Les Miserables
Answer two of the following questions: (Be specific, mention particular examples, but do not re-tell the story, be analytical!)
1. How does this story address fate, destiny, and luck?
2. What does this story show us about mistakes and intentions?
3. What about love? (who loves whom, what characters do for love, assumptions about love, etc)
4. What purpose does Fantine’s story serve, in reference to the entirety of the story? Is it like a fairy tale, beware of wolves, type of warning? Is it like Medieval Morality Tales? Or is it just bad luck? Look what can happen, and we have no control over it?
5. How responsible is Jean Valjean for Fantine’s situation? (Do you agree with the level of responsibility the story attributes to him?)
6. Why did the Monseigneur let Jean Valjean off the hook? Christian brotherhood? Belief in humankind? Was there something he saw in Valjean that made him think he was a “good person” who had had bad luck? Can/should we distinguish the individual person (monseigneur) from the institution of the Church?
7. How are we supposed to view Javert’s suicide? Why does he commit suicide? Does his experience with Jean Valjean show that people can change?
8. Is Éponine’s sacrifice a martyrdom? Does it stem from despair? Or from belief in the cause?
9. The film seems to portray the cause as an important one, and the youth as having integrity and courage, yet, historically, it was a completely failed effort? What should we make of that? (make sure to read The history (Links to an external site.) )
10. Music: lyrics and tune (what message is sent?) How do the songs help tell the story? Consider the tunes and the lyrics. Which tunes are the same or similar? How does that connect those pieces?
As always, the assignment requires well-written paragraphs, with topic sentences and evidence supporting your idea. (about 300 word answers, and indicate which question you are answering by using the number I assigned it above.)
purple hibiscus
Read through all of the questions in the back of the book and consider them for yourself. You can also find them here. Below are a few of them for you to choose between. Answer two of the following, thoroughly. Write 250-350 words, and indicate which question you are answering by using the number below. Explain your reasoning in depth, and try to draw connections between Purple Hibiscus and other works we have read/viewed this semester.
1. Amaka says, “Uncle Eugene is not a bad man, really. . . . People have problems, people make mistakes” [p. 251]. Is he in fact a “bad man”? Why does he violently abuse his wife and children? What good deeds does he perform? How can his generosity and political integrity coexist with his religious intolerance?
2. Eugene boasts that his Kambili and Jaja are “not like those loud children people are raising these days, with no home training and no fear of God”; to which Ade Coker replies: “Imagine what the Standard would be if we were all quiet” [p. 58]. Why is quiet obedience a questionable virtue in a country where the truth needs to be spoken? In what ways is the refusal to be quiet dangerous?
3. What kind of man is Papa-Nnukwu? What are his most appealing qualities? What do the things he prays for say about his character? Why has his son disowned him so completely?
4. Why does Kambili’s mother keep returning to her husband, even after he beats her so badly that he causes a miscarriage, and even after he nearly kills Kambili? How does she justify her husband’s behavior? How should she be judged for poisoning her husband?
5. How does Father Amadi bring Kambili to life? Why is her relationship with him so important to her sense of herself?
6. Jaja questions why Jesus had to be sacrificed, “Why did He have to murder his own son so we would be saved? Why didn’t He just go ahead and save us?” [p. 289] And yet, Jaja sacrifices himself to save his mother from prison. Why does he do this? Should this be understood as a Christian sacrifice or a simple act of compassion and bravery?
7. What does the novel as a whole say about the nature of religion? About the relationship between belief and behavior? (and then think further about identity, belief; think also about the article by Scott Peck at the beginning of the semester, religion and world view)
8. Why does Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie end the novel with an image of rain clouds? What are the implications of Kambili feeling that the clouds hung so low she “could reach out and squeeze the moisture from them”? What is the meaning of the novel’s very simple final sentence: “The new rains will come down soon”? (think about what we talked about with The Tempest and weather)
Sample Solution
Les Miserables is a French historical novel by Victor Hugo, first published in 1862, that is considered one of the greatest novels of the 19th century. Les Miserables is a game with destiny: it dramatizes the gap between the imperfections of human judgments, and the perfect patterns of the infinite. The reason for including so much of the world`s matter was to work out how mystical the world was. As he put it in Les Miserables: “How do we know the creation of worlds is not determined by the falling of grains of sand? Who, after all, knows the reciprocal ebb and flow of the infinitely big and the infinitely small, the reverberation of causes in the chasms of a being, the avalanches of creation? A cheese mite matters; the small is big, the big is small; everything is in equilibrium within necessity – a frightening vision for the mind.”
