History Literature / LesMiserables

* TheBumblebee: Gavroche, you little Ankle-Biter.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: It's possible that Cosette, Éponine and Azelma's dolls represent and symbolize their own futures. Cosette's doll is described as "a great doll nearly two feet high dressed in an robe of pink-crape, with golden wheat-ears on its head, and which had real hair and enamel eyes." Éponine and Azelma's doll, which they play with together, is described as "very much faded, and very old and broken." As adolescents, Cosette is well-dressed, beautiful and has an education, while Éponine and Azelma live in poverty and become gaunt, ragged and barefoot.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: It's possible that Cosette, Éponine and Azelma's dolls represent and symbolize their own futures. Cosette's doll is described as "a great doll nearly two feet high dressed in an robe of pink-crape, with golden wheat-ears on its head, and which had real hair and enamel eyes." Éponine and Azelma's doll, which they play with together, is described as "very much faded, and very old and broken." As adolescents, Cosette is beautiful and has an education, while Éponine and Azelma become gaunt, ragged and barefoot.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: It's possible that Cosette, Éponine and Azelma's dolls represent and symbolize their own futures. Cosette's doll is described as "a great doll nearly two feet high dressed in an robe of pink-crape, with golden wheat-ears on its head, and which had real hair and enamel eyes." Éponine and Azelma's doll, which they share, is described as "very much faded, and very old and broken." As adolescents, Cosette is well-dressed, beautiful, and had an education, while Éponine and Azelma descend into poverty and are dressed in rags.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Cosette, Éponine and Azelma's dolls. If you see closely, they represent and symbolize their own futures. Cosette's doll is described as "a great doll nearly two feet high dressed in an robe of pink-crape, with golden wheat-ears on its head, and which had real hair and enamel eyes." Éponine and Azelma's doll, which they share, is described as "very much faded, and very old and broken."

* TheMessiah: Valjean, and to a much lesser extent, Enjolras.

*** And does a darned good job, too: [[spoiler:He uses the bulk of his stipends and allowances to fund charitable church work, leaving himself, his understanding sister, and less-understanding-but-still-accepting housekeeper to live on what amount to peasants' wages; when he sees that the local hospital is overcrowded while he lives in a vast mansion with more living space than Madea's family reunion would require, he exchanges properties with the hospital; and he gives Valjean the silver utensils and candlesticks [[hottip:*: which were the only luxuries he allowed himself, and also ''the last reminder he had of his family'', killed in the Revolution]] (retroactively in the case of the diningware) that lead to Valjean's redemption.]]
*** A particularly notable example is when he goes out on an annual trip to a village while a notorious group of thieving, murdering bandits are in the mountains. They find him, and hearing of his reputation, give him a chest of gold and jewels out of respect.

*** And does a darned good job, too: [[spoiler:He uses the bulk of his stipends and allowances to fund charitable church work, leaving himself, his understanding sister, and less-understanding-but-still-accepting housekeeper to live on what amount to peasants' wages; when he sees that the local hospital is overcrowded while he lives in a vast mansion with more living space than Madea's family reunion would require, he exchanges properties with the hospital; and he gives Valjean the silver utensils and candlesticks [[hottip:*: which were the only luxuries he allowed himself, and also ''the last reminder he had of his family'', killed in the Revolution]] (retroactively in the case of the diningware) that lead to Valjean's redemption.

* ChekhovsGunman: Éponine. After dressing as a boy, Hugo refers to her as "a young (working) man" wearing a grey blouse and pantaloons. Her true identity is revealed after her TakingTheBullet for Marius at the barricades.[[hottip:*:Hugo does hint once that "he" sounded like Éponine, but didn't confirm it yet.]]

* EccentricMentor: BIshop Myriel.

* ChekhovsGunman: Éponine. After dressing as a boy, Hugo refers to her as "the young man wearing a smock and pantaloons" and reveals her true identity after her TakingTheBullet for Marius at the barricades.

* DelusionsOfEloquence: Thenardier is a frequent example of this, speaking and writing in a flowery manner that gives him the air of a philosopher/intellectual, but his writing is filled with misspellings, and Hugo comments to the effect that his obsession with BigWords shows a stupid person's understanding of what a smart person sounds like. Thenardier also frequently defends arguments by fraudulent citations of famous people, but has no actual knowledge of those authorities, except that they are famous (e.g. he will cite to the novels of someone who only wrote poetry). His wife also demonstrates this through the odd names she gave to her daughters, taken from romantic novels. This choice is very similar to the idea underlying a GhettoName.

* DiedInYourArmsTonight: [[spoiler: Eponine in Marius'.]]

* EccentricMentor: The Bishop of Digne.

* EvilGloating: Thenardier performs a near textbook example to Valjean when he has him captured in his room in Paris.

* GoodShepherd: The Bishop of Digne.

** If you can help it, never get into a discussion on whether or not Eponine genuinely wanted to save Marius when she takes the bullet for him later on. Some floodgates should remain closed...

** The Bishop of Digne specifically endeavors to emulate Christ. He's admittedly as close as a human being could be to being perfect.

* TheReveal: Mr Madeleine revealing himself as Jean Valjean in the middle of a trial. However subverted in the reader's case. Madeleine is introduced to the reader as a completely separate character to Valjean, though it is completely obvious that they are one and the same. It looks like Hugo is setting the whole thing up for a big reveal, but after a while he simply remarks that the reader will have guessed by now that they are the same person.

* TheRevolutionWillNotBeVilified: The Friends of the ABC are portrayed as heroic defenders of the common man, right down to the token drunkard. To balance the scale, however, the sympathetic Bishop of Digne is described as a once-noble victim of the Revolution of 1789, and early in the book has a debate with a dying revolutionary regarding who deserves more pity, the poor, or the nobles who are murdered for a crime that is not their fault.

** The Anticlimax happens again when Thenadier, [[spoiler: having fallen in to ruin,]] is scamming money off some people he heard were generous. He comes across Valjean again, and soon after the meeting reveals this. A passing line is made about a hundred pages later about how the reader probably guessed this before him.

* BlatantLies: Hugo states "And so Valjean- for we will never refer to him as anything else henceforth..." then goes on to refer to him as "Monsieur LeBlanc" for the next two hundred pages.

*** A particularly notable example is when he goes out on an annual trip to a village while a notorious group of thieving, murdering bandits are in the mountains. They find him, and hearing of his reputation, [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome give him a chest of gold and jewels out of respect.]] [[invoked]]

* HoYay: Grantaire is described as being "fanatical" about Enjolras, and is "subjugated" by his character. Grantaire says Enjolras's "chaste, healthy, firm, direct, hard, candid nature charmed him," and his own "soft, wavering, disjointed, diseased, deformed ideas, attached themselves to Enjolras as to a backbone. His moral spine leaned upon that firmness."
** You can't put nine young-ish revolutionaries in a novel without experiencing at least a little of this. The strongest would be Grantaire towards Enjolras. Grantaire respects, venerates, and loves Enjolras, to the point of offering to black his boots and [[spoiler: asking to die with him, and doing so (while Enjolras smiles at him and takes his hand)]], though throughout most of the novel Enjolras finds Grantaire to be an irritating drunkard.

* IHaveManyNames: Jean Valjean. To take directly from TheOtherWiki's page, "Jean Valjean: a.k.a. Monsieur Madeleine, a.k.a. Ultime Fauchelevent, a.k.a. Monsieur Leblanc, a.k.a. Urbain Fabre, a.k.a. 24601, a.k.a. 9430."

**** A particularly notable example is when he goes out on an annual trip to a village while a notorious group of thieving, murdering bandits are in the mountains. They find him, and hearing of his reputation, [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome give him a chest of gold and jewels out of respect.]]

** Inspector Javert seems to approve of these. He is perfectly willing to throw Fantine, a penniless prostitute who is on her knees begging for the life of her child, into jail for six months on account of assaulting a bourgeouis who had deliberately provoked her, and who is unavailable to testify.
* VillainousBreakdown: [[spoiler:Inspector Javert]], after discovering who saved his life.

* KarmaHoudini: Thénardier is never made accountable for his various crimes during the book, and in the epilogue, he takes the money Marius had given to him to travel to America and become a successful slave trader. In addition, Tholomyès, who abandons Fantine, becomes a successful lawyer.

** The Bishop of Digne specifically endeavors to emulate Christ.
*** And does a darned good job, too: [[spoiler:He uses the bulk of his stipends and allowances to fund charitable church work, leaving himself, his understanding sister, and less-understanding-but-still-accepting housekeeper to live on what amount to peasants' wages; when he sees that the local hospital is overcrowded while he lives in a vast mansion with more living space than Madea's family reunion would require, he exchanges properties with the hospital; and he gives Valjean the silver utensils and candlesticks [[hottip:*: which were the only luxuries he allowed himself, and also ''the last reminder he had of his family'', killed in the Revolution]] (retroactively in the case of the diningware) that lead to Valjean's redemption.]]

* TheEveryman: Jean Valjean, who was a simple tree pruner before his imprisonment. His name mean, literally, "John's as good as any other John."

* FauxSymbolism: Pretty much every single character in the novel.

* {{Padding}}: Victor, just because you like to divulge in well written rambles about small characters' life stories, the history of France, society's moral ground, and architecture, doesn't mean it has ''any'' actual point to the plot itself.

!!!The following article is about the novel. Tropes featured in the numerous film adaptations appear further down the page. [[Theatre/LesMiserables The stage musical has its own page.]]

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!!The Musical has its own page:

* [[Theatre/LesMiserables Theatre/Les Misérables]]

!!Other adaptations provide examples of:

* AnimatedAdaptation: Several, but the most recent 2007 anime ''Les Miserables: Shoujo Cosette'' is probably best known.
* CompressedAdaptation: Is there any other kind when it comes to ''Les Miserables''? Now, [[TropesAreNotBad Compressed Is Not Bad]], but still. Fourteen hundred pages.
** The 2007 Anime adaption for the WorldMasterpieceTheater series had 52 Episodes to tell the story.
*** And even ''that'' was too compressed.
* {{Determinator}}: Javert. Taken almost to ImplacableMan levels in some versions.
* LighterAndSofter: The Shoujo Cosette anime. It has more people survive than other adaptations and quite a few added cutesy scenes, especially involving Chou Chou the dog, a character whom Cosette and Gavroche adopt as a puppy. He ends up saving [[spoiler: Gavroche]] from the barricade.
* PromotedToLoveInterest: Various adaptations made Valjean fall in love with Fantine. By the time the two met she was sickly, dying, and completely insane from a disease that reached her brain.
* RelationshipCompression: Marius/Cosette.
* RockOpera: The original French concept album was a complete show in and of itself, and is pretty much self-contained in the music.
* SoundtrackDissonance: In the anime, the barricade's last stand is set to perky, sparkly J-pop music.
* SparedByTheAdaptation: [[spoiler: Gavroche, Mme. Thénardier, Valjean and Javert]] manage to survive in at least one adaptation each.
* SternChase: Javert hounding Valjean for decades. (Which is really an artifact of adaptation distillation/compression; Javert is not such a monomaniac in the book.) Some do at least give the impression he actually did other things, but keeps hearing about that ONE guy...
* [[WidgetSeries Widget Adaptation]]: [[http://lesmisgame.com/arm_joe.html Arm Joe.]]
* WifeHusbandry: In the 2000 TV miniseries, Valjean admits to Marius that he is in love with Cosette. {{Squick}}.
* YouAreNumberSix: Valjean's prison number is mentioned by most adaptation, but few of them do more than name it. Many filmmakers seem to have a problem with the numbers that Hugo chose, as the number often gets changed to: 2906 (1935 adaptation), 872 (1947 Italian adaptation), 1082 (1952 adaptation), 335 (1955 Indian adaptation), 1205 (1982 adaptation)...