Getting Into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn From Actors (20 page)

SETTING: France, early 1800s. The formidable and implacable Javert, a policeman, follows only one path in life—that of the law. Nothing else matters, not compassion, never mercy. The law is the law, and it demands judgment and retribution. This inner value colors everything he does and, in fact, becomes his very definition.

Javert thinks he has committed an unpardonable offense in believing that the respected Mayor Monsieur Madeleine is Jean Valjean, the escaped convict whom he has sought for years to bring to justice. In Javert’s mind, he himself must be punished. He visits Monsieur Madeleine and confesses his previous belief, declaring that he now knows he was wrong.

“Monsieur Mayor, there is one more thing to which I desire to call your attention.”

“What is it?”

“It is that I ought to be dismissed.”

Monsieur Madeleine arose. “Javert, you are a man of honour and I esteem you. You exaggerate your fault. I desire you to keep your place.”

Javert looked at Monsieur Madeleine with his calm eyes, in whose depths it seemed that one beheld his conscience, unenlightened, but stern and pure, and said in a tranquil voice, “Monsieur Mayor, I cannot agree to that. As to exaggerating, I do not exaggerate. This is the way I reason. I have unjustly suspected you. That is nothing. It is our province to suspect, although it may be an abuse of our right to suspect our superiors. But without proofs and in a fit of anger, with revenge as my aim, I denounced you as a convict—you, a respectable man, a mayor and a magistrate. This is a serious matter, very serious. I have committed an offence against authority in your person, I who am the agent of authority. If one of my subordinates had done what I have, I would have pronounced him unworthy of the service, and sent him away.”

All this was said in a tone of proud humility, a desperate and resolute tone, which gave an indescribably whimsical grandeur to this oddly honest man.

“We will see,” said Monsieur Madeleine. And he held out his hand to him.

Javert started back and said fiercely, “Pardon, Monsieur Mayor, that should not be. A mayor does not give his hand to a spy.” He added between his teeth, “Spy, yes; from the moment I abused the power of my position I have been nothing better than a spy!”

Then he bowed profoundly, and went towards the door.

Later in the book, Javert learns that Monsieur Madeleine is indeed Jean Valjean, and in the following scene Javert goes to arrest him. Valjean is in a hospital room, watching over Fantine, a sick young mother he’s taken into his care.

One who did not know Javert could have divined nothing of what was going on, and would have thought his manner the most natural imaginable. He was cool, calm, grave; his grey hair lay perfectly smooth over his temples, and he ascended the stairway with his customary deliberation. But one who knew him thoroughly and examined him with attention would have shuddered. The buckle of his leather cravat, instead of being on the back of his neck, was under his left ear. This denoted an unheard-of agitation.

Javert was a complete character, without a wrinkle in his duty or his uniform, methodical with villains, riding with the buttons of his coat. For him to misplace the buckle of his cravat, he must have received one of those shocks which may well be the earthquakes of the soul ….

On reaching the room of Fantine, Javert turned the key, pushed open the door with the gentleness of a sick-nurse, or a police spy, and entered …. Fantine raised her eyes, saw him, and caused Monsieur Madeleine to turn around.

At the moment when the glance of Madeleine encountered that of Javert, Javert, without stirring, without moving, without approaching, became terrible. No human feeling can ever be so appalling as joy.

It was the face of a demon who had again found his victim.

Javert sends Jean Valjean to prison, but on a prisoner’s ship, Valjean is thrown overboard and manages to escape. Years later Valjean becomes involved with a group of young revolutionaries because of the relationship between his adopted daughter, Cosette (the late Fantine’s child), and Marius, one of the group’s leaders. Javert, ever the policeman, is now in pursuit of these revolutionaries. Here, some of the radical young men catch him.

In a twinkling before Javert had had time to turn around, he was collared, thrown down, bound, searched …. The search finished, they raised Javert, tied his arms behind his back, and fastened him in the middle of the basement room …. Javert had not uttered a cry … he held up his head with the intrepid serenity of the man who has never lied.

Enjolras said, “You will be shot ten minutes before the barricade is taken.”

Javert replied in the most imperious tone, “Why not immediately?”

“We are economising powder.”

“Then do it with a knife.”

The revolutionaries give Valjean the honor of shooting Javert, not knowing the history between these two men. Valjean drags the fettered Javert outside, where they are alone.

Jean Valjean put the pistol under his arm, and fixed upon Javert a look which had no need of words. “Javert, it is I.”

Javert answered, “Take your revenge.”

Jean Valjean took a knife out of his pocket, and opened it …. [He] cut the martingale which Javert had about his neck, then he cut the ropes which he had on his wrists, then, stooping down, he cut the cord which he had on his feet; and, rising, he said to him, “You are free.”

Javert was not easily astonished. Still, complete master as he was of himself, he could not escape an emotion. He stood aghast and motionless.

Jean Valjean continued, “I don’t expect to leave this place. Still, if by chance I should, I live, under the name of Fauchelevent, in the Rue de l’Homme Armé, Number Seven.” Javert repeated in an undertone, “Number seven.” He buttoned his coat, restored the military stiffness between his shoulders, turned half around, folded his arms, supporting his chin with one hand, and walked off in the direction of the markets. Jean Valjean followed him with his eyes. After a few steps, Javert turned back, and cried to Jean Valjean,

“You annoy me. Kill me rather.”

Javert did not notice that his tone was more respectful toward Jean Valjean.

“Go away,” said Jean Valjean.

Javert receded with slow steps.

Javert once more catches up with Valjean, this time as Valjean is trying to save the life of Marius, who is seriously wounded. Valjean asks Javert to allow him to take Marius home first before he is arrested. Javert relents, escorting Javert and the unconscious Marius to Javert’s house. When the carriage driver complains of the blood left upon his seat, Javert pays for the damage. They reach Valjean’s home.

“Very well,” said Javert. “Go up,” he added with a strange expression and as if he were making effort in speaking in such a way, “I will wait here for you.”

Jean Valjean looked at Javert. This manner of proceeding was little in accordance with Javert’s habits ….

On reaching the first story, he paused …. He leaned over the street. It is short, and the lamp lighted it from one end to the other. Jean Valjean was bewildered with amazement; there was nobody there.

Javert was gone.

Javert cannot understand—or accept—his own actions. He has let a prisoner, a violator of the law, go.

Javert made his way with slow steps from the Rue de l’Homme Armé. He walked with his head down, for the first time in his life, and, for the first time in his life as well, with his hands behind his back …. His whole person, slow and gloomy, bore the impress of anxiety ….

He took the shortest route towards the Seine, reached the Quai des Ormes, went along the quai …. This point of the Seine is dreaded by mariners. Nothing is more dangerous than this rapid …. Men who fall in there, one never sees again; the best swimmers are drowned.

Javert leaned both elbows on the parapé, with his chin in his hands, and while his fingers were clenched mechanically in the thickest of his whiskers, he reflected.

There had been a new thing, a revolution, a catastrophe in the depths of his being, and there was matter for self- examination.

Javert was suffering rightfully …. [He] felt that duty was growing weaker in his conscience, and he could not hide it from himself …. He saw before him two roads, both equally straight; but he saw two; and that terrified him—him, who had never in his life known but one straight line. And, bitter anguish, these two roads were contradictory. One of these two straight lines excluded the other. Which of the two was true?

His condition was inexpressible.

To owe life to a malefactor, to accept that debt and to pay it, to be, in spite of himself, on a level with a fugitive from justice, and to pay him for one service with another service; to allow him to say, “Go away,” and to say to him in turn, “Be free”; to sacrifice duty, that general obligation, to personal motives, and to feel in these personal motives something general also, and perhaps superior; to betray society in order to be true to his own conscience; that all these absurdities should be realised and that they should be accumulated upon himself, this was by which he was prostrated ….

Where was he? He sought himself and found himself no longer.

Javert throws himself into the Seine and drowns.

Exploration Points

1.
What are the different colors of Javert’s passion for upholding the law?

In the first scene the color is
self-deprecation
. Javert cannot forgive even himself when he feels he has done something unworthy of the law.

In the second scene, Hugo shows us Javert’s
amazement
at discovering that a man he’d esteemed could actually be a common criminal. In Javert’s mind, a criminal will look and smell like a criminal. Hugo uses the misplaced buckle of Javert’s cravat to show us his “unheard-of agitation.” Then, the moment Javert lays eyes on Valjean, his amazement turns into
cold, hard vindication
as his expression shows “the face of a demon who had again found his victim.”

When he is captured, Javert displays a
sadistic pride
as he urges the young men to kill him whatever way they can, thereby proving themselves to be the bloodthirsty criminals he perceives them to be.

The fourth scene is a turning point for Javert, for he is forced to look upon a “lawless” man as one who is upholding the law by allowing him to go free. Javert rapidly experiences one emotion after another. First he rests in his
stoicism
regarding his assumed fate in Valjean’s hands: “Take your revenge.” Then he shows severe
shock
at being set free. Recovering quickly, he repeats Valjean’s address, displaying his
resolve
to uphold the law, regardless of what Valjean has done for him. Next he suffers
despondency
to the point where he prefers death to enduring the reality that his lifelong segregation of “good” and “bad” people has been so shaken.

When Javert lets Valjean go in the next scene, repaying the debt for his life, he shows
mercy
for the very first time. But then he is unable to live with the fact that he has been merciful to a criminal. He falls into utter
despair
, with suicide his only way out.

2.
Can you find any inner value for Javert other than his value of law as ultimate authority? Do the components and opposite of his passion for the law keep him from being a one-dimensional character?

Javert’s inner value of the law as ultimate authority is his only value. As a result, he could have been a mere flat character. But he is too important to the story to be one-dimensional. Hugo manages a marvelous feat with this character through deftly employing his very single-mindedness. By coloring the passion of Javert as his inner value is slowly stripped away, Hugo presents him as a serious-minded character who experiences all the emotions that any human would feel, albeit centered around one lifelong pursuit. These emotions include even extreme happiness, frighteningly displayed in that masterful sentence: “No human feeling can ever be so appalling as joy.” He does show a moment of mercy, springing from a repressed side of his conscience he didn’t know he had. But it quickly disappears. Javert then can’t even be merciful to himself for showing mercy! Instead his single inner value that has driven his entire adult life has been tainted. Demolished. Javert is shown to be just what he is—a shallow and narrow-minded man who cannot see the truth that lies beyond his own twisted perception.