Ugggghhh.... before i begin i want to point out that Victor Hugo's idea of a short story is surprisingly long >:(
Fuck You Victor Hugo!
The Last Day Of A Condemned Man
OK so there’s this guy who we never find out the name of (Fuck it I’m
gonna call him Mike) or what his actual crime was but he’s been condemned to
die for his crime so I’m gonna assume it was murder because to my knowledge you
don’t usually get the death penalty for things like theft, Mike is a calm
guy who takes his punishment well, he lives out six weeks in prison gets to see
his daughter one last time and then gets the guillotine.
That’s it, try to imagine that stretched over 100 pages >:(
I wasn’t particularly enamoured by this first story, it was
kind of boring. One of the problems I had was the fact that we never know
anything about this guy in this story, and maybe that was done for some kind of
effect, maybe there’s some fancy writing term that authors use to tell a story
without any detail but if I don’t know someone’s name or what they’ve done why
should I care about them? Compared to Les Mis where we know what crime Jean Valjean committed and why he did it it just pales in comparison, you cant just give an audience a character but then tell us nothing about him, it doesn't work! That was my major problem with the story. Also Mike
is completely blank, there’s nothing to him, he has no conflict, he has no
personality he is a completely dull blank slate and that’s a crap character to
have in a story.
The only time I actually agreed with Mike or felt anything
towards him was when his lawyer told him he might get away with hard labour for
life instead of death, but Mike decided he would rather have death, that I agree
with. Fuck hard labour for life, I would choose death.
I wasn’t even moved at all when he saw his daughter for the
last time, maybe it was because of the crapiness of Mike character or maybe it
was just badly written but I just did not care. I really thought I would like
this story but honestly I didn’t, it was boring, the character was boring, it wasn’t
written that great anyway, I would say don’t read it if you don’t have too. Victor Hugo has
other great stuff you can read instead.
Claude Gueux
Honestly I preferred this one to TLDOACM (Fucking hell even
shortening Victor Hugo takes forever!).
Basically there’s this guy named Claude and his family is
poor so one day he steals some bread and gets arrested for it and sent to
prison (it’s always bread with you isn’t it Hugo, try another foodstuff
sometime why don’t you). He gets sent away for five years and being that he’s a
big guy he struggles with the crappy rations prisoners get and one day this
other prisoner named Albin shares his food with him and they grow to be
friends, (or maybe even more than friends, it was a little homo erotic if you ask
me) Anyway the guards don’t like this and so Albin gets separated from Claude
which makes Claude more miserable so one day he snaps and kills the guard and
gets the death sentence and is sent to the guillotine where he dies.
I think i liked this story better because it's sort of based on a true story, from
what I read on Wikipedia this short story is one of the first “true crime”
stories ever written, and I love true crime, most of the books I own are true crime
books so yeah I was more drawn to this one than TLDOACM. It still wasn’t as
good as Les Miserables though.
I can definitely see how this story would have led to Les
Mis being written, there are some definite similarities in the characters,
Claude definitely reminds me of Jean Valjean and the mean prison guard is
clearly supposed to be like Javert. And of course let’s not overlook the whole “poor
people are shit upon by the government and always will be” theme that seemed to
run throughout the whole story which was prevalent in Les Mis too.
Actually Victor Hugo goes on a huge rant about that at the
end of the story, why didn’t he just write an essay on that if he wanted to get
his point across, why did he stick it on the end of the story? Basically he’s
just ranting to the government about how if you treat people like shit then that’s
what you will get, and that more needs to be done to change the world for the
better, if you keep the poor uneducated and treat them like crap then of course
you are gonna end up with criminals, because what other choice do they have? If
you can get a copy of this story then it’s worth reading just for the ending
rant.
I did like that more than the story though, it really made a
lot of sense to me, this was written over 100 years ago and yet nothing has
really changed in terms of the rich/poor divide and how the government treats
us. It’s sad to think that even though Victor Hugo tried to change things and
for all his efforts nothing is any better than it was in 1834, unfortunately it
doesn’t matter what anyone says, writes or actually physically does the truth
is that no matter where you go anywhere on the planet no government will ever
care about the poor. I seriously doubt that’s ever gonna change and I bet
Victor Hugo would have been very disappointed.
You know what I haven’t really thought about until right
now? I find it hilariously ironic that Victor Hugo wrote all these great works
about the poor and criminals and justice and social class and yet his most
famous book was turned into a fucking musical, an art form which I believe is
still dominated by the middle class. Think
about it, theatre is still for the rich, movies are for the rest, I’m 26 and I’ve
never actually seen a proper musical on stage, only movie versions. I’m not
really sure if what I’m trying to say here is getting across properly but my
point is that Victor Hugo may have tried to speak for the poor but his works
have been taken over by the better off. I don’t claim to try and speak for
anyone else but I’m not sure if that was Victor Hugo’s intention in the long
run.
Although I don’t think
he did himself any favours by making his stuff so hard to read.
Anyway that’s what I thought of The last day of a condemned
man and Claude Gueux, I tried to make myself coherent but I’m not sure if I came
across all that clear……..you know what, If you don’t like it then read the
books yourself, why are you looking at me to explain this stuff to you, I don’t
have any answers for you! I'm just a 26 year old idiot who saw a musical and thought it would be a good idea to read the book, just because my opinion is on the Internet doesn't mean i know any more than the next person. I don’t know anything! Leave me alone!!!
Sigh…..I think I’ve exhausted myself on Victor Hugo’s works
now, the next great novel I’m gonna read is The Count of Monte Cristo by
Alexandre Dumas.
