The film without the cuts. And the book itself.
An ex-convict hardened by nineteen years in the galleys steals from the one man who showed him kindness — and is saved by a lie of mercy.
Jean Valjean
A former convict carries the Bishop’s mercy through a life of concealment, labor, fatherhood, and sacrifice.
Digne
The town where every door shuts on an ex-convict, until one bishop leaves his open.
Why must misery endure before society admits its own laws create damnation?
Read →So Long As Ignorance Exists
So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to divine destiny; so long as the three great problems of the century—the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light—are unsolved; so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the world;—in other words, and with a still wider significance, so long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Misérables cannot fail to be of use.
Hugo insists these hells are man-made. Poverty, the selling of women driven by hunger, children left to grow up stunted: he calls them the work of "law and custom," not of God, so no one can shrug them off as fate. This is the doorway to the whole book, and before we meet a single character he has told us that the misery ahead is a choice society keeps making. He also ties his book's usefulness to that misery, meaning he half hopes it will one day be obsolete.
The Bishop's Candlesticks
An ex-convict hardened by nineteen years in the galleys steals from the one man who showed him kindness — and is saved by a lie of mercy.
Bishop’s silver candlesticks
Two silver candlesticks follow a pardoned thief from the night he was spared to the hour he dies.
Bishop Myriel / Monseigneur Bienvenu
A bishop with an unlocked door turns stolen silver into the beginning of another man’s salvation.
Les Misérables
The cast, locations, objects of note, core concepts, and selected passages in the Author’s Pen - at your own pace.
The Les Misérables World, as it plays on your phone
- Meet the people. 48 characters, each with a portrait, who they are and what they want.
- Walk the places. 27 places, each pictured, and what happens there.
- Follow the plot. The turns of the story, in order, so you always know where you are.
- Taste the original. 70 key passages in Victor Hugo’s own words, each with a short reading of what it is doing.
- The complete book. Every word, in a reader made for your phone. From any passage, one tap opens the book at that very page.
Step inside Les Misérables
Free, in your inbox in about a minute: the World and the complete book, on your phone.