Les Miserables

There is scarcely anything else in the world but that: to love one another. Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

I just finished rereading this beautiful, heart wrenching novel by Victor Hugo. If you haven't read it--or if you've only seen the play--you should find a copy and start working your way through. There's a reason it's widely considered one of the greatest novels ever written.

Like other great novels--The Brothers Karamozov comes to mind--it will put you through an emotional wringer. But that's the point.

If nothing else, the book stands as a powerful reminder of all that we take for granted. In this day and age, I think sorrow and loss and true deprivation are often vague and distant things. Not to say that such have have been banished from the world--far from it--but rather that here in America, few us of know what true poverty looks like, or recognize that most of the world's population for most of world history could scarce dream of the opportunities we take for granted: education, employment, health care, sanitation, leisure.

Even our perspective on death is someohow distant or muted. So often, death happens in the hospital to old people, not to the young or to people in the prime of life.

I suppose I'm a romantic at heart--a sucker for the sentimental--but something rings true in this social critique that also weaves togther themes of redemption, love, forgiveness, and self-sacrifice. Vive la Republique!