Note: I read this novella in French
Cliquez ici afin de lire mon avis en français
Claude Gueux is a novella by Victor Hugo, a story that brings to light
the cruelty in France in the 19th century, and also the absurdity of
the death penalty. These are debates that are relevant even today, even though
most of Europe has eliminated the death penalty from their statute, a majority
of the global population still lives under systems that continue to apply this
barbaric practice (like US, China, India, Japan, Indonesia, etc.)
The story starts with the arrest of a poor worker, Claude Gueux, accused
of stealing groceries as he was unable to feed his family anymore. However, the
rations given to him in the prison was not sufficient for him and he found an
inmate named Albin who was willing to share his bread with Claude. A friendship
developed between them over time, which did not please the director of the
prison. As a result, the director transfers Albin to another prison which impacted
Claude a lot, and despite multiple demands from him to the director bring Albin
back to his cell, it was rejected by the director, which provoked Claude to do
crimes far more serious in nature for which he was eventually sentenced to
death.
The bias and the cruelty of the system was shown well by the author,
where the system forces people under precarious circumstances to commit small
crimes and then, the environment in the prison is so grave that it provokes far
more violent crimes. Even the judges were not willing to listen to the words of
Claude and how he was provoked whereas the statements of the prosecutor and the
police were taken verbatim without much of cross-examination from the judges.
The problem I had with this book was the notes that were provided by the
publisher of my pocket edition (Emmanuel Buron). I understand that this is a
novel that takes place in the 19th century and a present day reader
needs a bit of context for which the notes could be important. However, on most
occasions it was more like a dictionary giving definitions of words which we
commonly use in France even today, such as ‘sinistre’ in which case I was not
sure if the target audience were Francophones or students of the French
language. The important footnotes were sunk in between so many of these
definitions that it became difficult for me to focus.
To conclude, I enjoyed this short read, and is a novella that is pertinent
even today, given the reforms we need in criminal justice. I award the book a
rating of eight on ten.
Rating – 8/10
Have a nice day,
Andy
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