Les Misérables recap

After nineteen years in prison, Jean Valjean is met with distrust until Bishop Myriel answers his theft with mercy. Valjean builds a new life as the mayor Madeleine but exposes himself to save an innocent man and promises the dying Fantine that he will care for her daughter. He rescues Cosette from the abusive Thénardiers and raises her in concealment while Inspector Javert continues his pursuit. Years later Cosette and the impoverished student Marius fall in love. During the 1832 Paris uprising, Marius joins his republican friends at a barricade; Valjean follows, spares Javert, and carries the wounded Marius to safety through the sewers. Javert, unable to reconcile Valjean's goodness with his own rigid creed, takes his life. Marius marries Cosette but briefly separates her from Valjean after learning of his conviction. Thénardier's attempted blackmail proves that Valjean saved Marius, and the couple reaches Valjean in time for a final reconciliation before his peaceful death.

Bishop Myriel lives modestly in Digne and directs his wealth toward people in need. When the newly released convict Jean Valjean is refused shelter throughout the town, Myriel welcomes him. Valjean steals the bishop's silver, but after the police bring him back, Myriel claims the silver was a gift and adds two candlesticks, asking Valjean to use this mercy to become an honest man. Valjean's bitter habits do not disappear at once: he takes a coin from the child Petit Gervais, then recognizes with horror that he has repeated the cruelty the world showed him. Years later, under the name Monsieur Madeleine, he becomes a successful manufacturer and benevolent mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer. Fantine, abandoned by her lover and supporting her daughter Cosette from afar, loses her factory job and is driven into destitution as the Thénardiers continually raise the price of the child's care. Madeleine intervenes when Inspector Javert arrests her and promises to bring Cosette to her.

Madeleine learns that another man, Champmathieu, is about to be condemned as Jean Valjean. After an agonizing struggle between safety and conscience, he goes to court and reveals his identity, saving the innocent defendant. He returns to Fantine, but Javert arrives to arrest him; the shock and Javert's harsh disclosure destroy Fantine's last hope, and she dies before seeing Cosette. Valjean escapes custody long enough to secure money for the child, is recaptured, and later escapes again. He finds Cosette doing exhausting work at the Thénardiers' inn, pays their demands, and takes her away despite their attempt to keep control of a profitable ward. In Paris, Valjean gives Cosette the secure affection she has never known, but Javert tracks them. They escape over a wall into the Petit-Picpus convent, where Fauchelevent, the man Valjean once rescued from beneath a cart, shelters them. Valjean becomes an assistant gardener and Cosette enters the convent school, giving both a protected home for several years.

Marius Pontmercy grows up under his royalist grandfather Gillenormand, believing his absent father abandoned him. After his father's death, Marius discovers that Colonel Pontmercy loved him and stayed away only because Gillenormand threatened to disinherit the boy. Marius embraces his father's memory and Bonapartist politics, quarrels with his grandfather, and chooses poverty. He befriends the republican students known as the Friends of the ABC but remains politically independent. In the Luxembourg Garden he repeatedly sees Cosette with Valjean, and the two young people fall in love without yet speaking. Marius loses sight of her after Valjean notices his attention. Living beside the destitute Jondrette family, Marius realizes they are the Thénardiers and overhears their plan to rob a charitable visitor who is really Valjean. He alerts Javert, then hesitates when he learns the intended victim's captor once saved his father at Waterloo. The police raid the room, but Valjean escapes before Javert can identify him, while the Thénardiers are arrested.

Éponine, in love with Marius, finds Cosette's new address for him. Marius and Cosette meet secretly in the garden and declare their love, while Valjean remains unaware of their relationship. Thénardier escapes prison and brings a gang to rob Valjean's house, but Éponine prevents the attack by threatening to raise an alarm. Political tension grows in Paris as republican organizers prepare for unrest. When Valjean decides to leave for England, Cosette sends word to Marius; Éponine intercepts the message and, despairing of winning him, draws him toward the coming insurrection. Marius asks Gillenormand for permission to marry Cosette, but his grandfather's insulting response drives him away. After General Lamarque's funeral, the Friends of the ABC build a barricade in the Rue de la Chanvrerie. Javert enters disguised as a volunteer but is exposed as a police spy. Marius arrives, saves the barricade by threatening to ignite its powder, and becomes one of its defenders. Éponine dies after shielding him from a shot and gives him Cosette's withheld letter.

Marius sends a farewell message to Cosette through Gavroche, hoping also to remove the boy from danger. The message instead reaches Valjean, who discovers the lovers' bond and goes armed to the barricade. He helps its defenders and asks to execute the captured Javert, but privately cuts the inspector's bonds and releases him. Government forces close in. Gavroche is killed while collecting ammunition from fallen soldiers, and Enjolras's companions die as the barricade is overrun. Valjean takes the gravely wounded Marius into the sewers. The journey nearly exhausts him, but he reaches a locked outlet where Thénardier, hiding nearby, mistakes him for a murderer and opens the gate in exchange for money while secretly taking cloth from Marius's coat. Javert is waiting outside. Valjean asks only to return Marius to his family and briefly go home; Javert, confronted with the mercy of the man who spared him, allows both requests and then departs instead of making the arrest.

Javert cannot fit Valjean's conduct into his belief that law and moral worth are identical. Rather than accept either mercy or a transformed understanding of justice, he drowns himself in the Seine. Marius slowly recovers under Gillenormand's care, is reconciled with his grandfather, and marries Cosette. Valjean gives Cosette the fortune he had preserved for her, then confesses his criminal past to Marius. Although Marius permits limited visits, his distrust leads Valjean to withdraw, and separation from Cosette leaves the older man failing rapidly. Thénardier approaches Marius under a false name and tries to prove that Valjean is a thief and murderer. Instead, the information shows that Valjean earned Cosette's money honestly and carried Marius alive through the sewer; the strip of coat Thénardier kept confirms the rescue. Marius pays him to leave France, and Thénardier departs for America. Marius and Cosette hurry to Valjean and ask forgiveness. Reunited with the two people he loves, Valjean dies peacefully as the bishop's silver candlesticks burn beside him.

Valjean carries the unconscious Marius away from the fallen barricade through the Paris sewers. At the outlet he meets Thénardier, who unknowingly helps him escape while taking a scrap from Marius's coat as possible evidence. Javert permits Valjean to deliver Marius to Gillenormand and then lets Valjean go; unable to reconcile that mercy with his lifelong faith in inflexible law, Javert kills himself. Marius recovers and marries Cosette. Valjean tells Marius that he is a former convict and withdraws from the couple, allowing Marius to assume the worst about him. Thénardier later tries to sell Marius proof that Valjean is a murderer, but his evidence instead reveals that Valjean saved Marius and that Thénardier was the criminal at the sewer. Marius and Cosette hurry to Valjean, finally understanding his sacrifice. They reconcile with him shortly before he dies peacefully, sustained by their love and by the bishop's candlesticks, the enduring emblem of the mercy that redirected his life.