Les Misérables by Victor Hugo; The Brothers Karamozov, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky; Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. What do these three novels have in common? They are all superb examples of Romantic fiction. What is "Romantic" fiction? Let us identify and analyze the themes—and underlying philosophical premises—of these great works to find answers to this all-important question that is too seldom asked in today's literary arena. The characters and events of a fictional story constitute the particulars, the specific facts, of an author's universe; they provide the novelist's world view at an observational level. A writer is God-like in that he creates his own world—reality as he sees it—and the key to understanding that world lies with the concretes discernable on a perceptual level. Consequently, we shall examine the essentials of each story's characters and action as an indispensable means of extracting its thematic content.

Les Misérables tells the story of Jean Valjean, a hardened ex-convict in nineteenth century France, who is converted to religious Humanism by Bishop Myriel, the saintly prelate of Digne. Before his conversion is completed, he robs a young boy and is a fugitive hunted by the relentless detective, Inspector Javert. In disguise as Monsieur Madeleine, Valjean rises from his job as a factory laborer by virtue of discovering a manufacturing process that revolutionizes the local industry of Montreuil-sur-mer. He brings prosperity to the area, makes a fortune and is appointed mayor. But in saving an innocent man, he reveals himself as Jean Valjean and is captured by Javert. He escapes prison, rescues the young, cruelly-mistreated Cosette, daughter of the dead (and equally-cruelly-mistreated) prostitute, Fantine, is pursued by Javert and finds refuge in a convent. Years later, Cosette falls in love with Marius Pontmercy, who, distraught at the impossibility of their relationship, intends to die on the barricades with his revolutionary friends, Enjolras and the Society of ABC. Jean Valjean rescues both him and Javert, then escapes the police by fleeing through the sewers. Javert, upon realization of the saintly nature of the criminal he has persecuted, commits suicide. Jean Valjean unites Marius and Cosette, who are wed, then withdraws from their life. Without his adopted daughter, he dies.

It should be clear from this highly-condensed summation of fourteen-hundred pages of Hugo's universe, that there are two central players in this drama. There is the hero, Jean Valjean—seeking safety from the terrible injustices perpetrated on him by the criminal justice system—and the man who stands in his way, who opposes him at every turn, who prosecutes him remorselessly, the inexorable inspector: Javert.

Les Misérables, at the level of action, is the story of a man seeking liberty from an oppressive system of criminal justice. Jean Valjean is, first and foremost, a fugitive. Javert, as the individual most ruthlessly devoted to the enforcement of the strict letter of the law, is and must be the hero's primordial antagonist. From this understanding, it is possible to extract a statement of the essentialized conflict of Les Misérables: Jean Valjean seeks freedom but is relentlessly pursued by the police officer, Javert.

In her book The Romantic Manifesto, novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand identifies a literary principle she terms a novel's "plot-theme," which she defines as "the central conflict or 'situation' of a story...the core of its events."

The plot-theme of Les Misérables is: the life-long flight of an ex-convict from the pursuit of a ruthless representative of the law.

It is only at this point, having digested the essence of the book's action, that we can logically raise the questions: What does it all mean? What is significant about all this? What is the meaning of the injustices heaped on Jean Valjean? Is there some connection between them and the abuses suffered by Fantine? Between his misfortunes and the cruel mistreatment received by the youthful Cosette? Is there some connection between the injustices borne by Jean Valjean and those that Enjolras and his band of revolutionaries seek to redress?

Is there some principle that ties these concretes together and explains their abstract meaning? Clearly, there is, and in two parts: 1) the terrible suffering borne by the poor and 2) the cruel indifference of society and its legal system to these sufferings. The book's action, reduced to essentials, adds up to an overwhelming picture: the terrible injustices of society toward the poor, which leads directly to the novel's theme: The injustice of society toward its lower classes.

Hugo provides a wealth of concretes to illustrate his theme: there's the abused, pushed-around, nowhere-to-turn desperation of the unwed mother, Fantine; the callous indifference of men to the Thenardiers' horrific mistreatment of the orphaned Cosette; the wistful, tragically-heroic lives and deaths of the Thenardier children, the street urchins, Eponine and Gavroche; above all, there is the crushing persecution of the saintly Jean Valjean by the criminal justice system. Essential to Hugo's theme is this grim portrait of a man who serves nineteen years at hard labor for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's starving children. These characters and their tragic lives constitute repeated variations on Hugo's theme, which he weaves inextricably throughout the fabric of his story. Everywhere the reader looks in Les Misérables he is confronted by one scene from endless perspectives: lower class members are innocent victims crushed by society.

Hugo's theme is principally from the field of political/social philosophy, the branch of cognition that studies the principles governing the formation of a proper political system. The essence of the field is the application of moral precepts to the study of man's social relations. Its fundamental question is: What is the basis of a civilized society? The wealth of negative examples Hugo provides highlights his view that nineteenth century French society is permeated by an inhumane lack of civilization. The novel's theme necessitates that the story be filled with painful, agonizing, heart-breaking events. The action of the book must constitute an impassioned, from-the-heart outcry against the ills of contemporary society.

Hugo's title captures perfectly the novel's thematic essence.

But there is a deeper level of meaning in Les Misérables. The theme is indubitably social, but there are more fundamental philosophical beliefs that are dramatized in the story.

Clearly religion, in some form, is crucial to Hugo's world view and to the meaning of this book. Its ethic of social service and its emphasis on the importance of relieving poverty does not proceed from a modernist, i.e. Marxist basis. The premises at work here are not dialectical materialism, economic determinism or philosophical atheism.

There is a profound spirituality to this book in a religious—though not necessarily a Christian—sense. For example: it is Bishop Myriel who morally regenerates the hardened ex-convict, Jean Valjean. The bishop is with him, helping him make difficult moral decisions for the rest of his life. Jean Valjean keeps the candlesticks (symbolic of the bishop's continuing influence) by his side in a case Cosette terms, "the inseparable." Bishop Myriel imbues Valjean with an understanding of, and reverence for, Christ's teachings: love the meek, the weak, the helpless; cherish the downtrodden; above all, take action—perform good deeds, engage in heartfelt charity, succor society's victims. Dedicate one's life to an active service of humanity. The regenerated Jean Valjean feels the presence of God in his life in the form of a burning moral exhortation: love and serve mankind.

Even Javert is not immune to the religious teachings that animate the novel. In the end he realizes that his remorseless persecution of the saintly Jean Valjean, although in strict accord with society's legality, is abominable to God's morality. There is, he sees, a higher law above the one he serves—and it must be obeyed. But he cannot change, so Javert loses the one element of life without which a man cannot survive: his world view. He has no choices left: he must die.

Religion permeates this book. The bishop's life, Jean Valjean's life, Javert's death—all dominated by the moral presence of God. But the book's religiosity is not in strict accordance with orthodox Christianity. For one thing, there is no belief in Original Sin. On the contrary, man is depicted as clean, pure, even noble (this in sharp contrast to Dostoyevsky's view, as will be seen). Further, there is no adherence to organized religion: the hero neither belongs to nor attends any church, he takes no sacraments, seeks no blessing from priests nor absolution from confession, and takes refuge in a convent only to escape the law; then, when safe, he pulls his daughter out so she can experience life. The hero clearly is not a Catholic. Neither does he read the Bible (it is not clear he even owns one), attend revivals or prayer meetings, or cherish a personal faith relationship with Jesus Christ. He is clearly not a Protestant.

Additionally, Hugo is contemptuous throughout the story of the devout Christians who scorn the poor. He paints a picture of convent life so dismal it would drive even one as ascetic as St. Francis of Assisi to the nearest brothel, seeking relief. His attitude toward clerics, in general, holds a generous dose of contempt and is reminiscent of H.G. Wells's remark that he could never drive a car in France because the temptation to run over a priest would be too great.

Even Bishop Myriel, who puts into practice Jesus's exhortation to actively aid the poor, holds beliefs that are non-Christian, even anti-Christian. As one critic points out, Myriel expresses many of Hugo's own ideas: belief in general education, in progress, in happiness on earth; he believes in the transmigration of souls, and, in one of the novel's most powerful scenes, he kneels for a blessing from an atheistic, regicidal revolutionary of 1793. (On this same theme are Enjolras and the revolutionaries who love man, reject Christianity, and who are "for religion against religions." These firebrands out to overthrow the existing social order are as representative of the author's religious views as is Bishop Myriel.) It must be remembered that although active aid to the downtrodden is stressed by Jesus it is not a belief unique to Christianity, not in the way that the incarnation, the virgin birth or the trinity are. Many religions and moral codes emphasize help to the needy, several of the more prominent being Judaism, Islam and Marxism. It is therefore important not to equate Jean Valjean's benevolence and ceaseless charity with Christianity.

One critic goes so far as to label Hugo's religion in Les Misérables "deistic." But this is a mistake. It is true that God performs no miracles in the universe of the book: He parts no oceans, causes neither bushes to speak nor corpses to revitalize, and enables no men to live inside whales. He Himself takes no action in the world; He is not active in a Judaic-Christian sense. But He is active in the world. God is the source of the burning moral exhortation to succor the needy. He is the dominating moral force in the universe of this story. Because of this, it is not the case that Hugo's God created the world but now holds Himself aloof from it. For the same reason it is also not the case that Les Misérables expresses a Religion of Humanity. It is not a secular, atheistic world view presented in the novel. The moral commandment to aid the poor does not come from social institutions; on the contrary, the institutions are corrupt, they are the enemy, they must be purified or even overthrown.

The moral principle comes from God.

This leads to the heart of Les Misérables. To quote from Paul Bénichou:

Against society and social strength, against the law itself, stands a spiritual premise which can alter the course of injustice... This Conscience above the Law was for Victor Hugo, God himself... Thus, the quartet of the Policeman, the Bishop, the Convict and the Prostitute strikingly act out the fundamental idea of Les Misérables: the appeal to a spiritual force in order to regenerate the social order.

This insight—the appeal to a spiritual force in order to regenerate the social order—is the essence of fourteen-hundred pages of text reduced to a clause.

Nevertheless, it is possible to analyze Les Misérables at a still deeper level of philosophy.

With what view does the novel leave us? Man is great but Society is corrupt. Human beings as individuals are noble but social institutions are base. How can it be that individuals are pure but the group is debased? Because to attain such nobility of character one must be inflamed by a love of humanity which comes exclusively from God. There are only rare individuals who dedicate themselves to God's teachings and who attain this degree of spiritual grandeur. In Les Misérables there are three: the bishop, Myriel; the convict, Jean Valjean; the revolutionary, Enjolras. These are the crusaders and the saints, imbued with the moral fire of a higher authority, fighting for justice in the here and now. In devotion to the metaphysical order, they seek sweeping reform of the social order. Despite their love of man, the saints of Les Misérables are alienated from men; their stature places them apart and higher; their devotion to God elevates them above their peers. Hence the bittersweet irony that the fighters for mankind, though they live in God's graces, die as lonely outcasts from man. Enjolras, fighting for the people, dies alone on the barricades because the people fail to rise. Jean Valjean, whose life was dedicated to Cosette, dies of a broken heart because neither she nor Marius—nor anyone—recognizes him for the moral giant he is.

This is the deepest level of conflict in Hugo: the great man, by virtue of his devotion to a higher order, makes himself a rebel and an outcast in this one. In fighting for the world, he fights against the world. In fighting for man, he is rejected by men. The social order resists the moral crusader; it stands opposed to or does not recognize the reforms that he fights for.

But there are other foes besides human cruelty, insensitivity and greed that oppose the hero: natural forces like starvation, illness, freezing winters, and brutal physical labor. There is a wealth of examples of this struggle in Les Misérables: Fantine's sickness and death, Cosette's shivering in the cold, and the harsh labor performed by various members of the poor to escape starvation are examples. There is a refractory element to the physical world itself that resists the reforming efforts of the moral giant. The saint's struggle with physical nature is not the focus of Les Misérables—his struggle with society is—but harsh physical nature underlies that struggle: the one-step-ahead-of-starvation-and-freezing lifestyle of the poor gives to that struggle a life-and-death urgency.

So what is Hugo showing us? The great man dedicated to a higher law that emanates from a spiritual realm seeks to put that law into practice in this realm—a world where society and nature combine to resist him. Service to a higher, spiritual world versus resistance from a lower, material world. God and Heaven versus the Earth. The soul versus the body. There is a mind-body conflict in Les Misérables. It is not merely a cruel, greedy society that rejects the saint's message of love; deeper than that is a recalcitrant physical world that is not malleable to the demands of the spirit. There is a Platonic dualism at the base of Hugo's metaphysics—a universe divided into a spiritual and bodily realm in which the two are separate, unequal and opposed, in which the soul is noble and pure but the body is debased, resistant to the higher moral principles of the spirit. This is why there is an element of the heroes' being "too fine for this world," why they don't merely live in poverty or die alone but, more fundamentally, perish with their moral vision unrealized.

At the end of Les Misérables, Bishop Myriel, Jean Valjean, and Enjolras are all dead. Perhaps their spirits will live on in a newly-awakened love of humanity in the souls of Marius and Cosette. Maybe they will be a kinder, gentler Marius and Cosette. Beyond that, nothing has changed. The same injustices exist as before.

This is not Atlas Shrugged, which we will examine later. The world has not been transfigured in accordance with the moral vision of the heroes. It couldn't be. On a Platonic metaphysics, an imperfect world could never absorb the perfection of a spiritual giant.

This is the bottom line and final lesson of Les Misérables: man can achieve spiritual grandeur, but the very requirements of his moral greatness preclude worldly success.