At the end of 2019, I watched Les Miserables three times over the course of the two week Christmas school break. It was the 2012 version, with Anne Hathaway, Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe, based on the blockbuster musical from the 1980s, which in turn is based on Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel. Les Misérables is the story of Jean Valjean, a French peasant who seeks to begin a new life after serving nineteen years in jail for having stolen a loaf of bread for his sister's starving child. It is set in 19th century France after the French revolution, but as revolutionary forces are once again heating up in the face of mass poverty and injustice. Valjean’s story eventually takes him to the 1832 Paris Uprising, led in the story by Enjolras and a group of university students.
As children, my brother and I were obsessed with Les Miserables - the stage musical, listening to the cassette tape so many times that we had all the songs memorized—no easy feat when they contained so many words beyond the scope of our childhood understanding. The reason I came back to the obsession more recently was my ten- and twelve-year-old children. My daughter sang “I Dreamed a Dream” for an audition last Fall and wanted to see the drama that went with it. I was nervous that she would find it too dark, too confusing, too sad. I was nervous too because I loved it so much and would have found it hard to have a story I treasured be rejected by my child. I was gladdened, and also surprised, when both she and her brother felt a similar level of passion for the complicated tragedy as I. They wanted to talk about their favorite characters and why they loved them. They hummed the tunes over the Christmas dinner table with my family, prompting my brother and Dad to then whistle the songs for the rest of the holiday. They wanted to talk about the character development that takes place, the contrast the story offers between justice and grace, and what difference the sacrifice of Enjolras and the idealistic collection of university students actually made.
The pace of change in our world seems relentless. How different the emotional and technological landscape is for today’s youth than it was for me, at the tail end of Gen X, or even my brother, at the beginning edge of the Millennials. How does a story a century and a half old, across so many different generations, still have something relevant to say?
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We rang in the New Year quietly, with a Netflix marathon and a range of tasty junk food. After the clock struck twelve, my daughter became first solemn, and then emotional. It took some prompting to get at the problem. Eventually she named the climate crisis and observed that everyone seems to just be carrying on as if there isn’t a problem; she talked about the angry and divided political landscape, and the fact that when more action is needed from all of us in order to really address what is happening in our world, all we seem to do is argue. “My friends say that we’ll all be dead by 2030. And I think they’re right. I just don’t see how we’ll survive,” she cried quietly.
Her concerns were voiced before the brush fires came to rage out of control in Australia and the Iran-USA conflict heated up to the brink of war, but as these developments filtered through our news outlets just days into the new year, her feeling of dread for the coming decade was cemented.
Our family’s life is undeniably privileged. We try to give our children opportunities and to create a childhood for them that is full of fun, play, friendship, community, faith and exploration. I don’t want my children to be needlessly upset. I also don’t want them to be sheltered from the very real problems our world faces. I couldn’t help but feel proud of my daughter for being in tune with our world’s need, for recognizing and naming the truth of our collective problem for herself.
Her words gave me a sense of why the two kids were feeling so connected to Les Miserables, even though they generally shy away from movies that are too violent or depressing. I was surprised that they weren’t both crushed by the anti-Hollywood ending of Les Miserables. As opposed to the new Star Wars movie—which we also saw over the holidays—the people don’t rise up to fight for justice with the rebels. The dream is crushed. Almost everyone dies, seemingly senselessly, for their idealism.
What the story so brilliantly depicts, however, is “the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.” Just as my brother and I did so many moons ago, the character Cecilia and Gordon connected to most of all was Enjolras, the student leader who tries to rally together a second revolution. Enjolras himself enjoys some privilege, but he chooses to give his life to stand with the poor and desperate of France, even if the poor of France don’t end up standing with him. When he realizes that their fight will be in vain, that his leadership has not been able to spark the masses of desperate people out of their fear and into revolution, he invites any of his fellow students to leave the barricades and save their lives, with no judgment or ill feelings. He then adjusts the hope to which he believes their sacrifice will point. The revolution won’t be now, but their death will not be in vain. “Let others rise to take our place,” he tells them, “Until the earth is free!”
Victor Hugo offers a more nuanced reflection than the musical on this big-picture, rather than immediate, hope:
"This is a bad time to pronounce the word 'love.' No matter, I pronounce it, and I glorify it. Love, yours is the future. Death, I use you, but I hate you. Citizens, in the future there shall be neither darkness nor thunderbolts, neither ferocious ignorance nor blood for blood. As Satan shall be no more, so Michael shall be no more. In the future no man will slay his fellow, the earth will be radiant, the human race will love. It will come, citizens, that day when all shall be concord, harmony, light, joy, and life; it will come, and it is so that it may come that we are going to die."
Enjolras’ hope is further illuminated by the larger narrative of the protagonist Jean Valjean, whose story threads its way through all of the other events and characters. The kids also found Valjean compelling in a way that provoked much reflection and conversation. Jean Valjean is saved by the gift of a bishop’s silver candlesticks. When Valjean had become exactly the hardened criminal he had for so long been believed to be by others, when he stole from the only person who had shown him any real kindness in all of his life, this person unexpectedly granted him not just what he had stolen, but the additional gift of candlesticks. The bishop sees into Valjean’s heart and recognizes a person of worth and dignity. “I have raised your soul from darkness,” he tells him as he places the candlesticks in his hands. “I have bought your soul for God.”
Valjean’s story is representative of all of the struggling, desperate characters of Les Miserables, and representative of us as well. The same claim that allows Valjean to begin a new life is the one that allows Enjolras to lay his life down. Whether we live or die, whether we are beginning again or sacrificing all, the future horizon to which we look is one that we can only see and know in the context of self-giving love.
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My Dad and I were walking the dogs shortly after Christmas. We like to solve the problems of the world on these walks. We had just watched Les Miserables for the third time with the kids, and we were reflecting on our surprise that they would find it just as powerful today as we had found it thirty years ago, despite how much the world has (seemingly) changed. We wondered together about who the voices of Enjolras might be for this next generation. Those voices of rebellion, of fearless sacrificial hope, are needed as much today as they were in 19th century France. We saw a parallel with Greta Thunberg. But ultimately, my Dad lamented that there weren’t more voices rising up and being heard, that we didn’t have more elected officials able to snap out of the politics and lead us to a better day and a new horizon.
Of course, none of the leaders in Les Miserables were elected officials either. Enjolras was not a person of power. And maybe that is why he is such a compelling and important character.
Maybe we can’t wait for icons of a new movement to arise. Maybe each of us have to figure out what we can offer toward the dawning of this new day. We can only do that grounded in love that isn’t concerned with what it receives in return.
What I could offer my daughter in her New Year’s Eve upset was something seemingly far more mundane then a revolution she might join, a battle field where she might risk everything to set the world free. I was able to speak from our particular tradition. “We get to be part of the church,” I said. “We have hope.” We get to be gathered to worship, to bow down before the truth of our lives in service to a truth and mystery greater than ourselves. We get to be encouraged and motivated by people right here who are living lives that are courageous and generous. We get to keep being called back to affirmations which name this world, its creatures and our fellow human beings as beloved works of our Creator’s hands, worthy of our care and concern and guardianship. We get to be constantly renewed in our vows to offer this care, concern and guardianship, not just by ourselves, but in partnership with the One who made us. We get to then tackle challenges together rather than tearing one another apart or being paralyzed into inactivity. We get to be in communion with those who are totally different from us. Each and every day, we get to see how far and wide Love can extend as the hungry are fed and acts of kindness and compassion are extended far beyond the confines of our one church community.
It might seem mundane, but this is also powerful. The principles of communities like this - whether “religious” or finding other ways into living for the common good - fly in the face of most of the other messages that we are taught by the world around us:
I am a self-made isolated individual—“I’ve got this!”
I am not good enough and I am the center of the universe
My power comes in being the right kind of consumer
I wait for others to make a difference—in the meantime, I shop
Instead, we get to pray and practice and serve and discern and make choices out of the liberating, empowering claim that our lives are the recipients of free, costly, unconditional Love; that having received this love, we can then put that love into action in ways that join with Enjolras and Greta and Valjean and all of the other lovers and dreamers over the course of history that have glimpsed a new horizon and have been willing to give whatever is in them to give in order to see a new day dawn.
We don’t know what exactly will be asked of us in the coming decade. We don’t know what sacrifices will be asked of us. Thankfully we do know that “without love, we are but a clanging gong or a crashing cymbal.” Thankfully, we also know the truth of the final chorus of Les Miserables, and we go forward accordingly in Love:
Do you hear the people sing
Lost in the valley of the night
It is the music of a people
Who are climbing to the light
For the wretched of the earth
There is a flame that never dies
Even the darkest night will end
And the sun will rise
Martha Tatarnic is the lead priest of St. George’s Anglican Church in St. Catharine’s, Ontario, and author of The Living Diet: A Christian Journey to Joyful Eating
