New Criticism

Les Miserables
New Criticism

by Jenessa Siblos

Les Miserables does make you feel, intensely and sometimes thrillingly, by honoring the emotional core of its source material. It overflows with humor, heartbreak, rousing action and ravishing romance. With the imperfections, it's perfectly marvelous. The movie doesn’t only contain these incredible stuff. However it also include symbols, imagery and figure of speech which an audience could really find it interesting to watch and read it. The following were just an example of these substance.

Figure of speech

There are various figures of speech being use.

Similes are very abundant in Victor Hugo's writing. A simile is a type of analogy made by comparing two things to show a relationship. Similes always contain the words like or as. The following line are some examples which shows simile that can be found in the story.

§  Fantine song I Dreamed  A Dream “but the tigers come at night with their voices soft as thunder” ( The tigers voice is compared to a thunder)

§  The Poor “And the sun in the morning is waiting to rise like the waves crash on the sand like a storm that’ll break any second”. (the sun was compared to a waves and the waves was compared to a storm)

·         
Anaphora is another figure of speech that can be found in the story which means the use of the same word or phrase at the beginning of several successive clauses, sentences, lines, or verses, usually for emphasis or rhetorical effect.

§  Fantine line. “ She has nothing to fear, She has nothing to hide”

§  Valjean line “I was born inside a jail,  I was born with scum like you”

§  Eponine line “ And you will keep me safe, And you will keep me close”

§  Work song “Look down! Look down, Don’t looked in the eye”

§  Bishop line “Rest from pain and Rest from wrong”

·         On occasion, Hugo also uses a figure of speech called an erotema. An erotema is when the writer asks the reader a rhetorical question, a question that does not really require or expect an answer. Hugo uses an erotema, saying,

§  "Should the scab of the sheep cause the shepherd to recoil? No. But what a sheep!" The reference to the scab is also a metaphor for what the Bishop believed the Convention member's sins to be, and the exclamation, "But what a sheep!" also metaphorically portrays the member as the horrible sinner the Bishop believed him to be at the time.

·         On some instances in the story Hugo also uses a figure of speech called Hyperbole means deliberate and obvious exaggeration used for effect or in a word. Example were the following line in the story.

§  Young Cosette line “ There is a castle on a cloud” ( in literary speaking it was really impossible to build a castle on a cloud)

§  Courfeyrac line “ Like the flowing of the tide Paris coming to our side” ( it is very unbearable  that Paris will be the one to come to our side)

§  Valjean line “ Yet why did I allow that man to touch my soul and teach me love” ( in literal speaking no one can hold a soul of an individual)

·         Metaphor is a direct comparison of a person into an object in the story le’s Miserable this is the line which is an example of it.  

§  "It is your soul I am buying for you." Jean Valjean is transformed at that moment and the candlesticks are the means.

·         An apostrophe is a moment when an author or character addresses a person that is not actually present. Dr. Wheeler gives us an example from a John Donne poem,

§  "Oh, Death, be not proud. In Les Misérables, we see the Bishop of Digne make use of an apostrophe when we see him sitting and meditating on Scripture and then exclaiming to his invisible God, "Oh, you who are!" (Bk. 1, Ch. 5). He then proceeds further to analyze the names of God, ending with, "But Solomon calls you Compassion, and that is the most beautiful of all your names,"

·         Another figure of speech is Metonymy which mean a figure of speech in which an attribute of something is used to stand for the thing itself

§  In the Drinkers line “ Landlord, over here” ( landlord represent property-owner)

§  Javert line “ He’s a convict from the chain” ( the convict represent the criminals)

·         Another type of figurative language is a meiosis. A meiosis is an understatement, which is a way of stating the facts in a less striking way than they really are. We see the Bishop of Digne's sister, Mademoiselle Baptistine, make use of a meiosis. It is very clear that Mlle Baptistine does not completely enjoy living the same lifestyle of self-inflicted poverty that her brother does. Yet she lives with him and helps him keep house.

·         Personification is giving non-human things human attributes. In the story there is a line  stated

§  "...but one ugly tree, a few steps away from the traveler, which seemed to be twisting and contorting itself'' Since it says that the tree is twisting and contorting itself it implies that the tree is doing it on purpose.

Symbols

·         Myriel’s Silver Candlesticks - M. Myriel’s candlesticks are the most prominent symbol of compassion in Les Misérables, and they shed a light that always brings love and hope

Silver candlesticks

·         Snakes, Insects, and Birds-When describing the novel’s main characters, Hugo uses animal imagery to accentuate these characters’ qualities of good and evil. The orphaned figures of Cosette and Gavroche are frequently referred to as creatures of flight: Cosette as a lark and Gavroche as a fly.

Snake, one of the animal imagery sybols.

A lark represents Cosette.

A fly represents Gavroche.

Point of view

·         This novel was in the perspective of Jean Valjean. It talked about Jean Valjean's life which makes you think Jean Valjean is the protagonist .This book is in omniscient third person point of view.

Les Miserables has omniscient third person point of view.

 Songs interpretation

        Some song which was sung in the story were in quodlibet form which mean a piece of music combining several different melodies, usually popular tunes, in counterpoint and often a light-hearted, humorous manner. The term is Latin, meaning "whatever" or literally, "what pleases." There are three main types of quodlibet: A catalogue quodlibet consists of a free setting of catalogue poetry (usually humorous lists of loosely related items). In a successive quodlibet, one voice has short musical quotations and textual quotations while the other voices provide homophonic accompaniment. In a simultaneous quodlibet, two or more pre-existing melodies are combined. One example is the song  "One Day More" falls into the last category: a simultaneous quodlibet.