Amanda's Novel

For this blog post, I decided to analyze a small portion of one of my favorite books, Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. I only used pages 89-91, the part of the book when the story of Jean Valjean's past is unfolded. There wasn't any special reason that I chose this specific part, I just opened the book and this is where I landed. I decided to analyze it using the techniques that we learned in class last Tuesday, and here is what I came up with:

1. I did a verb analysis and found that this section of the book is mostly a narration, or a story. This makes sense because the author is describing Jean Valjean's past and is telling the background information so the reader can understand why Valjean ended up in prison. In this section, the author uses verbs such as "was," "had not been taught," "chose," "has lost," "died," "was killed," "earned," "hired out," "had taken care of," and "was bleeding." I knew that this was a narration because of the past, preteret, and past progressive/perfect tenses that were used. I also noticed at the end of my section that the author started using other verbs such as "approaches," "dwells," "produce," "render," and "develop." Because these verbs were in the present tense, I knew that the author had changed from a narrative to a description. The author was reporting about the prejudices that the people had against the poachers. The author also describes the difference between the poacher and the smuggler. Therefore, I can say that this section that I read was both a report and a story.
2. The following are some of the references that the book made to Jean Valjean:
• born of a poor peasant family
• grown up
• of a thoughtful disposition
• he/his/him
• not in love
• rough and grumbler
• reaper, workman, teamster, labourer
• the thief
• something of a poacher
3. Just for fun, I tried to think of some of the Indo-European themes that happened throughout the book. Here are a few of them that I came up with:
• Jean Valjean overcomes the dragon (himself) when he decides to leave his life of crime and to become a new man, or be "reborn"
• In the end of the book, the hero, Jean Valjean, overcomes the dragon, Javert, who has been chasing him throughout the whole book.
  
• There are many others that I have thought of, but I think these are a few examples that there are indeed IE themes throughout this book. It would be interesting to see how many more there are (especially in the original French).