Les Miserables

Play Title: Les Miserables

Author: Victor Hugo Category/Genre (musical/drama/comedy): Musical

Where did you watch this play?

Setting: time/place/historical context

This play takes during the late seventeen hundreds and early eighteen hundreds in France.

Characters At least 3: name/physical description/role in the story line

1. Fantine is the mother to Cosette. She works in a factory to earn money to pay a couple that takes care of her child. She gives up her child to Jean Valjean to take care of and love when she is dead.

2. Jean Valjean is Cosette's only father she's ever known. He is an ex-convict who changes his life from crime and hatred to a life of loving his daughter and taking care of people in need. By the end of the story Jean Valjean achieves his goal to be a great, respectable man.

3. Javert is a major policeman who is over Jean Valjean, 24601. Through the years of Jean Valjean's parole, Javert is constantly trying to catch Jean Valjean. In the end Javert is humiliated because Jean Valjean has the opportunity to kill him but spares him his life.

Plot

Jean Valjean is a prisoner who was just released on parole when his life is changed by a simple act by a priest. From that point on he dedicates his life to becoming a great respectable man. On his road to becoming a changed man he takes in a dying mother's child, Cosette. While taking care of Cosette, Jean Valjean is trying to constantly escape Javert's grasp. During all of this Cosette runs into a man, Marius, who she falls in love with and in the end gets married to. Marius though, is part of the rebels who are planning to fight back the government. Jean Valjean rescues Marius, when he needs help, and takes him back to his home. In the end Jean Valjean has achieved his goal to be a better man in life and dies.

Climax (high point of action)

The climax of the story is when Javert comes to realize that Jean Valjean has become a good man. This occurs when Jean Valjean has the ability to kill Javert, but instead he gives Javert his life. The whole story is about Jean Valjean's goal to become this great man and when Javert finally realizes it, Javert can no longer live with himself so he commits suicide.

Theme (universal meaning of the work/author's meaning)

The theme of the story is love. Love is the center of the entire story. Jean Valjean had a love for his new daughter Cosette that made him strive to be a good father. Another example would be of how much Javert