Internal Conflict In Les Miserables

Before becoming a mayor, Jean Valjean was a thief, he was convicted of stealing bread for his sisters starving children. After being caught, Valjean was given five years in prison, he elongated his sentence by trying to escape three times which added 14 years to his jail time. After Jean Valjean got out of prison he decided to be a better man. Valjean had a life-changing encounter with a bishop, he chose to become a man of God instead of the crook he used to be. Valjean becomes the mayor of a town but the law is still after him. Officers arrested someone they thought was Valjean, now Valjean has to make the decision to turn himself in or to let another man serve his sentence. When adapting a novel into other mediums such as a movie and a musical, there are details about internal conflict that are lost and potentially added. This is the case when adapting Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, the song “Who Am …show more content…
That is, the movie gives a visual representation of the novel unlike the song or the book. For example, when Javert tells Jean Valjean that they have found the real Valjean, he gets very nervous and looks down into the factory, he avoids eye contact with Javert and paces back and forth. This gives a visual representation of his anxiety and nervousness because he knows that a man is going to be charged for something he never did. Though visual representation is a good thing, sometimes it can cause over dramatization. The real Valjean goes to the courthouse as mayor to denounce himself, when the witnesses come to the stand to confirm that the man they found was Valjean. Every time the convicts say that Champ is Valjean, the real Valjean gets a pained look on his face and stares at the ground, he knows that he is ruining the life of an innocent man if he keeps silent. Though this never happened in the book, it elaborates on how the internal conflict affected