✓悲惨世界 Good 'ol times

It has been exactly four years since December 2015 when I first started writing about Les Miserables, then as a script writer for our batch’s school play competition (which we won; wherein I acted as Javert, the police inspector and Valjean’s never-ending nemesis.). //O how I long for the good ‘ol times!// The second one, was when after the competition was over, I still wasn’t satisfied with the script that I had merely got off from the Broadway musical adaptation of the book and having to summarize that to fit for a 30-minute-long play. God knows how arduous a task accomplishing that feat was! But, what was even more challenging was to read the original annotated unabridged English translation of Victor Hugo’s obra maestra. I dare say, reading it back then in 2016, and reading it yet again in 2019 still gives me the same old feeling: Reading Les Miserables was (and is!) the most difficult and, I repeat, THE MOST DIFFICULT, but at the same time, most satisfying, excruciating, thought-provoking English literary piece that I have ever read to date. There has not been any other book that could have surpassed this one in the number of epiphanies it gave me, the headaches it brought me, and the time that it cost me nor could have any enlightened me more regarding religion, politics, love and sacrifice than this masterpiece. Take for example the following, “Intellectual and moral growth is not less dispensible than material amelioration. Knowledge is a viaticum, thought is of primary necessity, truth is nourishment as well as wheat. A reason, by fasting from knowledge and wisdom, becomes puny. Let us lament as over stomachs, over minds which do not eat. If there is anything more poignant than a body agonizing for want of bread, it is a soul which is dying of hunger for light.” //this is merely one of the extremely many vivid depictions of the thoughts that passed Valjean’s mind as he was strolling through the slums that plagued Paris. NS […] ‘Tuesday. It isn’t Tuesday. Is it Tuesday? Perhaps it is Tuesday. Yes, it is Tuesday.’ […] I do not understand how God, the father of men, can torture his children, and his grandchildren, and hear them without being tortured himself. //simple but concise statements reflecting how all the hubbub amidst preparation for war affected an innocent, poverty-stricken child’s (Gavroche’s) mind. NS Love has no middle terms; either it destroys, or it saves. All human destiny is this dilemma. This dilemma, destruction or salvation, no fatality proposes more inexorably than love. Love is life; if it not be death. Cradle; coffins also. The same sentiment says yes and no in the human heart. Of all the things which God has made, the human heart is that which sheds most light, and alas! Most night. … that her father’s name was M. Fauchelevent, that he was very kind, that he gave much to the poor, but that he was poor himself, and that he deprived himself of everything while he deprived her of nothing. //Cosette upon discovering the true identity of her father, Jean Valjean (aka M. Fauchelevent) NS Takeaways from reading the book: I learned that a person’s intrinsic nature can change over time from good to bad, like as to how Valjean started off from being an ordinary person in a corrupt and fractured political system which forced him to steal a loaf of bread to stave off death from his sister’s child and led him to 19 years of jail. I learned that giving someone a second chance is all it takes to turn that person’s life around, like as to how Bishop Myriel covered for and forgave Valjean (even after him stealing all his silverware) on the condition that he hereon after become an upright honest man. I realized how hard it was to be a single mother with an illegitimate child, like as to how Fantine got fired and ostracized when news broke about that. What’s worse is how, in the midst of making ends meet for her and her daughter Cosette, she was forced to cast aside all her pride, even her virginity to degrade herself in prostitution. I now understand that some people take on horrible jobs, not because they want to, but because they have to, in order for their loved ones. I realized that some people just simply cannot be trusted, that even if you give them a second, heck a third, fourth, nth chance, they will only be going to use you, abuse you; like as to how the Thénardiers misused Fantine’s prostitution-earned money not for the benefit of Cosette, but instead for their own children, Eponine and Azelma. It’s best to steer away from these kinds of animals. I respect Marius for his decision to follow in what he believes in and thus, give up all the luxuries of the rich he had grown accustomed to, and eat dirt like all the rest. I respect Eponine for her courageousness of taking a bullet for Marius to save someone more important than her, someone she deeply loves, despite Marius having eyes only for Cosette. Eponine always had the chance to ruin, to jeopardize the relationship between the two star-crossed lovers and turn herself to become Marius’ Juliet. But, she chose not to. Instead, she accepted the harsh reality that it is. And for that, I deeply admire her. I now understand that some people will take to extreme lengths just to exact their revenge or to validate their subjective belief of “justice”, like as to how Javert will do everything, and I mean everything, within his power to see that Valjean is taken down for good. He does not see nor refuses to see the angelic side of Valjean, and in that, made a devil of himself. And finally, I now understand that all of these epiphanies and the stories they are rooted from repeat time and time again, such is the nature of human beings. Humans can change, yes. Periodically, such that of an ECG. Humans, in their entire lives, will experience the same rollercoaster ride of emotions, albeit in a lesser (or greater) extent. *Sigh*, we humans repeat history. Are we really doomed to be always like that? #RelivingtheGood'OlTimes #SYSU 1901