Why victor hugo wrote les miserables

In life, Victor Hugo was a poet, a politician , a philosopher, and a writer who touched the hearts of millions. He understood the importance of words, and realized the immortality in taking up a pen.

His arena was literature and his weapon of choice were words and prose. Like all good writers, Hugo wrote about the things he was familiar with, the things he knew about, his life lay the foundation for Les Miserables , and his experiences are scattered throughout his book and can be recognized if one knows what to look for. There is convincing evidence that lead some to suspect that Hugo wrote Les Miserables with the intention of paralleling his own life.

He wrote the story with examples of events that he experienced and overcame. The entire novel, Robb argues, is focused mainly on two exact dates. The first is the of June, , in which Victor Hugo witnessed first-hand the insurrection of the Passage du Saumon.

This is the metaphorical and literal barricade at which all strands and most of the characters converge together in a similar fate Robb, He continued to write until his death in He was buried with every conceivable honor in one of the grandest funerals in modern French history.

Hugo remains one of the most popular and respected authors in French literature. His writings were cultural fixtures throughout the nineteenth century, and he quickly emerged as one of the leaders of the Romantic movement in literature. Hugo also developed his own brand of imaginative realism, a literary style that combines realistic elements with exaggerated symbolism. In this style, each character represents a significant social issue of the time.

Hugo believed that the modern writer had a mission to defend the less fortunate members of society. Though he often drew criticism for his politics, his passion for documenting injustice ultimately led to widespread praise for both his literary and social achievements. It is also, however, a historical novel of great scope and analysis, and it provides a detailed vision of nineteenth-century French politics and society. Each of the three major characters in the novel symbolizes one of these predicaments: Jean Valjean represents the degradation of man in the proletariat, Fantine represents the subjection of women through hunger, and Cosette represents the atrophy of the child by darkness.