The Immense Popularity Of Les Misérables Has Not Diminished Over Time

Les Misérables was first published in France and Belgium in 1862, a year which found Victor Hugo in exile from his beloved France. Enemies and admirers throughout the world devoured his works—poetry, political tracts, and fiction—and the effect of these works upon the public was always sensational. On the morning of 15 May, a mob filled the streets around Pagnerre's book shop, eyeing the stacks of copies of Les Misérables that stretched between floor and ceiling. A few hours later, they had all—thousands of books—been sold. Hugo's critics were quick to condemn him for making money by dramatizing the misery of the poor, while the poor themselves bought, read, and discussed his book in unprecedented numbers. True to Hugo's political stance, he had written a book about the people that was for the people, a book that demanded a change in society's judgement of its citizens.

The story is set between 1815 and 1832, the years of Hugo's youth. The descriptions of Paris, the characterizations of Gavroche and other Parisian stock characters, and such statements as, "To err is human, to stroll is Parisian" all attest to Hugo's unswerving adoration of his home city. Exile no doubt encouraged the romantic meanderings of Hugo's prose. The protagonist of Les Misérables, Jean Valjean, is also in exile from the world of men because of the desperate crime he committed in his youth. Liberated from prison, Valjean hides his identity and becomes a successful man, as charitable as he is rich and powerful. His altruism leads him to promise Fantine, a dying prostitute, that he will seek out her exploited young daughter Cosette after her death. The ensuing love between "father" and "daughter" (Cosette) is miraculous, redeeming Valjean and bestowing happiness on his otherwise grim life. To some extent, Hugo also was seeking redemption, having, for much of his youth, ignored the populist concerns of Republican France. He sacrificed his lifestyle in Paris for justice, andLes Misérables, "the Magna Carta of the human race," is a testament of this humanitarian awakening.

The story of Les Miserables is about four people; Famine, Bishop Myriel, and Marius Pontmercy and Jean Valjean. The story revolves around the lives of these four French people and how was their experience of meeting each other in the most restless era of the French history. The story tells a lot about the 1832 revolution and it also shows distasteful side of Paris. The novel promotes human rights and the theory of impartiality among all citizens.

Marius' life has a happier ending. He recuperates from his wounds and overcomes his grandfather's hostility to his marriage. The marriage, however, is a mortal blow to Valjean. He has confessed his past to Marius, and the latter, in spite of his magnanimity, slowly estranges Cosette from Valjean. Marius does not know that Valjean is the man who saved his life in the sewers. Without Cosette, Valjean's life loses its meaning and he slowly withers away. Thénardier, however, unwittingly reveals to Marius that Valjean is his savior, and Marius and Cosette arrive in time to console Jean Valjean on his deathbed.

Les Misérables vindicates those members of society forced by unemployment and starvation to commit crimes—in Jean Valjean's case, the theft of a loaf of bread—who are thereafter outcast from society. It is fairly common parlance today to suggest that prison creates more hardened criminals than it reforms, but the idea was radical to Hugo's contemporaries. "Perrot de Chezelles, in an 'Examination of Les Misérables,' defended the excellence of a State which persecuted convicts even after their release, and derided the notion that poverty and ignorance had anything to do with crime. Criminals were evil." Jean Valjean morally surpasses characters working on behalf of this excellent State. The poor and the disenfranchised understood Hugo's message, accepted the affirmation he gave them, and worshipped him as their spokesman. Workers pooled their money to buy the book not one of them could afford on their own. The struggling people of France had found an articulate illustration of the unjust forces arrayed against them.

The immense popularity of this story has not diminished over time. Since the original 1935 film version, there have been several other international films entitled Les Misérables including a Spring 1998 release starring Liam Neeson and Uma Thurman. The "most popular musical in the world" has toured the globe several times and has been running on Broadway since March 1987. Why does this story continue to charm and inspire audiences and readers? In our time, as there was in Hugo's, there is cause for despair: greed and violence undermine true progress; human life is rendered meaningless through materialism and nihilism; children the world over suffer neglect, poverty, and ignorance. Who does not identify with Jean Valjean's arduous journey through the sewers, and who does not long for an escape like his emergence into the pristine Parisian dusk? Hugo illustrates how the most profound revolution takes place in our individual consciences, how every moment we are faced with decisions to do right or wrong, and how to make in our hearts pitched battles against our own worst impulses.

Les Misérables incites us to make the best fight of our lives the fight to become authentically good people and gives us hope that our efforts will not be in vain. Time cannot change the necessity or urgency of that message—only people can.

The Old Man And The Sea As A Good Book To Read And Reflect Upon

Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea is a classic work that brought him the 1954 Nobel Prize in literature. It has been translated and read in many different languages. It is a book that is familiar, at least by name, to almost anyone who has had a primary education. Growing up, I too heard a great deal about this book. Frankly, I wondered what all the fuss was about. It was met with the reply, as all kids will know, that I was too young to understand. Eventually, I decided to read the book and discover for myself.

The story of The Old Man and the Sea, as the name may suggest, revolves around an aged man named Santiago. He is a fisherman in Cuba who has come upon some hard times, in that he has not caught a decent fish in eighty four days. He has been so unlucky that his young apprentice, Manolin, has been forbidden by his parents to sail with Santiago any more. Santiago believes that his bad luck is drawing to an end and sets out on his eighty-fifth day to search for a fish far into the Gulf. He travels farther than all other fisherman and casts his lines. A very powerful fish, which he believes to be a marlin, takes his bait. The fish is so powerful that it pulls Santiago's skiff along. Santiago does not let go and braces the lines with his body. So starts an arduous journey for both the fish and the old man that lasts two days and two nights. On the third day, the marlin is so tired out that Santiago, who himself is delirious with pain, manages to pull it close to the skiff and kill it.

The fish is too big for his skiff and so he ties it to the side and starts for Cuba. However, the trail of blood oozing from the slain fish draws in sharks. Initially Santiago is able to defend his catch against the sharks but it is not long before the inevitable happens and Santiago has to watch as sharks completely devour the marlin, leaving only a skeleton and the head of the once great fish. Eventually Santiago reaches shore and drags himself to his hut and falls asleep. In the morning groups of fishermen and tourists notice Santiago's skiff and the skeleton of the enormous fish, measured at eighteen feet. Manolin rushes to Santiago's hut and cries when he sees the old man fast asleep with the injuries received from his battle with the marlin. He brings the old man coffee and newspaper and upon waking the old man promises they will fish together again. He falls back to sleep and dreams of his youth, of lions on the African beach.

During my reading it was difficult to keep an open mind, my mind being filled with preconceptions of my mother's and sister's opinions. Their opinion was that The Old Man and the Sea was a testament to the resilience of human nature and our ability to endure pain and suffering in our battle against nature. Of course the old man has to endure a lot of pain and hardship to catch the marlin. The marlin represents nature and the old man humanity. Humanity's resilience and endurance are certainly showcased but there are other characteristics of the human species which have been showcased more prominently. I assume that the old man is quite an experienced fisherman, seeing as he had been fishing for some time and some of his feats of skill have been mentioned. I do not question his bout of bad luck but his attempt to try to fight against the marlin even after its strength had been revealed when it started pulling the skiff. The old man is an experienced fisherman and he knew how powerful the marlin was. Despite that the old man still carries on with his efforts.

Readers are reminded of the old man's past, how he was called 'Santiago the champion' and how strong he once was, how he dreamed of lions playing on the African beaches. I think that his efforts push into the spotlight a quality of humanity that is evident to anyone who but looks: arrogance and pride. The fisherman refers to the marlin in a tone of respect, as a brother, and acknowledges its strength and that it is a worthy opponent. But I think that is just to comfort himself and convince himself that there is another reason why he is trying to catch it. It is conveyed that Santiago yearns for the strength that he once had. He knows that he would have been able to catch the marlin by himself when he was younger. He yearns for acceptance in his community and, most of all, he wishes to prove to himself that he still has the strength that he once had.

It may be evident that Santiago, in fact, does still have the strength and endurance to bring the fish in himself. But take a look at what happens afterwards. Santiago knows that at one point, if he manages to bring the fish in, he will have to slay the fish. He knows that in order to slay the fish he has to harpoon it and he knows that harpooning the fish will release its blood which will bring in sharks. He knows all that and still he cannot bring himself to let the fish go. He goes through hell and back to catch that fish and in the end he can do nothing but satisfy himself with the thought that he still can bring a large marlin in as he helplessly sees his effort and hard work dissolving in bloody water as the sharks munch on it. It seems pathetic, the lengths to which he will go to satisfy his ego, which is almost as big as the marlin. In the end, it is all for an 18-foot skeleton lying on a beach which shows that "yes, the old man caught this". Does nature not reclaim itself? One wonders what would have happened if Santiago had kept on fishing near the bay. As he says himself, his bad luck cannot last forever. Everything that he does is the act of a desperate man who lets his emotions get the better of him. Santiago's actions are not so distant from a depiction of humanity's tendency to act without thinking about the consequences or often ignoring the consequences all together.

Hemingway's style of writing is precise. It is simple, yet elegant and succinct. One would recommend it as a good book to read and reflect upon. One's reactions may seem critical and pessimistic but one is entitled to one's own opinions.

The Kite Runner Has To Be One Of The Most Profound And Beautifully Books

The Kite Runner is a book that has accommodated almost every kind of emotions in this world. Relationships like father and son, between two friends, between two lovers and between two countries.

It is a tale of two friends – Amir and Hassan, living in the 1970s’ Afghanistan. Amir is the son of one of the wealthiest father in the whole Kabul and Hassan is the son of his servant with whom Amir’s father has grown up.

They are enjoying their childhood lives with full passion under an Afghanistan ruled by a monarchy. But the fate has something else for them. After a shocking incident that Amir saw happening with Hassan, in which he didn’t do anything to help him, made him depressed. He no longer talked to Hassan and was immersed in his dead mother’s old books and writing stories.

Then there comes a republic in Afghanistan which seeks help of Russians to help them rule Afghanistan. But the people of Afghanistan can’t tolerate living under guns of the Russian soldiers. But the Russians had more plans for Afghanistan – They overtook the government and put their own raj in Afghanistan. Gunfire and bombs were everywhere.

One of the most different and compelling books I've read in years, The Kite Runner is a story told to a Western audience of a culture almost completely foreign to them. I swallowed up the little references to Afghani customs and daily life as much as I did the story itself. Even the revealing tales of the refugee community in the United States made for fascinating reading.

The story is so horrific in places, my wife almost abandoned the book when she read the rape scene. However, Hosseini touches on the drama and tragedies in human life with a strangely philosophical tone that draws your onward through the text. On the other hand, he doesn't try to make the story perfect - the fact that Hassan dies before Amir returns to Afghanistan means he can never apologise for the things he did. Worse, when he discovers Hassan is his brother, Hassan is dead and so is their father - Amir can never reconnect with them on the strength of this new information. I found some of these things the most heartbreaking of all.

I found a surprising dislike for Amir through the book. He always seemed to drop out of everything that required courage. Like defending Hassan, or actually fighting Assef. Even with the relatively bureaucratic process of adopting Hassan's son, he fails rather than fights. And this leads directly to Sohrab's suicide attempt. When an Afghani commented that perhaps Amir was always just a tourist in Afghanistan, I felt it was a real comment on the weakness of Western culture - that Amir was better suited to a detatched, democratic lifestyle where you could donate through a telethon but never help anyone directly. Take the example of Baba standing up to the Russian soldier to defend a woman's honour, but failing to integrate into American society later on. Amir's experience was almost the opposite.

Perhaps the bravest choice by the author was not to go for the 'happily ever after' ending. Amir takes Sohrab to the USA, sure. But Sohrab is traumatised and doesn't speak for a year and doesn't interact. The book ends with Amir making the tiniest bit of headway in connecting with the boy but there's clearly a lot of work to do. Sohrab may never be 'normal' or healed. He may never live up to Amir and Soraya's dreams of a child.

Still, despite overwhelming odds, The Kite Runner manages to stir something in the soul. It may be that Khaled Hosseini has tapped into a way of letting us realise we do the same thing - do we stand by and allow injustices to happen and justify it with excuses?

The characters are exceptionally well drawn. From those opening words about Baba, Hassan, Ali and Rahim Khan, you'll grow to care about those people, their lives and their outcomes. And throughout the book, all the people whose lives impact on Amir's childhood are brought back and we're given closure on each one. Hassan's execution and Ali's death by land mine are a stark reminder of the deadly regimes that reigned over Afghanistan while Amir was in the relative safety and comfort of America. I knew this was a work of fiction when I started reading, but it could have easily been a biographical piece, and that's why I have more of an emotional investment in the characters than I would with an ordinary book.

The Kite Runner, for me, has to be one of the most profound and beautifully written books I've read in years. It's not my normal reading material either, but I'll be swiftly following up with a reading of Hosseini's next book, A Thousand Splendid Suns.

To get rid of all this, Amir and his father leave for Peshawar in Pakistan from where they go to America forever. There Amir gets married to an immigrant Afghan. But there is one problem – They are not able to have any children.

After some days, Amir receives a call from Peshawar from his father’s brother – Rahim Khan who asks him to come and meet him in his last days of life. Amir obeys, and reaches Peshawar where he comes to know that Hassan has died and now he has to go to Taliban ruled Afghanistan to save his one and only child. He also comes to know about a startling fact about him and Hassan from Rahim Khan there.

What happens next is truly epic and the whole story is also awesome. This part of the book really captures your heart. And if you are not the ones who have a brave heart, you are sure to shed some tears along the journey of this book.

"To Kill A Mockingbird"-Appropriate For Young Adult Readers

Probably ten million folks have written opinions on Harper Lee’s classic during the last fifty years, but I’m going to add my ten cents to the pot anyway. Because To Kill a Mockingbird is worth every coin we toss in.

This is the story of a black man standing trial in Alabama for a crime he didn’t commit. An honest, hard-working black man accused by the lowest of white men. But it’s much more than a local legal proceeding. Within these pages, the whole of American society stands trial.

Maycomb is a slow, tired, tight-knit southern community where everybody’s blood kin if you dig deep enough. It’s a town of contradictions. A town where good people are blinded by old prejudice and set habits. It’s where young Scout and her brother Jem are trying to work out just what makes people tick.

The narration is carried by an adult Scout, looking twenty-five years into the past to the recall the events of 1935. It’s rich with quirky, childish humor. With dry wit, exaggeration, understatement and innocent misstatements. For example, when Scout has a run-in with her new first grade teacher, she complains to Jem.

“Don’t worry, Scout,” Jem comforted me. “Our teacher says Miss Caroline’s introducing a new way of teaching. She learned about it in college. It’ll be in all the grades soon. You don’t have to learn much out of books that way – it’s like if you wanta learn about cows, you go and milk one, see?”

“Yeah, Jem, but I don’t wanta study cows. I-”

“Sure you do. You hafta know about cows, they’re a big part of life in Maycomb County.”

I contented myself with asking Jem if he’d lost his mind.

“I’m just trying to tell you the new way they’re teachin’ the first grade, stubborn. It’s the Dewey Decimal System.”

Scout and Jem are guided in their reflections on the human race by their father, Atticus Finch. He’s old, as fathers go, but he’s the best shot in Maycomb County. And he’s level-headed, fair, unassuming, and the attorney of Tom Robinson, the black man on trial for his life. Miss Maudie, a neighbor, tells the children after Tom’s trial:

“There are some men in this world born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father’s one of them….We’re so rarely called on to be Christians, but when we are, we’ve got men like Atticus Finch to go for us.”

But the Christians of Maycomb County aren’t found guiltless. In one starkly hypocritical scene involving the Methodist missionary society, pious Mrs. Merriweather laments the barbaric societies of the world that don’t adhere to the teachings of scripture. Yet with her next condescending breath, she recommends the church leaders “encourage” the unhappy Negro community after the unfair and fatal result of Tom’s trial. “If we just let them know we forgive ‘em, that we’ve forgotten it, then this whole thing will blow over.” She goes on:

“The cooks and fieldhands are just dissatisfied, but they’re settling down now – they grumbled all the next day after the trial…Gertrude, I tell you there’s nothing more distracting than a sulky darky…You know what I said to my Sophy, Gerturde? I said, ‘Sophy,’ I said, ‘you simply are not being a Christian today. Jesus Christ never went around grumbling and complaining,’ and you know it did her good. She took her eyes off that floor and said, ‘Nome, Miz Merriweather, Jesus never went around complaining.’ I tell you, Gertrude, you never ought to let an opportunity go by to witness for the Lord.”

And in a discussion of current events at school, German persecution of Jews is condemned, and rightly so. But as the teacher enumerates the qualities of Jewish citizens, their contributions to society, their difficult past, their being forced to leave their homeland, the reader’s mind draws strong parallels to the blacks overlooked and persecuted in the same way in Maycomb County. This blindness and hypocrisy is underscored when a student remarks, “…that ain’t no cause to persecute ‘em. They’re white, ain’t they?”

Old Families take a good hit as well. That cultured set of gentlefolk deprived during the War Between the States of everything but their land, their pedigrees and their snobbery. Scout declares, “Atticus told me one time that most of this Old Family stuff is foolishness because everybody’s family’s just as old as everybody else’s. I said did that include the colored folks and the Englishmen and he said yes.”

Against all this drama, we also meet Arthur “Boo” Radley, reluctant hero and victim in his own right. A harmless mockingbird whose protection warrants the bending of a few rules.

Published right in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement, To Kill a Mockingbird has left its mark on American society. And for the better. It captures a segment of history with all its nostalgia and preserves a slice of small town southern culture. But it uses neither the forgetful nor the rosy lenses we often prefer to view such subjects through. Rather, it takes a good hard look at where we’ve been, and gives us all the encouragement we need to never go back there.

Appropriate for young adult readers. Difficult vocabulary, complex sentence structures, abstract ideas and some adult material. Probably too advanced for readers younger than high school.

Famous Classic Fairy

Fairy tales are something that we all have grown up listening to. Many of us still love reading old fairy tales and story books. These fairy tales take us into a world of mystery and fantasy where there are fairies, ghosts, elves, dwarfs, prince and princesses, etc. the world of fairy tales is a world of magic and miracle which leaves us enchanted.

Some of the famous famous classic fairy from reliable book guide are enlisted below:

1. Cinderella: This story revolves around Cinderella who stays with her step mother and two step sisters. This story shows how Cinderella transforms into a beautiful girl with the help of her fairy godmother and goes to the royal ball where she meets the prince who falls in love with her.
2. Sleeping Beauty: this is a story about a princess who is cursed that she will die on being pricked. This curse is altered by a good fairy so that instead of dying she will sleep for hundred years. The princess gets pricked by a spindle and falls asleep until a handsome prince comes and wakes her up.
3. Rumplestiltzkin: this story is about a poor man who tells the king that his daughter can spin straw into gold. The king sends her into a room full of straw and asks her to spin it into gold. She fails to do it suddenly a little man comes and helps her. The girl gives birth to a son whom the little man wants when she refuses he feels pity and tells her that if she guesses his name correctly he will spare her child. The girl guesses his name which is rumplestiltzkin and the man runs away.
4. Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs: this story is about a beautiful princess who runs away from her evil step mother and stays in the woods with seven dwarfs. The evil step mother tries to kill her with a poisoned apple but a prince kisses her and brings her back to life.
5. Rapunzelle: this story is about a girl with extremely long hair, the girl is locked up in a tall castle by a witch. She is rescued by a prince who climbs the castle by the help of the girl's long hair.
6. The Fir Tree:Out in the woods stood a nice little Fir Tree. The place he had was a very good one: the sun shone on him: as to fresh air, there was enough of that, and round him grew many large-sized comrades, pines as well as firs. But the little Fir wanted so very much to be a grown-up tree.