-Jean Valjean learns an important lesson from the Bishop in the excerpt you read from Les Miserables. How would you summarize that lesson? Why did the bishops actions change Valjean? (my question)

This passage has, like Blood Brothers, picked my brain and caused me to dig deep within myself. I believe the message that the Bishop conveys to Jean Valjean is that all souls are equal in life and all are deserving of love. His message is that the soul and the man can never fully be conquered by sin, hate, suffering, and shame, and that there will always be another path to walk which is bathed in light.

 Valjean had a spot of darkness that momentarily stained his soul, as will happen to all men over the course of their lives. However when society saw that blackness, it did its duty of condemnation and attempted to cut from his soul that spot. The body of the society saw his action as an attack on the human race. They did not see the man who stole only one loaf instead of them all. They did not see the man who worked to feed seven very hungry children, the same children that society had let slip through the cracks. To let people starve was not a crime to society, but for the starving to grow too hungry to wait was. Society misjudged Valjean for a villain, when in actuality he was a man in need of food for himself and 8 others.

                He was then locked away, beaten, and degraded. His soul was torn. The black spot that had once shown up due to desperation, the spot that would have vanished with a morsel of bread, now clung to Valjean. It was in the screams of his cell mates, the violence of the thrashings and the hard, cold silence of a wooden plank to rest. So the black spot grew into a black cloud that was the man 24601. This black soul saw light in every chance of escape. This soul wanted nothing more than to get away from the blackness, but for its attempts, it was thrust further into pain and despair. By the time Valjean made it out of his own hell, his soul had soaked for too long in the black filth of societies doing. It had tainted his character. All the world could see from where he came, and yet he was the one deemed a menace. His soul pondered why no person could see that his soul had been given over to society, blackened by it. Somehow though, after his nineteen years of being debased and educated in evil, society saw him as the perpetrator of a crime. With no light left in his world, he became what society made him.

I am answering the second question by saying that Valjean’s soul never thirsted or hungered for darkness. It always craved the light. At first he was scared of the light, for the light had been what society represented. He knew society was unjust, and so he saw the light as unjust also. His soul was still black, and so he stole from the man who had shown him kindness. Would we blame a dog who had been beaten from birth for biting the one friendly hand that is finally offered to it? No. Valjean was still a good man, as seen with his inward torture upon his contemplation of theft. When Valjean was returned for his crime, the Bishop saw all that I have described. The Bishop saw the now small, blinding whiteness in Valjean’s soul. Unlike society, He knew what to do.

 To clean a stain, you do not cut out the blackness; this will ruin the garment. You can bleach the whole cloak in the color of the stain, and then stain will not be noticed.

The best way to clean a garment, and a soul, is to wash it. You cannot wash something dirty in something dirty. The dirt will only multiply. When, however, that soul is washed in the cleanliness of good and joy and love, the spot leaves. It took the Bishop one day to undo the darkness of 19 years. A soul can never fully be conquered by sin, hate, suffering, and shame, and that there will always be another path to walk which is bathed in light. Valjean’s soul was so changed by the Bishop’s display of light because it was hungry and needed to be fed.