Characteristics of jean valjean. How do Jean Valjean and Fantine parallel one another and how do they differ? 2022-10-31

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Jean Valjean is a character from the novel "Les Misérables" by Victor Hugo. Throughout the novel, Valjean undergoes a significant transformation, evolving from a bitter, imprisoned man to a compassionate and selfless individual. Here are some key characteristics of Jean Valjean:

  1. Resilience: Valjean spends 19 years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's starving children. Despite this hardship, he does not let his circumstances define him, and he works tirelessly to rebuild his life after his release.

  2. Compassion: Valjean is a compassionate and caring person, especially towards those who are downtrodden and marginalized. He takes in Cosette, the orphaned daughter of Fantine, and raises her as his own, showing her love and kindness.

  3. Selflessness: Valjean is a selfless individual, always putting the needs of others before his own. He risks his own life to save Marius, a young man he barely knows, from the barricades during the June Rebellion.

  4. Honesty: Valjean struggles with his past as a convicted criminal and the stigma that comes with it. However, he is ultimately honest about his past, confessing his true identity to Cosette and Marius when they become engaged.

  5. Courage: Valjean displays great courage throughout the novel, both physically and emotionally. He stands up to his oppressors, including the cruel Inspector Javert, and faces his own inner demons, choosing to do what is right even when it is difficult.

Overall, Jean Valjean is a complex and multifaceted character who undergoes a significant transformation throughout the course of the novel. Despite facing numerous challenges and hardships, he remains resilient, compassionate, selfless, honest, and courageous, ultimately becoming a better person for it.

Jean Valjean Character Analysis in Les Miserables

characteristics of jean valjean

He undergoes a metamorphosis when he learns to open up and love Cosette. Despite trying to live his life in peace while protecting Cosette, he is constantly pursued by Inspector Javert, a zealous law enforcement officer who will stop at nothing to bring Valjean back to prison despite Valjean living a good life. In this play names divide characters and define people as well as they divide the city in two based on your last name. He has to switch from thinking about prison escapes and police chases to dolls and children. He rose to his feet, shivering, chilled, foul-smelling, bowed beneath the dying man whom he was dragging after him, all dripping with slime, and his soul filled with a strange light. Through Eponine, who has nothing greater to live for other than her love for Marius, who she then dies for at the barricades. In the musical, Valjean neither gets arrested again nor escapes from prison.

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Character profile for Jean Valjean from Les Misérables (page 1)

characteristics of jean valjean

Despite her tragic upbringing, Cosette grows up to be a good, morally sound person. Lesson Summary Les Miserables by Victor Hugo is an 1862 novel that follows several years in the life of Jean Valjean, a man convicted of stealing a loaf of bread and then spending nineteen years in prison. He has also learned to survive in hard environments. Fantine will do everything just to sustain the needs of her daughter but unfortunately she died and Valjean took the urge to take care of Cosette. Despite of these hardships he met the Bishop of Digne who showed kindness to him.

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Jean Valjean

characteristics of jean valjean

In the end, Valjean dies knowing he is loved and that he fulfilled his promise to Myriel so many years before: he remained a good man to his dying day. Marius is then told that Valjean was the man who had "assassinated" one of Marius' relatives, carrying the body through the sewers on 6 June. Along the way, Jean Valjean and a slew of characters he becomes entangled with get swept into a revolutionary period in France, where a group of young students make their last stand at a street barricade. Raising Cosette and loving her, allowing himself to be pushed away so she may have a good life, gave his life meaning. Valjean, in the end, dies as a good man, a symbol that love and redemption are possible even for people who have been cast away by society and who have, in turn, shunned society back.

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How Does Jean Valjean Change

characteristics of jean valjean

She is not in control of the judgemental behavior of the factory manager who fires her. They begin meeting every evening to gaze into each other's eyes. Valjean both helps and hinders Cosette as she blossoms into an adult. Valjean shows them the proof that Cosette really belongs to him and Fantine. One of the letters was sent from his mother to his father, which he reads.

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Les Miserables: Jean Valjean Character Analysis

characteristics of jean valjean

As mayor of Montreuil, Valjean learned the ways of a gentleman, perhaps one of humble condition, but gentle indeed. That includes legal knowledge. Valjean changes himself so that he can provide a good life for Cosette. Judges, clerks, gendarmes, a throng of cruelly curious heads, all these he had already beheld once, in days gone by, twenty-seven years before; he had encountered those fatal things once more; there they were; they move; they existed; it was no longer an effort of his memory, a mirage of his thought; they were real gendarmes and real judges, a real crowd, and real men of flesh and blood: it was all over; he beheld the monstrous aspects of his past reappear and live once more around him, with all that there is formidable in reality. Before going to the galleys, I was a poor peasant, with very little intelligence, a sort of idiot; the galleys wrought a change in me. Valjean does not know that Cosette returns Marius' love and does not understand why Cosette seems less attached to "her grandfather" than before.

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An Analysis of the Characters of Jean Valjean and Fantine in Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

characteristics of jean valjean

Madeleine was actually Jean Valjean called Valjean allows Javert to arrest him, but quickly escapes. The main difference between the two is that Valjean finds salvation in the Bishop, and is able to move forward. This revelation puts Javert's entire worldview in danger. The alias, however, does not last forever and Valjean once again finds himself in the galleys. Jean Valjean seems like a three-dimensional character at first. However, his love for Cosette and desire to be a good man becomes an overprotective love that is not entirely unjustified.

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How do Jean Valjean and Fantine parallel one another and how do they differ?

characteristics of jean valjean

Nineteenth-century France was not kind to criminals, and Valjean eventually ends up staying nineteen years in the galleys for stealing a loaf of bread. The Thenardiers become her home while her mother leaves in search for work. Can I conceal myself forevermore? He assumes custody of Marius after falling out with Georges Pontmercy on political matters. He dies content, under the light of the Bishop's candlesticks, and it is stated that an angel awaits to carry his soul to Heaven. He dies a martyr in the June Rebellion of 1832 in Paris.

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Characters from Les Misérables

characteristics of jean valjean

Still a criminal he steals some silverware from a kind priest who gave him shelter. Personality When Javert is ruthless, Valjean is compassionate. He was portrayed as both the hero and the miserable. He takes care of Fantine and becomes the father of her daughter Cosette. Then a man in a city nearby was arrested under the name Jean Valjean. He is another character who dies in the rebellion.

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Jean Valjean Character Analysis

characteristics of jean valjean

After Valjean tries to make a new life for himself using a false identity, Javert continues to be involved in his life, first as a police officer at Montreuil-sur-Mer, and later as a member of the Paris police. He nurtures and loves the girl as if she were his own, but he also keeps her away from the rest of the world in fear of his own past. He showed the compassion and love he was shown by Myriel and raised a daughter who could move past the circumstances of her birth. The novel shows the transformation, which Valjean has undergone because of cruelty and injustice. It mixes realism and capital-r-Romantism in a sweeping description of the working class of contemporary France, with a large cast, action, drama, quasi-documentary descriptions, melodrama, out-of-the-blue asides about poverty or human nature, etc. Whenever we see her, we cannot help but hope her and Marius will live happy lives together in the future despite the bitter endings of the other characters. Valjean is forced to assume multiple identities through the years as Javert continues to hunt for him under the belief Valjean needs to go back to jail because he is a dangerous man.

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Jean Valjean

characteristics of jean valjean

These examples in the story show that Desiree was dependent on others inside of being self…. Jean Valjean disguised as Monsieur Madeleine. However, at several points throughout the novel we witness Valjean in severe internal struggle with his own conscience. Throughout the story he is chased by Inspector Javert who believes that no convict can ever turn good. It is hinted that Valjean escaped with the help of a file hidden in a coin, an item he is later proved to possess. In the end, the truth catches up to him and he is finally able to remember the reality of his past in the final moments before his The Painted Girls Vs Ballet Shoes Essay 1367 Words 6 Pages Marie would often fight with Antoinette over how her dedication to Emile was greater than to her family. Thanksgiving Movie Analysis 276 Words 2 Pages Jean Valjean goes through a lot in this movie.


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