Les Miserables: Volume 3, Book 1 Summary & Analysis

Chapter 1 In Paris (the narrator begins a long study of this figure) there is a certain child, a “gamin” (street urchin) of between 7 and 13 years. He is joyful even though he often goes without food, and he knows all the ins and outs of the city. He talks slang and swears like a convict, but has a good, innocent heart.

Chapter 2 This child belongs to Paris. He is mischievous and delights in the Bohemia of children that is the city. He loves searching for small animals among the cobblestones and tadpoles in the ditches of the Champs-de-Mars. He is jovial and jokey, often exasperating shopkeepers.

Chapter 3 The child usually manages to scrape together a few sous to attend the theater at night, which he adores. He easily fights, sings, and scoffs at anything grave, failing to take anything too seriously.

Chapter 4 Paris, the narrator says, contains the lounger—a symbol of monarchy—and the gamin—a symbol of anarchy. The gamin is made out of the same clay that made Adam (the Biblical first man), and he is against prejudice, tyranny, oppression, and injustice. But eventually he’ll grow up.

Chapter 5. The gamin loves to roam around and observe Paris’s secrets, places like Mont-Parnasse, Mont-Souris, and the Tombe-Issoire, all different corners of Parisian suburbs. These are filled with small children, and constitute their whole universe.

Chapter 6 During the time of this book, there are hundreds of stray children in Paris. Though in other cities vagabondage for children leads to crimes as adults, in Paris there is greater purity among these street children. Nevertheless, throughout history street children could be sent to the galleys or carried off by the police to who knows where.

Chapter 7 “Gamins” nearly are a social caste of the city. They are strong-minded on religious themes, always watch executions, consider politicians as assassins, and admire those who are left-handed.

Chapter 8 In the summer, the gamin swims in the Seine and keeps an eye out for policemen, calling out to warn the others. He loves uproar, but always wants both to overthrow the government and to get his trousers sewn back up.

Chapter 9 Famous people in French history like Voltaire and Beaumarchais have something of the gamin in them. The gamin is witty and brave: he “amuses himself, because he is unhappy.”

Chapter 10 The gamin has much of grace, but also is a kind of social disease that can only be cured by light: by education, science, and the arts. The gamin expresses Paris, which expresses the world in its great diversity, including all civilizations within it.

Chapter 11 Paris has no limit. It is immense because it is daring—to dare, the narrator states, is the price of progress, and accounts for one of humankind’s great sources of light.

Chapter 12 Similarly, to depict a Parisian child is to depict the city in all its types. The narrator beseeches philosophers to spread light among this populace and determine what use to make of principles and virtues in bettering the people.

Chapter 13 Eight years have passed since Valjean’s arrival to the convent. A little boy of 11 or 12 years of age is known to wander around the Boulevard du Temple, conforming almost exactly to the ideal of the “gamin” sketched above, though with an emptier heart. His parents did not think of or love him, so he simply struck out on his own. Sometimes, though, he returns to see his mother at his family’s home—the Gorbeau hovel, where several individuals who don’t know each other are lodged. The housekeeper is now named Madame Bourgon, and the most wretched of the inhabitants is a family of father, mother, and two grown daughters. The father’s name is Jondrette, and he tells the housekeeper that if anyone should ever inquire for a Pole, Italian, or Spaniard, it is he. When the boy, Little Gavroche, returns home, his mother asks him few questions, though she does love his sisters. The chamber next to the Jondrettes’ is occupied by a poor young man named M. Marius.