Les Mis: A Case For Christianity By: Landin Wilkins
Les Mis, written originally by Victor Hugo and adapted into a musical byAlain Boublilis an enthralling viewing. With the themes of love, freedom, loss, death, hope, and faith, Les Mis not only inspires hope for a brighter future, but inadvertently presents one of the best perspectives on Christianity in all of media for a modern audience. This fifteen hundred page “monster” of a novel was begun in 1845 in France by Victor Hugo, however was forced to abandon the manuscript after the rise of Napoleon III; Hugo thought of Napoleon as a traitor and liberticidal tyrant, collecting together a resistance that would lead to the threat of his arrest and the exile of the poet1.After fleeing his homeland Hugo moved to Brussels in Belgium, leaving the half written Les Mis with his mistress back in France. Hugo wrote the large majority of the novel on the road, only residing in Belgium for the last pages, overlooking the Battlefield of Waterloo2.With the huge success of his previous novel,Notre Dame de Paris,(better known in English as the Hunchbackof Notre Dame) Les Mis had a similar booming success; though in France it was tentative due to the threat of censorship and the guillotine. Even so, the story persisted through until 1980 when theatre lyricistAlain Boublil saw a production ofOliver!Where he began to see thecharacters in that show as Hugo’s own: “As soon as theArtful Dodgercame onstage, Gavroche cameto mind. It was like a blow to the solar
“ Why Was Victor Hugo Exiled?”Visit Guernsey, www.visitguernsey.com/articles/2019/why-was-victor-hugo-exiled#:~:text=However%2C%20w hen%20Napoleon%20III%20took,he%20was%20forced%20into%20exile. Accessed 20 Jan. 2025. 1
ow ‘Les Misérables’ Was the Biggest Deal in BookHistory.”The Paris Review, 10 Apr. 2017, H www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/03/23/hugo-inc/#:~:text=Les%20Misérables%20was%20pub lished%20in,who%20ushered%20it%20to%20safety. 2