This is my book report from when I read Jean Valjean in Grade 7. 🙂 I just found it and thought it was kinda interesting!
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The book I read was Jean Val Jean, as told by Solomon Cleaver. It was a story about a young man who was given an unfair sentence for a relatively small crime and how he turns away from sin to a life of goodness.
The story takes place in small towns across France and eventually in Paris. The time was in the 1800s.
The main character of the story is Jean Val Jean. He is a large man, very strong, but with a good heart. Another main character is Cosette, Jean’s young adopted daughter, who he loves very much.
The minor characters are Javert, a police investigator, who is said to have a “bullet-shaped head”. He is tall and sinewy, with coarse black hair. Other characters are Marius, a young law student that falls in love with Cosette, and the bishop, a very kind, generous, selfless man.
The plot of the story goes as follows: Jean stole a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s hungry children and was sentenced to five years in prison. While there, he tried to escape several times and the five years stretched to nineteen. He became bitter and filled with hatred. Finally he was released, but was given a yellow passport so that wherever he went, people would know he had been in prison. Because of this, he was turned away from every place he went to. Just when he had given up hope, he was directed to a kindly bishop’s house, where he was welcomed with open arms. There the bishop challenged him to leave his old life behind and start a new life dedicated to God and to good.
However, the first thing Jean did was to steal a fourty-sou piece from a young boy, but he was immediately ashamed. So, he went to the town of M. sur M. and promptly became a hero by rescuing the children of the chief guardsman. Because of his noble act, nobody asked to see his passport, and he began a new life under an assumed name – Madeline. Madeline became rather wealthy by manufacturing jet and built a factory. He was soon asked to be mayor.
He had only two enemies, the first a retired lawyer named Father Fauchelevent, whome he soon befriended. The other was chief police investigator Javert who became suspicious of the new mayor. Meanwhile, Madeline became acquainted with a poor, dying woman named Fantine who begged him to bring her young daughter to her before she died. He set out to do that, but Javert came to see him and told him that he had wrongfully accused him of being Jean Val Jean, and he knows that he was wrong because the real Jean Val Jean has just been arrested.
Since Madeline knew that the man apprehended could not be Jean Val Jean, he went to the court and told everyone that it was he who was Val Jean. He was soon arrested and sentenced to life in prison. When Fantine heard of this it was too much for her and she died.
Jean went to prison but soon escaped by pretending to drown, so that he could go get Fantine’s child, Cosette. She was being kept by a family named the Thenardiers, who treated her like a slave. Jean saved her and made her his own daughter. To escape Javert’s relentlesspursuit, he and Cosette moved into a convent where Father Fauchelevent now lived. There Jean was safe, and Cosette was well taken care of and educated.
Eventually they left the convent and Cosette fell in love with a man named Marius. Jean was very upset over this relationship and decided to move to a different part of Paris. When Marius discovered that Cosette was nowhere to be found, he ran off and joined the revolutionists. Jean was ashamed of what he had done, and to make things right, he too joined the revolutionists in order to save Marius. During a battle, Jean had an opportunity to kill Javert, but decided not to. Marius was seriously injured, so Jean took him away from the battle. They eventually came upon Javert who promptly arrested Jean. Jean agreed to go with him as long as Marius was taken care of. Javert decided that he could not arrest him after Jean had spared his life, so he left and committed suicide, the order in his world destroyed.
Marius and Cosette got married, but when Jean told Marius of his past, Marius disowned him. But once he learned that Jean was the one who saved his life, he was overcome with regret and rushed to see Jean to ask for forgiveness. Jean immediately forgave him, but it was too late. Jean had grown sick over not seeing Cosette, the only love of his life, and died.
This is an excellent book, and I would be interested to read the novel that it is based on, Les Miserables. The characters are realistic and easy to relate to, and the plot is well detailed and interesting. It really makes you pay attention to what’s going on because of all the little things that come into play later in the story. I really enjoyed it.
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