THOUGHTS ON VICTOR HUGO'S "LES MISERABLES"

Les Miserables is certainly one of the great works of French (and world) literature. The theme of the book is resignation in the face of intense suffering.

In 1796, Jean Valjean, a pruner from Brie, stole a loaf of bread to feed his sister and her starving children one night in the depth of winter, for which he was sentenced to five years in the Toulon galleys. After several abortive attempts to escape Valjean was released when he had spent 19 years at the oars. Brutalized and coarsened, he must, in view of his numerous attempts to escape custody, carry a yellow passport as a sign that he is a highly dangerous convict. Refused shelter in the town of D----, and even driven from a dog-kennel in which, in desperation, he has taken refuge, Valjean eventually receives succour from Monsignor Welcome, the saintly Bishop of D----. His coarsened nature, however, cannot prevent him from purloining the Bishop's silverware, for which he is subsequently apprehended by the constabulary. However, Monsignor Welcome tells the police that the silverware is his (Valjean's). His last words to the bemused convict are "It is your soul I require of you". On seeing a Savoyard, Little Gervais, drop a coin, Valjean stamps upon it and refuses to return it to the boy. The Bishop's words echo in his mind and he tries to find Little Gervais but in vain.

Fantine, a workgirl from the town of M. sur M., becomes pregnant by her student lover Felix Tholomyes and gives birth to a girl, Cosette. She returns to the town of her birth in order to seek work but cannot take Cosette with her because of her bastardy. Passing through the village of Montfermeil outside Paris, Fantine stops at the inn which is known as the Sergeant of Waterloo and is run by a couple called the Thenardiers ("the woman was a brute, the man a blackguard"). Pausing, she notices the two little Thenardier girls, Eponine and Azelma, playing in a monstrous contraption which has been constructed for their amusement by their mother. Completely taken in, Fantine leaves Cosette with the couple, who maltreat and abuse the child and make her do all the rough work about the inn.

Returning to the town of M. sur M., Fantine obtains employment in the local factory, but the existence of Cosette is discovered and she is dismissed. Her situation goes from bad to worse. She is compelled to sell her hair and teeth in order to placate the Thenardiers, who are using the mother as a means of obtaining money while starving and maltreating the child. In order to maintain the upkeep of her child, Fantine is eventually forced into prostitution.

Meanwhile, Jean Valjean has become M. Madeleine, the respected, rich and industrious Mayor of M. sur M. (and Fantine's former employer). One winter's night a young man thrusts a handful of snow down Fantine's neck, whereupon she attacks him furiously and is apprehended by Javert, the ruthless police inspector. M. Madeleine rescues her and places her in the infirmary which he has organized, but she is dying of tuberculosis. On hearing that an imbecile, Champmathieu, has been apprehended for the assault on Little Gervais, Madeleine goes to the court in Arras and confesses his guilt. He has promised the dying mother that he will go to Montfermeil to bring her child, but on his return to M. sur M. he is arrested by Javert. This takes place in front of Fantine and she dies ("You have killed this woman"). As a streetwalker, Fantine is buried in a common grave ("her tomb was like her bed").

After a vivid and memorable description of the Battle of Waterloo, and a brief account of Valjean's escape (and supposed death), my favourite Christmas story takes place. Cosette is sent into the forest to fetch water on a bitterly black Christmas Eve and meets Valjean who rescues the child from the claws of the Thenardiers. Eventually he finds sanctuary in an extremely strictly run convent, where Cosette is educated. To cut a long story short, the novel traces the development of Valjean's character from devil to angel.

I would say that Hugo is attempting to show that Christ makes the most exorbitant demands upon His followers ("it is your soul I require of you"), and, furthermore, wickedness is not confined to those who are Dives but also abounds among those who purport to be Lazarus.

WHY COMMUNISM IS OF THE DEVIL

"Now the serpent was more crafty than all of the other wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman: "Did God really say: 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden?". (Gen. 3:1).

God certainly did NOT say to our first parents, 'You must not eat of any tree in the garden'. God is a god of knowledge. He wants us to discover Him. AND THE DEVIL DOES NOT, BECAUSE ONCE WE HAVE DISCOVERED THE ONE TRUE GOD, SATAN'S WORK IS UNDONE!

Communism (or to give it its esoteric, abstract and intellectual title, Marxism-Leninism) is a tissue of half-truths and downright lies designed (deliberately!) to distract and deceive the working class. Anyone who has made even a cursory examination of the history of the (late unlamented) Soviet Union will be aware of the slavery of the proletariat and the misery suffered by millions within that living Hell. The venom poured by Marxist-Leninists (notably the infamous John Foster, Kenneth Brinson, Michael Balchin, Nick Wright et.al.) upon the modest, unassuming and fearless Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose "unique and unrelenting voice" has saved his country, is but a series of symptoms of the fruitless and diabolical attempts of a nefarious and mendacious creed to blacken the name of civilization, which the appalling suffering of the people of St. Petersburg during the Bokhrana shows it opposes. While the starving mothers of St. Petersburg were killing their babies and boiling their corpses in communal cauldrons for food, the filthy "comrades" were stuffing their ugly faces in Moscow at tables groaning with delicacies as Comrade Stalin got roaring drunk.

THE PARTY, THE SWP AND THE REST OF THE FAR LEFT ARE FILTH!

UNANGELIC EVANGELICALS

We've all heard about Georgy Porgy and his wondefrul conversion (goodbye Jack Daniels, hello Jesus) from drunkenness (at which he was adept) to Christianity (at which he's a moron - but there again, he's that anyway). Since President Bush's version of "Christianity" is of the Evangelical variety, his moronic (and indeed Satanic - isn't America in particular, and indeed the West in general, The Great Satan?) attitude is hardly surprising.

I've gone to Evangelical churches, and, as far as I'm concerned you can stuff them. One middle-aged gentleman once told me that people shouldn't have any books in their homes except the Bible (what's wrong with Karl Marx I'd like to know?). I can also remember a young lady at university who took issue with me over my description of Paul of Tarsus as the first heretic ("well, GOD dosen't think so!") and a misogynist (see 1 Tim. 2:9-15). Her response to about just about everything I said was "I love Jesus.....I love Jesus.....I love Jesus". JESUS!

And taxpayers' money is spent sending this type of person to an institution of higher education? A PSYCHIATRIC INSTITUTION WOULD BE FAR MORE APPROPRIATE!

Believe me, Evangelicals aren't angels!


P.S. Excellent article in www.rcpbml.org.uk on William Wilberforce, who "freed all the slaves"

THE FALLACI FALLACY

The career of the Italian writer Oriana Fallaci has now reached an all-time low in her diatribes against Islam.

I don't have a great deal of time for the late (unlamented) Pope John Paul II., particularly because he was deliberately put there by American cardinals in the interests of Yankee imperialism. However, his attempts tobring about reconciliation between the faiths (albeit to promote the selfish interests of the financial mandarins of the Roman Catholic Church) did bear, or attempt to bear, some worthwhile fruit - until God avenged the Hiroshima Holocaust on 9/11.

Now Muslims are in the same position which the Irish in the United Kingdom used to know only too well (particularly if they were of the Roman Catholic persuasion, take note church hierarchy!). And now we have the Septugenarian Streicher, do we?

THE TROUBLE WITH MUGABE

The whole thing about this trouble in Zimbabwe can, of course, be laid at the feet of the white Rhodesians - it's them to blame, again!

We've tried and tried in this country to help the white Rhodesians integrate with their black fellow-citizens. Garfield Todd paid a high price. And so have many others who have tried to resist the efforts of "good old Rudyard" ((jack)boots!boots!boots!kick 'em in the balls again) and his erstwhile comrade de guerre "good (?) old Smithy"!

As all of us who care to study a little history are aware, 11 November is commemorated very solemnly and with great pomp and pageantry as a monumental fiasco of a memory of the fallen. The black fallen, of course, don't count, but they never did to the beer-swilling, rugby-playing Rhodesian minority who now weep crocodile tears over the black masses in Zimbabwe.

It wasn't their war. But they died in it.

So! Mugabe's gone power crazy, but what the hell else do you expect? He and his didn't exactly get the "milk of human kindness" from the white farmers who are now bleating about the injustices heaped on them and theirs.

The trouble with Mugabe? He's one of the few who will stand up and be counted in the war of atrition against the Bush-Blair axis!

christiancommie