Javert and Fantine: Different Approaches to Grace.

 

This past Friday evening I watched the recent film, Les Miserables, for the first time. Though I definitely would not label this movie family friendly, I highly recommend it for more mature audiences. I have grown up listening to the soundtrack of this incredible story, but watching this film put some things into place for me, and the music became so much more meaningful. 

Two of the characters in this film that really stood out to me were the characters Fantine and Javert, played by Anne Hathaway and Russell Crowe respectively. In the story, they are both greatly blessed by the protaganist, John Valjean. Valjean takes Fantine out of the gutter and granted her grace when Javert would have had her killed for her "crime." Then later Valjean lets Javert go with no strings attached when he has the opportunity to kill this man who has chased and haunted him for years and never shown an ounce of grace or mercy.

WARNING!!! May be spoilers if you wish to see the film, and don't already know the story.

Fantine was a woman who in desperate times, trying to send money to her little girl, becomes a prostitute. There is a scene in the movie where she weeps bitter tears and curses her life in a famous song titled "I dreamed a dream." In the song she has a line "I dreamed God would be forgiving," indicating that He hasn't been, and she has lost hope in any such God. She then later scratches a man who tries to "do business" with her, and in doing commits a crime worthy of death.

But Valjean comes upon this scene, and as a man with authority, literally carries her away from that life and takes her to a hospital. Upon finding that she has a daughter, he promises her on her death bed that he will find and care for her precious Cosette. With her eyes shining, and her face aglow in this incredible grace and giving that she has received, her faith is restored as she says "you are a gift sent from heaven."

Her restored faith in God, which is then further indicated as she is the one who "takes" Valjean to heaven at the end of the film, was wonderful to see. Fantine was showed grace, and received it with open arms, dying in peace.

But then there is Javert. Javert was a man of the law, and spent many, many, years of his life chasing down John Valjean, and seeking to place him back under justice. Fairly early in the story, he stands in front of Valjean, not knowing his identity, and apologizes for something that Valjean could easily have taken advantage of, thus saving his own future. But instead, Valjean merely says "you were just doing your job," and lets it go. Javert's face obviously shows his surprise and lack of understanding of this grace shown to him.

Then later, after realizing the identity of the man who had acquitted him, he spends years chasing after and looking for Valjean, swearing he will not rest until he has placed the man back in the prison shipyard.

Many years later, Valjean goes to aid the revolutionaries, and finds that they have Javert tied up, trying to decide what to do with this man of the law. Valjean asks if he can essentially decide Javert's fate, and the revolutionaries hand him over, telling Valjean to do with Javert what he would, handing him a gun.

Valjean then again says "you were just doing your job," and lets Javert go, clearly indicating that there are no strings attached to his grace. Javert is shocked and astounded by this, and not much later sings a song telling of his reaction to this grace.

Who is this man?
What sort of devil is he?
To have me caught in a trap
And choose to let me go free?
It was his hour at last
To put a seal on my fate
Wipe out the past
And wash me clean off the slate!
All it would take
Was a flick of his knife
Vengeance was his
And he gave me back my life!
Damned if I'll live in the debt of a thief!
Damned if I'll yield at the end of the chase.
I am the Law and the Law is not mocked
I'll spit his pity right back in his face
There is nothing on earth that we share
It is either Valjean or Javert!

How can I now allow this man
To hold dominion over me?
This desperate man whom I have hunted
He gave me my life, he gave me freedom.
I should have perished by his hand!
It was his right.
It was my right to die as well
Instead I live, but live in hell!
And my thoughts fly apart
Can this man be believed?
Shall his sins be forgiven?
Shall his crimes be reprieved?
And must I now begin to doubt
Who never doubted all these years?
My heart is stone and still it trembles
The world I have known is lost in shadow.
Is he from heaven or from hell?
And does he know
That granting me my life today
This man has killed me even so?
I am reaching, but I fall
And the stars are black and cold.
As I stare into the void
Of a world that cannot hold
I'll escape now from the world
From the world of Jean Valjean
There is nowhere I can turn
There is no way to go on.....

And after this, he throws himself into the Siene river, and commits suicide. That was the point in this poignant film that I cried the hardest. Javert had finally discovered grace, and instead of receiving it, he rejected it and preferred death to living in grace. 

 

So there are two characters, Javert and Fantine, and both are showed grace. But they receive it quite differently. Fantine embraces it with open arms, and Javert runs from it in fear, preferring death. Do I receive grace like Fantine? Do I revel in it, embrace it, and live in peace because of it? Or do I fear it like Javert? Do I run from it? Do I refuse it, insisting that I have to do my many things in order to be worthy of it? Do I try to earn it on my own? These are the questions that have ran through my head and convicted me in the past few days.

 

But it is not a condemning conviction, like it condemned Javert. Instead it is a life giving conviction that grants me a peace like Fantine's. I just pray in the days ahead I can remember Fantine and Javert, and the life-giving peace of the one response, and the suicidal condemnation of the other.