Javert is not a villain. Rather, he is a tragic character in his misguided and destructive pursuit of justice. [Javert] was a compound, Hugo writes, of two sentiments, simple and good in themselves, but he made them almost evil by his exaggeration of them: respect for authority and hatred of rebellion. He is absolute, a fanatic. As Hugo says, his life is one of privations, isolation, self-denial, and chastity— never any amusement. Having been born in a prison (his mother a fortune-teller and his father serving in the prison galley), Javert perceives himself to be excluded from a society that irrevocably closes its doors on two classes of men, those who attack it and those who guard it. It is on the basis of an irrepressible hatred for that bohemian race to which he belong[s] and a personal foundation of rectitude, order, and honesty that he opts to become a law officer. So devoted is he to this choice that, Hugo writes, he would have arrested his own father if he escaped from prison and turned in his own mother for breaking parole. And he would have done it with that sort of interior satisfaction that springs from virtue. (Kurt Krikorian and Richard Carrick as Javert, Campolindo 2004.)
Posted on: Fri, 19 Sep 2014 01:07:08 +0000
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