Les Misérables: Valjean's Soliloquy

"Did a voice whisper in his ear that he had just passed the solemn hour of his destiny; that there no longer remained a middle course for him; that if he were not henceforth the best of men, he would be 

the worst."

Summary

    Jean Valjean wanders down a road; it's insignificant which one, he just wanted to go anywhere besides D------. While walking down a country road, Jean Valjean hears someone coming up from behind him. He dodges into a push, and sees the thing behind him is a little boy who's flipping his coin; probably his only coin. The boy, who is known as Little Gervais, drops the coin, and it rolls to Jean Valjean, who quickly puts his foot on it so Little Gervais can't take it back. The boy demands that Jean Valjean five it back, but he plays dumb and pretends he does not have the coin. Confused and upset, Little Gervais runs away crying. Jean Valjean gets up, and stares down at the coin he just stole. Suddenly he realizes that he just stole a boy's only means of wealth and ruined the boy's life. Overcome with guilt and shame, he cries out for the boy and runs after where he might have gone. He shouts and shouts and runs and runs, and he asks everyone he comes across if they've seen a little boy named Little Gervais. Jean Valjean accepts that he will never find the poor boy, and breaks down; his entire world crashes down around him. The man cries for the first time in nineteen years.
    Jean Valjean was last seen praying in front of the Bishop's house in the middle of the night.

Analysis

    The destruction of Jean Valjean's soul was brought about by self-hatred; by doing that which made him hate the world, his soul split into two: he must either be as good as a saint, or as evil as the society that he had grown to hate. But with every hateful thought comes an equivalently strong pang of guilt. An entire lifetime of psychological development flashes before his eyes: he sees a resentful yet sacrificing man become a man full of hate and sin; he no longer knows who this man is. Who is he? What does he want? Does he still want to hate the world? If so, what are the consequences? He'll continue to be a man of evil and the dangerous man that society has labelled him to be; but he can't do that without humoring the society he hates with the fury of a thousand blazing suns.
    There is no middle ground available for Jean Valjean because if he tried to take a twilight path, he would be walking a nearly invisible tightrope that hung above the abyss of evil. So, to prevent himself from fulfilling the expectations of the society who hated him, he chose the higher ground; and he had no choice. Jean Valjean re-identifies himself as a man of light, a man of pure good based off the light that blinded him just hours ago. The Jean Valjean of darkness is dead now; the Jean Valjean of light has been born and shall exist forevermore in the memories and stories of those he affected.

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Thanks for reading,
                       Nick