Chapter 23 Seven disappointed content

Let's try to describe it. Society must face these things, because they are of its own making. We have already said that Jean Valjean was only an ignorant person, not a stupid person, and he was born with a spiritual light in his heart.Sorrow (sorrow has its light) added to the little light in his heart.He suffers from sticks, whips, shackles, confinement, fatigue all day long, and suffers from the scorching sun in the prison. He sleeps on the prisoner's wooden bed and asks himself and reflects on himself. He organized the court himself. He began to question himself. He admitted that he was not an innocent person, and the punishment he received was not excessive.He confessed that he had committed a reprehensible recklessness; if he had begged for the loaf of bread, it might not have been denied; to wait for that piece of bread; some people say can you wait even if you are hungry?This is not a justifiable reason; actual death by starvation is seldom seen at all; and, whether by luck or misfortune, human beings are incapable of suffering long and many ways, both physically and mentally, without dying. so be patient; even for the sake of the poor children, that's better; for such a wretched wretch as he is who dares to fight the whole society, and thinks that by stealing he can get rid of his troubles, That was sheer madness; and anyway, if you pass through a door that takes you out of poverty and into disrepute, that door is still a bad door; anyway, he was wrong.

Then he asked himself again: Is he the only one at fault in his desperation this time?Willingness to work and lack of work, willingness to work and lack of bread, is it not a serious matter in the first place?Later, if he made a mistake and confessed to it, was the punishment too harsh?Do the laws err in punishment more than the criminals in crime?Are the two ends of the scale, the penalty end, a bit too heavy?Increased punishment can never eliminate fault; the result of increased punishment cannot reverse the situation, it cannot replace the fault of the criminal with the fault of the punisher, nor can it turn the criminal into an injured person, change the debtor into a creditor, and make the Is it correct to think that those who violate human rights are protected by human rights?If one attempt to escape from prison is punished once more, whether the result of this practice constitutes the murder of the weak by the strong, or whether it constitutes a crime against the individual by society, and makes this crime repeated every day until nineteen years later. How long?

He asked himself again: whether human society has the right to make its members accept its unreasonable indifference in one situation and its ruthless insecurity in another situation, and make its members suffer. Is a poor man perpetually trapped in either want (lack of work) or excess (excess of punishment)?The formation of rich and poor is often due to chance. Among the members of society, those who share the least wealth are also those who need the most care, and the society is just the most demanding of them. Is this reasonable? Having raised these questions and reached his conclusions, he proceeds to judge society and condemns it.

He condemned it with the wrath of his heart. He believed that the society should be responsible for what happened to him, and he made up his mind that one day in the future, he would settle accounts with it.He declared that the loss he had done to others was too unbalanced in comparison with the loss he had done to him, and he finally concluded that his punishment was not in fact unjust, but certainly unequal. Rage may be mad and preposterous, and it may sometimes go wrong, but man cannot be indignant unless he is justified in some respect.Jean Valjean felt himself indignant. Besides, what human society inflicted on him was nothing but cruelty.He has seen society only in that scowl it professes to be just before those it strikes.The world's contact with him is nothing more than to achieve the purpose of persecuting him.He came into contact with them and was hit every time.Since his childhood, since the loss of his mother and sister, he has never heard a friendly word, nor seen a kind face.From pain to pain, he gradually came to a conclusion: life is war, and in this war, he is a defeated soldier.He has no weapons other than hatred.So he made up his mind to hone his weapon in prison and bring it out with him.

Some ignorant priests established a school for convicts at Toulon, in order to teach the necessary lessons to the persevering among the unfortunate.He is one of those persevering ones.He entered school at the age of forty and learned to read, write and count.He felt that to increase his knowledge was to increase his hatred.In certain circumstances, both education and intellect can be used for evil. It is a pity to say that after he judged the society that caused his misfortune, he went on to judge the God who made it. He also condemned God. During those nineteen years of torture and slavery, this person's heart was on the one hand rising, and on the other hand it was also degraded.On the one hand he was awake, on the other hand he was confused.

We already know that Jean Valjean was not a bad person by nature.He was a good guy when he first came to prison.After he condemned society in prison, he felt that his heart became cruel. After condemning God, he felt that he had become a person who feared nothing and nothing. We cannot but think carefully here. Can a person’s disposition really be completely changed like that?Man was created by God with good nature, can man make him evil by manpower?Can the soul be completely transformed into bad by the influence of bad fate?Can the human heart be like the back under the low house, because of the pain and oppression, it can even curl up and shrink into a deformed and ugly shape, causing all kinds of incurable disabilities?Is there not in every man's heart, and especially in Jean Valjean's, some primordial spark, a divine essence, immortal on earth and immortal in heaven, to be developed, inspired, magnified, and radiated by goodness? , to a spectacle, and never to be utterly extinguished by evil?

These are serious and profound questions, and any physiologist who had seen at Toulon the convict resting on the iron rod of the capstan with his arms crossed (the rest is the moment when Jean Valjean thinks back and forth), With the ends of the chain in his pocket so as not to drag, with a downcast, serious, silent, thoughtful look; if he had ever seen this law-abandoned slut who used to look angrily at everyone, had he seen this outcast The civilization-repelled criminal, who often looks up to the sky with stern colors, might answer without thinking, "No." Of course, we don't want to hide that the physiologist as an observer may see an irreparable tragedy on this occasion, he may complain for the person who was hurt by the law, but he He didn't even think about the way to heal. He might turn his head away from the wound in his heart, and he would be like the Dante who turned his head away from the gate of hell and wrote "Hope" written on everyone's forehead by God. The word is wiped from this person's life.

We have tried to analyze his state of mind. Did Jean Valjean understand his own state of mind as clearly as we have tried to analyze for the readers of this book?Did Jean Valjean see clearly all the factors that constituted Jean Valjean's mental pain after they were formed?In the process of forming them one by one, has he seen clearly?His thoughts develop layer by layer, and he is trapped in many sad scenes day by day. For many years, his spirit has always been confined within the scope of those scenes. Is this level of development of thought fully understood?Is he aware of the ebb and flow of his thoughts?That's something we're not sure about, and we can't believe it.Jean Valjean was so ignorant that although he had suffered so much, he was still confused about these things, and sometimes he didn't even know what he felt.Jean Valjean fell into the darkness, he suffered in the darkness, he resented in the darkness, we can say that he hated everything.He often lives in a dark environment, blundering around like a blind man or a sleepwalker.At certain times, however, he too, from internal or external causes, will suddenly feel a sudden onslaught of rage, a pang of unearthly pain, and he will feel suddenly a pale, fleeting light shine through his The whole soul, at the same time, made all the sinister abysses and tragic vistas of his destiny appear before him, behind him, around him, under the irradiance of that fierce light.

After the flashes, the night is still dark, where is he?He was baffled again. The most inhumane thing about that kind of punishment, that is to say, the most destructive thing about the wisdom of the thief, is that it can especially make people gradually transform into wild animals through a slow poison, and sometimes into wild animals.Jean Valjean's repeated persistent attempts to escape from prison are enough to prove the special role that law plays in people's hearts.Jean Valjean's plan was utterly futile and foolish, but he tried it whenever he could, without thinking of its consequences or of the experience he had gained.He is like a wolf that always flees in a hurry when the cage door is opened.Instinct said to him: "Run away!" But reason would say to him: "Stay!" But facing such a strong temptation, his reason finally disappeared, and all he had was instinct.Only animal nature is at work there.The new punishment he received after his re-arrest was enough to make him even more panicked.

One little thing we should not overlook, is that he was physically strong, and those in the penal cell were not equal to him.In his labor, he twisted the chains and pushed the capstan, and Jean Valjean was worth four men.He can lift his hands and carry very heavy things on his back.Sometimes he can take the place of a jack, which was formerly called the "Jiazi", from which, we incidentally, the rue du Jauzi, near the Paris market, gets its name.His companions nicknamed him Ran Qianjin.Once, the balcony of Toulon City Hall was being repaired. Under the balcony, there were many pierced human-shaped columns, which were beautiful and gratifying. One of them came off its tenon and almost fell down.Jean Valjean, who was there at the time, actually put his shoulders on the pillar, waiting for the rest of the workmen to come and repair it.

The lightness of his body is more impressive than his strength.Some prisoners dream of absconding all the year round, so they combine cleverness and force to form a real science.Those prisoners who are always envious of flying insects and birds practice a magical skill every day.Jean Valjean's specialty is that he can go straight up the steep wall and find the place of strength in the hard-to-find convex place.In the corner, he pressed his elbows and heels against the unevenness of the stone, so he could use the stretch of his back and legs to ascend to the fourth floor like a monster.Sometimes he used that method to go straight to the roof of the prison. He rarely speaks.He never smiles.There must be an external stimulus to make him laugh that wry smile that echoes the devil's laugh, and that happens once or twice a year.Judging by his expression, it seems that he is always watching something frightening. He really seemed to be thinking about something wholeheartedly. He was half endowed and crippled intellect, and through his unhealthy powers of discrimination he felt dimly that a monster possessed him.He lived an inhuman life in that dark, pale, semi-dark place, and every time he turned his head and neck to look up, he would see layers upon layers of layers above his head with terror and anger. There was a monstrous pile of things, laws, prejudices, people and things, piled up like a mountain to an invisible height, dangerous and dangerous, palpitating, its shape was beyond his knowledge, and its size made his heart shudder. Crack, it's not something else, it's just that incredible pyramid, what we call civilization.Here and there, over the wriggling, misshapen mass, near and far, and on some unattainable plateau, he saw groups of men, mendaciously illuminated by a strong light, and here were carrying Jailers with sticks, policemen with steel knives, over there is the archbishop wearing a high crown, and at the highest point, in the center of a circle of light, is the emperor wearing a crown and dazzling eyes.Those strange sights in the distance seemed not only to not awaken his deep dream, but to make him more sad and bewildered.Laws, prejudices, objects, people, and things, come and go in his head according to the mysterious and complex dynamics that God has appointed in civilization, in a way that is murderous and peaceful, serene and harsh, and ineffable. His attitude was trampling him, ravaging him.All those who are sunk in doom, trapped in the eighteen levels of hell with no mercy, outlawed by the law, feel on their heads the whole weight of this society, which is cruel to those who are outside it. How terrible, how terrible for those who are under it. Jean Valjean was thinking in this situation, but what was the nature of his thinking? If the millet under the millstone had the ability to think, it might think what Jean Valjean thought. As a result, that reality full of phantoms and the ghosts of reality constituted for him an almost indescribable state of mind. Sometimes, while he was doing prison work, he would stop suddenly and think about it.His rationality, more mature than before, but also more chaotic, rebelled.He felt that everything he suffered was irrational.Everything around him is impersonal.He often said to himself that this was a dream, and when he looked at the jailer standing a few steps away from him, he would feel that it was a ghost, and that ghost suddenly gave him a stick. For him, this ever-visible natural world is indistinct.We can almost say that, for Jean Valjean, the sun did not matter, the spring and autumn days did not matter, the sky did not matter, and the cool April dawn did not matter.I don't know what kind of dim light always shines on his heart. Finally, if we wish to sum up all that we have said above, and point to a definite result, we can only say, A tenacious prisoner of Glenn, by the subtle influence of the prison for nineteen years, has been capable of two kinds of bad behavior: the first bad behavior is eager, unthinking, mild-tempered, completely instinctive, and is a response to The counterattack of his pain; the second kind of bad behavior is sullen, measured, calmly considered, thought out with the same false ideas he has acquired from the pain.His intentions often pass through three successive levels: thinking, determination, obstinacy; only a certain character takes this path.The cause is a constant indignation, an anguish of the soul, a deep feeling of ill-treatment, a rebellion against men, including the good, the innocent, the just, if there are such men in the world.Hatred of human law was the starting-point and aim of all his thoughts; and that hatred, which, in the course of its development, was not checked by some wisdom, could at a given moment become a hatred of society, Then it turns into hatred of human beings, then into hatred of creation, and finally into a goalless, endless, ferocious desire to do harm, no matter who it is, it will kill everyone.We know that it was not for nothing that the passport called Jean Valjean "an exceptionally sinister man." Year after year, the man's heart hardened slowly but irrevocably.As soon as his heart hardened, his tears dried up.Until the day he was released from prison, in nineteen years, he did not shed a single tear.