his fellowman. When he could have lived and given much back, he simply cannot forgive ValJean for saving his life and cannot forgive himself. It's tragic stuff, indeed.

He's a character much like Hawthorne's young Goodman Browne, Melville's Captain Ahab, or any number of characters out of Faulkner, Warren, Styron, Woolf, etc.

And yes, you're right--that's the failing a lot of us have in and out of the church--we can spout a lot of abstractions, but really truly putting ideas like love, integrity, charity etc. into action is something else altogether.

Of course, the Thenardiers are absolute, filthy abusers--I'm stunned that they were used as comic relief in the film version, because, of course, they are meant to be the kind of debauched users who turn up like cockroaches when nothing else is left. Besides abusing Cosette and selling her for money, they also affect Eponine, who must atone for her cruelty to Cosette, begun when they were children, completely alone, when she dearly wants to be with Marius (who is the only dullard in the piece, imo).
The couple was used with great effect on the stage--and because, of course, there are so few moments of any type, comic or otherwise, that it's easy to see why they were used as comic relief. A colleague of mine--who went with me to take a bus load of French students to see the play out of town--despised the play version because they had made jesters out of child abusers.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/30/2012 01:32PM by ducky333.

ducky333 Wrote:
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> despised the play version because they had
> made jesters out of child abusers.

...which mormonism obviously is.

I've both done and seen Javertian things in mormonism...well on a small scale anyway.

There's the "not one jot or tittle of the law shall pass away" ethic in mormonim. Indeed, I think mormonism itself was a revival of Phariseanism that was lacking in Christianutty that was more and more preaching that sinners could be saved in sin, just by believing/confessing.

But I wasn't clear on where Les Mis stands on the revolution. It was OK to gun down troops? "Revolutions" are typically as or more dogmatic that the systems they're overthrowing. I personally even think the American Revolution was unnecessarily bloody, as was the American Civil War. I think the idolization of revolutions is trite.

Great posts. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I saw it last night and I did experience flashbacks to mormonism and individuals who I knew in LDS circles when watching Javert. I agree with Ducky333, that Javert is not all evil. He is simply fanatical in his interpretation of the law and it's application. Sad is a good way to describe him.

For me, the overwhelming theme of Les Miserables is kindness...and the sequelae of kindness.

The description of the character, Javert from Les Miserables, is a perfect description of fundamentalist Christians that have gotten themselves wrapped up in the 'Christian Right' political movement. Not just Mormons were involved in this travesty that has harmed our country.

There is profound truth in the saying; "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."

I have recognized this rhetoric and politics of making religious law and doctrines secular and imposing them on the rest of us through hook or crook is the way Satan's plan story in the pre-existence was taugh to us.

If all the fundies are correct and we are all going to hell as a nation, how is that different than the stories in the Bible? As to using Federal money to pay for sins, these are they same people who can't wait to go kill dark skinned people somewhere over there.

Quite right, Gentlestrength.

In the LDS story of the pre-Existence, both Satan and jesus offered plans of Salvation. Satan wanted to FORCE people into salvation. Jesus offered to allow people to CHOOSE salvation, using their Free Agency.

Heavenly Father gave the nod to Jesus' plan. This made Satan so angry, he rebelled, taking a third of heaven with him.

So, WHY did the LDS get involved in Proposition 8 in CA? Sounds to me like Satan's plan, doesn't it?

As to the Born agains, they worry over abortion, yet think nothing of supporting the exterminating of numerous innocent Muslim people in the Mid East.

Their failure to unseat president Obama, sounds like Instant Karma.

eta-had to rephrase. The sacrificing of lives is never the right course, but it is often the necessary one. Their living conditions were something we can't possibly understand. This was Dickensian in the extreme.. The loss of life is always a tragedy--it's ungodly and unholy. But that was/is the cost of battle. I always cry hearing "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables," because that's what's left after bloodbaths like this one. Vital young men are gone. In the novel, is it what God would want? No. But it's what men must do to keep women and children from begging, starving, prostituting themselves, dying on the streets. Or to change working conditions. Or so that a man doesn't have to go to prison because he's stolen a loaf of bread to feed his family.

The discussion about Javert really was a great way of looking at the church by the op. The man who could have been so much more, but mercy, to Javert, couldn't trump justice. Thus, he couldn't live with Valjean's saving him.

And that is, I think, the sad thing about the church. Justice trumps mercy all the time--the courts of "love," the constant spying on and trying to get dirt on others, turning a blind eye to others' suffering because it's felt they "deserve" it. Which is in exact opposition to what Christ taught.

Javert does each and every one of those things in the novel and is, thus, the absolute personification of Mormon theocracy imo.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/31/2012 08:35PM by ducky333.