"He Is Not Here. He Has Risen."

Death and resurrection in Les Miserables

Note: this article contains spoilers

A Question of Identity

“Do you want me to tell you who you are?” It is with these words, spoken degradingly over the stranger who arrives in the small town of Digne looking for shelter, that we are first introduced to the main character of Les Miserables, Jean Valjean.

Who is Jean Valjean? That depends on who you ask. In the eyes of God, he is a soul, created good but marred by the mistreatment of society and the disfiguration of his own hatred. To Monsieur Bienvenue, the Bishop of that Province and the first one to show Jean Valjean mercy, he is one of the poor, in desperate need of compassion and salvation. To the rest of the world, he is a dead man. Society sees Jean Valjean as an escaped convict, dangerous and violent, a damned soul who is simply inhabiting a corpse until he has served his time and returned to the wretched earth.

The Theme of Death

This imagery of death might sound dramatic, but it is actually essential to the main theme of Hugo’s book. Les Miserables is positively littered with the motif of death. Death follows Jean Valjean like a shadow, rearing its head in the midst of his happiest moments. For example, when Jean Valjean has secured his future by adopting the disguise of Monsieur Madeleine, a ghost appears in the form of Champmathieu. Champmathieu is the man who has been mistaken for Jean Valjean’s old self, and he is going to be tried and sentenced in Jean Valjean’s place. When Valjean hears of this, he must choose. Will he preserve his own life by allowing an innocent man to be condemned in his place? Or will he sacrifice his life for the sake of another? Jean Valjean must choose between two deaths: the death of Monsieur Madeleine or the death of his soul. He chooses his soul and saves Champmathieu.

Later in the story, in an attempt to outrun the police, Valjean takes refuge in the convent of Petit-Picpus. Inside the convent walls he witnesses what looks like death, in the self-mortification of the nuns, but which is really a pathway to life (their holiness and spiritual joy). This imagery terrifies him initially. He recoils from it, revealing to us that he has not yet fully embraced the idea that death can lead to life. And yet, ironically, it is in this “tomb” of the convent that his life with Cosette (his adopted daughter) starts to blossom.

Throughout the book, Jean Valjean repeatedly comes face-to-face with the challenging reality that true life involves a death of some kind. This theme reaches its climax at the end of the novel, when we witness the three deaths of three characters, all of whom are mysteriously related to each other. These are the deaths of Marius, Jean Valjean, and Javert.

Three Deaths, Two Resurrections

First, we have the “death” of Marius. Marius is the young man who has fallen in love with Jean Valjean’s daughter, Cosette. However, when he finds out that Cosette is leaving, perhaps forever, Marius falls into despair. With nothing left to live for, he decides that he will go die as a martyr in the revolution that is sweeping through Paris. When he arrives at the barricades, Marius is out of touch with reality. He is unable to think clearly and ends up injured. But just before he dies, he is saved by the most unlikely of characters.

Jean Valjean also went to the barricades to die. Unknown to both Marius and Cosette, Valjean has realized that Cosette is in love with Marius. At this point in the story, however, Jean Valjean’s love for Cosette is not yet wholly selfless. So, he sees Marius as a threat. Cosette’s love was the one light in Jean Valjean’s otherwise dark existence. He clings to her light, unable to let go of it and terrified of losing it. His love becomes possessive because he is not willing to let it become selfless. Thus the idea of losing her makes him want to die.

In despair Jean Valjean stumbles to the barricades. When he arrives, much to his surprise, he finds Marius there. When Marius is injured, Jean Valjean rescues him, pulling him into the sewers to escape the soldiers. Once in the sewers, Jean Valjean is faced with a familiar decision. He can risk his own capture by saving Marius, losing both his life and his daughter in one fell swoop. Or he can leave Marius to die and return to his life of anonymity, keeping Cosette to himself. The choice is placed before him again: life or death? Jean Valjean chooses life, but not his own. He carries Marius through the sewers, out into the light of day, and surrenders himself to the police. Thus Jean Valjean survives the darkest pit of Paris and the darkest pit of his heart. In dying to himself, he is able to secure the life and happiness of both Marius and his daughter.

Finally, there is the death of Javert. Javert is the prefect of police who has been pursuing Jean Valjean for decades. Through a series of events, Javert happens to meet Jean Valjean just as he is exiting the sewers with Marius. He arrests Jean Valjean with zeal, but he is quickly plagued by a feeling of guilt. Why does he feel guilty? It is because he owes his life to Jean Valjean. You see, Javert was at the barricades too. Caught as a spy by the rebels, Javert was facing certain execution. But he was set free by Jean Valjean in a singular act of mercy. This act of mercy broke in upon Javert’s law-ordered world, shattering his entire concept of justice. He had never believed before that a convict could do any good, or that the law could be wrong in its estimation of a man. And yet here was a man who had been deemed “evil,” but who was rising above the law’s assessment to display heavenly virtue.

Much like the Bishop’s virtue at the beginning of the novel, which dazzled Jean Valjean and sparked his conversion, Javert is being offered a chance to change his ways. He has the opportunity to accept a new worldview, one in which mercy triumphs over justice. In order to have it, he must renounce the idol he has made of the law. Unlike Jean Valjean, Javert is unable to do so. He lets Jean Valjean go free, but he cannot live with himself afterwards. In a desperate act of justice, Javert flings himself over the edge of a bridge, committing suicide. He dies, but it is not the kind of death that leads to life.

The Art of Dying Well

Many of us have heard of the art of living well. It is not often that we hear of the art of dying well. I used to think that dying well meant going out “guns blazing” in the midst of a glorious battle, or embracing the heroic and tragic death of martyrdom. Only in recent years have I realized that dying well and living well can be synonymous. To live well means, as Jean Valjean learned, to lay down one’s life for the sake of others. It means to die to yourself so that others may live. In short, it means to love. Regardless of what the world says, this kind of sacrifice brings about a deep and abiding peace.

When Jean Valjean sacrifices himself to Javert at the end of the novel, it seems like the end of the road for him. However, through his act of self-sacrifice, Jean Valjean has unknowingly brought his death under the domain of Providence. In a strange and inexplicable turn of events, Jean Valjean’s arrest becomes the catalyst for his being set free forever. With Javert gone, Valjean is finally free to live without being hunted. Thus Providence, which moves in and through all things, takes the deaths of Jean Valjean and Javert uses them to bring about new life. In dying to himself, Jean Valjean is raised to life.

Jean Valjean’s story tells us of a suffering that leads to joy and a death that leads to life. By end the of the book, Jean Valjean is truly unrecognizable. Gone is the hatred which plagued his soul and the self-preservation which sought to poison it. He has been through every suffering imaginable, and yet it has somehow not broken him. By clinging to sacrificial love, Jean Valjean becomes more radiant in death than he ever was in his fabricated lives. He has won for himself the crown of mercy. It is a mercy that does not erase suffering, but redeems it. In this, he becomes a model of Christ. On his death bed we see this imagery fully on display.

He walked steadily to the wall, brushing aside Marius and the doctor, who sought to help him, and took down the little copper crucifix which was hanging there. Then he returned to his chair, moving like a man in the fullness of health, and, putting the crucifix on the table, said in a clear voice: ‘He is the great martyr.’ Then his head fell forward…

So, who is Jean Valjean? By the end of the story, he is no longer a convict. Now, he is a Christ figure. He is a martyr. He is a Saint. Jean Valjean no longer needs to grasp at life and freedom from behind the mask of a false identity, for in giving himself up, he has gained eternal life. If someone were to inquire of this new Jean Valjean what had become of his old self, he could now answer truly, perhaps for the first time in his life, “He is not here. He has risen.”