He will be acting selflessly, sacrificing himself and his freedom for a stranger in a way that feels almost saintly. But if he does reveal his identity, the one thing he will be doing is sanctifying his soul. The difference being he will be alone with himself without the slightest chance of reaching out to either god or community. And he will be thrown back in to the thick of it, unable to “escape men,” watched all the time, surrounded all the time by other prisoners and guards, never able to be alone with himself except that at the same time he will only ever be alone with himself. But if he returns to prison and, as he fears, returns to the state he had been in while at Toulon, he will be losing god and religion as well, falling back into the darkness. Obviously, his name will no longer be concealed. The notion of being broken down again and having to either accept that or try and build himself back up is terrifying.īack in 1.7.3, Hugo tells us that what Valjean’s goal is is to “conceal his name and sanctify his soul,” “to escape men and return to god.” If he reveals his identity, he will be undoing nearly all of that. And to return to what he sees before him is to have eight years of hard work, hard internal change, whisked away in a flash. He’s done so much work building himself into a respected leader, a knowledgeable dependable person. He’s also done so much work trying to become a better person, the person Myriel bought his soul for him to become. But Madeleine-Valjean has evolved and buried and changed many of those mannerisms in order to remain disguised, in order to both “conceal his name and sanctify his soul.” I don’t think he fears returning to that simply because it means returning to prison. It’s not his looks that Javert and the other prisoners recognized, but his mannerisms.

What I find interesting is that Valjean notes that it’s not exactly their features that are similar, but their characteristics are. Valjean sees a reflection of his past self. The Hapgood translation online has a typo that I wish wasn’t a typo (It says “concealing his soul in”).

Tactile wars 1.7.9 apk mod