Part II, Book 2, Chapter 1
Number 24601 Becomes Number 9430
Finally, we’re out of the Waterloo zone (by far my least favorite stretch of the book) and back to Jean Valjean! I can’t wait to see what he’s been up to! Let’s see what the opening line of the chapter is—
“Jean Valjean had been recaptured.”
Well, this sucks.
Hugo announces that he’s going to save time by presenting us with two (very flawed) newspaper articles, instead of telling us what happened himself, and I canNOT with this man. We just had NINETEEN CHAPTERS of Facts and Opinions about Waterloo that, frankly, we didn’t need, all to get us to Monsieur Does-He-Even-Have-a-First-Name Thénardier, and now some serious shit has gone down with Jean Valjean and Hugo is like, oh actually we need to be concise now.
(I realize that the feint at concision is a way for him to use a storytelling device that gets something across that he couldn’t with the standard omniscient-narrator thing, but it is still very, very rich of him to claim that he cares about efficiency because, again: NINETEEN CHAPTERS OF WATERLOO.)
Anyway. The first newspaper article reports that the convict Jean Valjean was arrested and imprisoned, and ends by mentioning that before his re-arrest he withdrew a huge sum of money from the bank that is now unaccounted for. The implication is obviously that there’s something sinister afoot, and I just want to hit the journalist besmirching my good sweet Valjean. He gave that money to the poor, you jerks!
The second newspaper article is a lot more detailed and a lot more lurid (and a lot more WRONG): it explains how the convict Jean Valjean tricked the innocent people of a town by operating under a fake name, and had kept a prostitute as a mistress who has since died. This is slander on both Jean Valjean and Fantine’s names and I’m losing it. It then explains that Valjean was captured while on his way to Montfermeil—aka the town where the Thénardiers live—and I am so sad that he almost made it to rescue Cosette!!
The second article repeats the same sinister detail about Valjean withdrawing a huge sum of money that no one has seen since, and then reports that he was tried for armed highway robbery as part of a conspiracy with a gang of brigands. What is Petit-Gervais telling people??? Every time this story comes back the crime gets worse, and the original crime, while not a great look, was that Valjean deliberately stepped on a coin and that’s it. Armed robbery! A conspiracy! A gang!
What’s worse, Valjean didn’t try to fight the charges, and let himself be sentenced—TO DEATH. JFC what is wrong with this justice system.
Luckily (“luckily”) his death sentence was commuted by the king, and with his life spared, Valjean was sentenced to a lifetime of penal servitude in the prison hulks at Toulon.
Yes, you heard that right. Jean Valjean, after a dramatic inspirational arc as an inventor-businessman–politician–philanthropist, ended up right back where he started.
This is unbelievably upsetting. I cannot believe Hugo would do this to me personally. There is only one song that can sum up this situation (and it’s not in the musical, because the musical wisely chopped this entire section of book out):
“I tried so hard and got so far / But in the end it doesn’t even matter”—clearly, this iconic Linkin Park song is about Jean Valjean.
As a second-time prisoner, Valjean is given a new number: 9430. This is not nearly as catchy as 24601, and also I want to know how this numbering system works, since 24601 is a much bigger number than 9430. Were they locking up so many people back then that they had to come back around and start at the beginning again?
The chapter ends with a note about the fate of Montreuil-sur-Mer. Turns out, Madeleine was a load-bearing mayor, and all of Montreuil’s prosperity went down the toilet once he was gone. The TL;DR is that all the workshops closed down, people got greedy and the once-revitalized industry got completely enshittified, the community fell apart, the safety nets disappeared, and the poor ended up with nothing.
This all so much and all of it sucks. What the hell, Hugo???
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