Oh my gosh, thank you for this post. Here I was thinking, like you, that there wasn't much more to be said on Valjean and Javert, and you give us this. I never made the Jacob-wrestling-with-God connection, but you're totally onto something there. Valjean wrestles because he finds the problems worth wrestling with. Javert only wants to throw him, end the match, and pretend it never happened. Because to wrestle with God is to acknowledge that God not only exists, but might disagree with him. And that's a terrifying thought.
It also never occurred to me that turning Valjean in would be a degradation in the same way that letting him go would be. Because you're right, to turn him in would be to make himself Pilate, to imprison a righteous and undeserving man, to go against justice. He sees that the only way for a man not to be degraded is to lower himself, to submit to higher moral authority and to suffering. Vajean, when he'd reached his absolute lowest point, when he was neck-deep in human excrement, that's when God placed the rock below his feet and allowed him to step up out of the pits. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
The crucifixion imagery is another really interesting thing going on here. Especially since it's not Javert alone forming the cross, but Javert and Mabeuf together. I just read it as sort of background imagery, of death and martyrdom looming over the barricade. But the fact that it is Javert who makes it...yeah, I'm not entirely sure what to make of that.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2014-04-21 03:30 pm (UTC)It also never occurred to me that turning Valjean in would be a degradation in the same way that letting him go would be. Because you're right, to turn him in would be to make himself Pilate, to imprison a righteous and undeserving man, to go against justice. He sees that the only way for a man not to be degraded is to lower himself, to submit to higher moral authority and to suffering. Vajean, when he'd reached his absolute lowest point, when he was neck-deep in human excrement, that's when God placed the rock below his feet and allowed him to step up out of the pits. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
The crucifixion imagery is another really interesting thing going on here. Especially since it's not Javert alone forming the cross, but Javert and Mabeuf together. I just read it as sort of background imagery, of death and martyrdom looming over the barricade. But the fact that it is Javert who makes it...yeah, I'm not entirely sure what to make of that.