Les Miserables recap

Released after nineteen years in prison for stealing bread, the ex-convict Jean Valjean is shown mercy by a saintly bishop and vows to live honestly. Under a new name he becomes a prosperous manufacturer and respected mayor, but the dogged inspector Javert suspects his true identity. Valjean rescues the dying Fantine's daughter Cosette from the cruel Thenardier family and raises her in hiding as his own. Years later in Paris, Cosette and the idealistic young republican Marius fall in love, while a student uprising builds toward revolt. During the fighting at the barricades, Valjean saves Marius by carrying him through the sewers, spares the captured Javert, and secures the young couple's future. Javert, unable to reconcile Valjean's goodness with his own rigid faith in the law, drowns himself. Marius marries Cosette; Valjean, having confessed his convict past and withdrawn in shame, is finally reunited with them and dies in peace, his long struggle toward redemption complete.

In post-revolutionary France, Jean Valjean is released after nineteen brutal years of hard labor, imprisoned originally for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's children. Marked forever by his yellow convict's passport, he is refused food and shelter everywhere he goes, growing bitter toward a society that will not forgive him. He is taken in by the merciful Bishop Myriel, whose astonishing kindness after Valjean repays it with theft transforms him and sets him on a secret lifelong effort to become an honest, good man. The premise follows Valjean's struggle to escape his past and live decently, shadowed by the relentless inspector Javert, and gathers in the fates of the poor and downtrodden of France, among them the abandoned young mother Fantine, her daughter Cosette in the hands of the grasping Thenardiers, and the idealistic young people of Paris drifting toward revolt.

The many threads converge during the 1832 Paris uprising. At the barricade, Valjean spares the life of the captured Javert, then rescues the gravely wounded Marius by carrying him through the city's sewers to safety. The idealistic students, including Enjolras and the boy Gavroche, are killed when the barricade falls, and Eponine dies taking a bullet meant for Marius. Javert, released by the very man he has hunted for decades and unable to reconcile his absolute faith in the law with the mercy he has received and witnessed, throws himself into the Seine. Marius recovers and marries Cosette. Valjean, believing his criminal past would taint their happiness, confesses it and gradually withdraws from their lives, sinking into loneliness and decline. When Marius learns that it was Valjean who saved him, he and Cosette rush to the old man's side, and Valjean dies content, blessed and forgiven, his lifelong effort at redemption fulfilled. Fantine died years earlier without seeing her daughter grow, and the scheming Thenardiers come to a low and disgraceful end.