My last post--written at the beginning of a semester that has now ended--described my first experience on Skid Row, and my thoughts were left somewhat unresolved. Five months later, I finally have more time to process that experience, as well as experiences I've had since then. And, I now have a new context in which to investigate the issue of poverty: I am reading Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, which the author opens with the following lines:
So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilisastion, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine, with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age--the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of woman by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night--are not yet solved; as long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a more yet extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless (1862).
Thus begins the famous novel, which apparently Hugo himself labeled a religious work, and which I expect will shed valuable light on the questions my experiences have raised. Here begins, then, a short series offering snapshots of my journey through Les Miserables.
