R.F. Gammon Author: Les Mis

The Best Version of Les Mis?

by R.F. Gammon - June 06, 2017

Note: This post is about the book and the stage musical. The 2012 movie, while decent, will not make appearances; if I use pictures from it it's because they're just nice pictures of the characters.

It's the first week of June. 185 years ago, in the city of Paris, dozens of young university students rose up against the messy French government in hopes of fixing the government. Their goal was for the people of Paris to join them in their uprising. But no one did, and they were left to be slaughtered by the French National Guard.

It is against this backdrop that Les Miserables is set.

While the book can be quite difficult to get through (Hugo likes to go off on random rabbit trails the entire time) he's not afraid to deal with difficult themes or the truth of human nature. One of his protagonists is an ex-convict; another is a young prostitute; the villain is an unrelenting law officer. Thieves, murderers, cons, and shady people fill most of the supporting spots.

There's a lot of darkness. But there is also hope. Lots of hope.

Fantine (Ruthie Henshall)

In honor of the June Rebellion, the next few posts on this blog will be Les-Mis themed, and I hope you'll be inspired to check out the book or the Broadway musical. (I'll give you a rundown of the different versions of the musical in a couple of days. See how helpful I am? XD)

Today's post: The Themes of Les Miserables.

Redemption

When your hero is a convict, you're going to have to deal with redemption at some point; and we see this theme reoccur multiple times. The most prominent example, of course, is Jean Valjean, who went to jail for nineteen years for stealing a loaf of bread.

Jean Valjean (Colm Wilkinson)

As Valjean goes from a hardened man to a guy who makes it his mission to help people, we see the hope that we are offered. And this leads me to

Grace

Valjean is housed by a bishop, who feeds him and gives him a good room. And he repays this kindness by stealing all his silver. The next morning the police catch him and the bishop has to decide: will he help this man or let him go back to jail, probably for life?

The Bishop (also Colm Wilkinson)

That's when the bishop tells a lie. To keep the man who stole his stuff free. He could have let him go back, but instead, he gives him the silver as a gift, including two candlesticks that Valjean didn't grab on his way out.

And the man who should have gone to jail becomes a priest. He begins to use his money to help the poor. He helps people who most would walk right past.

When you are redeemed and find grace, you become a new man, and Jean Valjean certainly does.

Courage

The boys who started the June Rebellion knew that they were probably all going to die. They didn't have to do it. But they did anyway. They wanted the people around them to have a shot at freedom and real life.

Enjolras (Anthony Warlow)

This may not have been entirely necessary, but it was still brave and defiant of the system that did nothing for the poor. And when you defend the least, when you're willing to give your life for it...
Courage.

Selflessness

You remember that prostitute I mentioned earlier in this post? Well, her name is Fantine, and she was a girl who made a mistake when she was young that led to her having a child out of wedlock. She left her daughter to board with a family in a small town a long way away and went to work in a factory.

But then she loses her job.

Cosette (Alex Finke)

That's the whole reason she became a prostitute- she was told her daughter was dying and she had to save her. She sacrificed herself for her child.

A mother's love is a force to be reckoned with, and Fantine is no exception. A woman who was willing to sell her body and soul for her little girl to live. The love of a mother knows no bounds.

There you have it: my four biggest themes from Les Mis. There were more of them when I was thinking about it, but, ya know.... I hope you enjoyed reading this list! And I hope you check back for more Les Mis-style stuff on Tuesday!

Have you read/listened to Les Miserables? Do you agree with my themes? Chat with me!

14 comments

Lessons in Broadway Musicals

by R.F. Gammon - April 11, 2017

Hey, my peeps. Whazzup?
Aaaah, musicals. We all know of them, and many of us are unashamed musical theater geeks. It's not uncommon in my house for me to listen to musicals from the moment I get up until I go to bed. Sure, it makes my family crazy sometimes, but I have to feed my addiction somehow #Obsessed

But what makes musicals worthy of our time and attention? I mean, you have to choose the things you pour your time and energy into, and nothing should come before God. There's lots of other obsessions in the world, so why do we theater buffs love our plays?

In this post, I'm going to argue that there are great life lessons to be found in four of my favorite musicals. I chose these four just because I know them very well and I like them - and I think the messages are very clear.

And just as a warning: There are some minor spoilers ahead, although I will try to steer clear of the big ones. If I'm adding any of those, I will mark them in their own paragraph.

The Phantom of the Opera

People often say that the moral of Phantom is that you can't judge people based on the outside, but I disagree. Because, the truth is, the Phantom is hideous on the inside as well as the outside. He does some truly awful things throughout the course of the musical.

But in the end, Christine exhibits selfless love for him. No spoilers, although if you've seen the musical you know what I'm talking about. And he discovers for the first time what it's like to have someone show you grace.

This is a picture of what we look like when God redeems us. We are truly despicable people, We are not beautiful on the outside; we're even worse on the inside. Spiritually, we are dead. There's nothing we can do to fix ourselves, and every attempt only sinks us further into the sin in which we dwell.

But then Jesus saves us and gives us new life, even though we've done nothing to deserve it. He shows us grace.

Hamilton

Hamilton is the true story of Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, who founded the Coast Guard and started our country's financial system. He was a brilliant man who made many great contributions to American society. The first act of the musical depicts a brilliant man who just keeps rising through the ranks of society. No matter what he does, he succeeds. He gets important positions. He's friends with influential people like George Washington.
But by Act II we see a man whose secret sins have caught up with him. His family begins to fall apart. His career is broken. He is entangled by his lies, and he cannot escape.
We can learn a lot from Hamilton's life as presented by this musical. Here are some of the most valuable lessons:

Our Founding Fathers, no matter how perfect we think they might be as compared to today's political climate, are very far from perfect. Also, blackmail, marital infidelity, media exaggerations, etc. have been part of the political climate from the beginning in America.
No matter how secret you think your sin is, when you try to hide it, it will never really go away. And it will return to haunt you someday.
Every action has a consequence. Or, as Jefferson says in the musical, "Every action has its equal opposite reaction." If you've done something good, it may give you benefits later - or it may very well turn around and give you a load of poop in exchange for your initial good. Same thing with not so good actions. We usually find this out the hard way.

Les Miserables

Ah, this musical. I could go on all day about the positive elements of this story and the lessons we get from it, but for now I'll stick with one: Grace.

Spoilers in the following paragraph, so if you haven't seen this yet and want to (you should, but not the 2012 movie XD) maybe skip it.

It's grace that prompts the bishop to tell a lie to keep Jean Valjean out of jail, and grace that makes him give a bunch of precious silver to a convict who tried to steal it. It's grace that makes Jean Valjean later rescue a little girl from the cruel couple who's abusing her. Grace prompts Valjean still later to save the life of a boy who has fallen in love with his daughter, even though he knows that this may very well lead to him losing her heart. It's because of grace that Jean Valjean spares Javert, the villain of the story, from death, and the fact that he is willing to do this completely destroys Javert's worldview and his life, because he is unable to understand what grace could possibly mean.

There's additional grace in here - but to talk about all of it would be a very long post and I could honestly go on about Les Mis for months so I'll stop before I really start XD

Wicked

I know, I know. Wicked? Really? Where's the good message in that one? It's all about antiheroes and stuff, isn't it?
Well, yes and no.

If you take it the way it was perhaps intended to be taken, Wicked says that there's no good and no evil. Everything is ambiguous. It's kind of New Age-y.

But, if you look deeper, there's the message that Phantom allegedly has. Wicked is all about not judging by the surface appearance. Elphaba, the green-skinned protagonist, is a girl who wants to do the right thing and rise above the place where she's spent her childhood (or in other words, to escape the discrimination that surrounds her.) She is manipulated into making a couple of significant mistakes that she was told would not happen, and the press launches her into the public eye as a villain and enemy to the common good.

And at the end, she's almost embraced that wickedness. She doesn't want to fight to be good anymore. But she does keep fighting for it, and that's the thing we have to remember. It is very hard to be good. We want to be wicked. It's in our nature. Only through God are we empowered to do the right thing.

So there you have it! My non-definitive post on the nature of grace and other such goods in musical theater. I hope you enjoyed this post!

So do you agree with my opinions of these musicals? Do you have any other musicals that offer stories of grace? Can we just fangirl about the above musicals for a little while? Because they are honestly full of so much awesome.

16 comments

The Best Version of Les Mis?

The Themes of Les Miserables

Redemption

Grace

Courage

Selflessness

Lessons in Broadway Musicals

The Phantom of the Opera

Hamilton

Les Miserables

Wicked

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