 AnWyk AnWyk

 The book which the reader now holds in his hands, from one end to the other...treats the advance from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from falsity to truth, from darkness to daylight, from blind appetite to conscience, from decay to life, from bestiality to duty, from Heaven to Hell, from Limbo to God. Matter itself is the starting point, and the point of arrival is the soul.  —Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

 Written by Victor Hugo  Born February 26, 1802 in Besacon, France  Father was a military officer  Started a journal with his friends to publish their poetry  Wrote Les Mis while running from unrest in class  He is also the Author of The Hunchback of Notre Dame  Died May 22, 1885 in Paris  Published in 1862  The story is set to begin in 1815

“In the early morning hours of June 5, crowds of workers, students, and others gathered in the streets of Paris. The immediate trigger was the death of General Jean Maximilien Lamarque, who had been a friend to the poor and downtrodden. The crowd had hoped to accompany Lamarque’s hearse before it took the general home to his native district in the southwest of France. Those mourning and those with a political agenda merged into a mob that numbered in the tens of thousands – some witnesses claimed it eventually grew to 100,000. The 30-year-old Victor Hugo was nearby, in the Tuileries Gardens, writing a play. Then he heard gunfire from the direction of Les Halles. Instead of going home to safety, he followed the sounds of gunfire through the deserted streets. He was unaware that the mob had taken half of Paris, and the barricades were everywhere in Les Halles. According to Wikipedia, Hugo headed north up the Rue Montmartre, then turned right onto the Passage du Saumon, finally turning before the Rue du Bout du Monde (if this street still exists, it has a different name now): “Halfway down the alley, the grilles at either end were slammed shut. Hugo was surrounded by barricades and flung himself against a wall, as all the shops and stores had been closed for some time. He found shelter between some columns. For a quarter of an hour, bullets flew both ways.” Three decades later, he would write about the unforgettable experience in Les Misérables.”

MAINS OTHER IMPORTANT CHARACTERS  Jean Valjean  Javert  Fantine  Cosette  Marius  Eponine  The Bishop  The Thenardiers

 Redemption  Compassion  Injustice  Oppression/Suffering

 Theme--as stated in Literature Structure, Sound, and Sense 1. “Theme should be expressible in the form of a statement with a subject and a predicate.” 2. “The theme should be stated as a generalization about life.” 3. “We must be careful not to make the generalization larger than is justified by the terms of the story. Terms like every, all, always should be used very cautiously.” 4. “Theme is the central and unifying concept of a story.” 5. “There is no one way of stating the theme of a story” 6. “We should avoid any statement that reduces the theme to some familiar saying that we have heard all our lives.”

 Practice by turning those words under “Themes to Watch For” into a statement form that you think describes life.  Redemption, Compassion, Injustice, Oppression/Suffering  What do you think is true about these things in life in general?  Save these, we will see if you agree with Les Mis when we finish the book

 Identifying Theme  And how the author weaves it through a text  (more in depth than we did with Night)  Point of View  We will analyze the beliefs of characters that cause them to act the way they do

 Even though this song mourns a lost love, it voices the more overarching pain of an oppressed woman.  You probably are not in the situation the singer is in, but you have most likely suffered or grieved in some way.  Use this time to mark the lyrics for words or phrases that are meaningful to you, and write a short journal on the back about the connections you can make to the song