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{{work}}
{{Infobox book
In 1829, a slim book appeared in France. It was called ''Le dernier jour d'un condamné'', in English, ''The Last Day of a Condemned Man'', [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|and the plot conformed to the title]]. That topic, augured by the title, was covered in such heretofore unthinkable detail that, at the time of its publication, it caused something of a scandal among the reading public.▼
| title = The Last Day of a Condemned Man
| original title = Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamné
| image = HugoLastDayCondemnedMan.jpg
| caption =
| author = Victor Hugo
| central theme =
| elevator pitch =
| genre =
| publication date = 1829
| source page exists =
| wiki URL =
| wiki name =
}}
▲In 1829, a slim book appeared in France. It was called ''Le dernier jour d'un condamné'', in English, ''[[The Last Day of a Condemned Man]]'', [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|and the plot conformed to the title]]. That topic, augured by the title, was covered in such heretofore unthinkable detail that, at the time of its publication, it caused something of a scandal among the reading public.
The short novel, whose first edition was published anonymously, was written by a man who, sick of shutting himself in and imagining himself in the shoes of the condemned man everytime he saw the people of Paris rushing to the spectacle of a public execution on the Place de Grève, decided to try to do something about it. His name was [[Victor Hugo]]. ''The Last Day of a Condemned Man'' was his first mature work. It is not as well known as some of his [[Les Misérables (novel)|other]] [[The Hunchback of Notre Dame (novel)|writings]].
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[[Fyodor Dostoevsky]] really, ''really'' liked this book, calling it Hugo's "masterpiece". This may have to do with the fact that Dostoyevsky had gone through [http://www.executedtoday.com/2007/12/22/1849-not-fyodor-dostoyevsky/ the very same experience as the man in the book.]
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{{tropelist}}
* [[A Fate Worse Than Death]]: The hero flips back and forth between whether or not hard labor for life in the [[wikipedia:Bagne of Toulon|bagne of Toulon]] is worse than execution.
* [[Age-Appropriate Angst]]: The main character is consistently acknowledged by himself and others to be a young man.
* [[All Crimes Are Equal]]: The other condemned man, whom the protagonist encounters at the Conciergerie (see "Justified Criminal," below), explains that he was sentenced to death not so much because he killed people as a [[The Highwayman|highwayman]], but because he committed a [[Rule of Three|third]] crime; he could have stolen a handkerchief, and it would still have resulted in the death penalty.
* [[All Just a Dream]]: Played with in the first chapter:
{{quote|
* [[Author Tract]]: It's no secret that Hugo wrote the novel singularly to further the abolition of capital punishment.
* [[Big No]]: Only in the comic book adaptation; but {{spoiler|the last line, "FOUR O'CLOCK",}} is a sort of [[Big No]].
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* [[Gallows Humor]]: "Are they afraid I might strangle myself with the mattress?" and "These executioners are gentle fellows." Although that might simply be despairing irony rather than "humor".
* [[Happy Place]]: In final holding, with only hours left to live, the protagonist tries to block out the outside world and distract himself with happy memories. The memory he dwells the longest on is his first kiss, but this only serves to yank him back into the real world when he writes about it and adds, "It is an evening I will remember all my life."
{{quote|
* [[Hope Spot]]: It's only really a hope spot for the main character, as the reader {{spoiler|probably knows he's doomed,}} but it's a classic hope spot nonetheless... a [[What an Idiot!]] gendarme comes to guard him, tells him that as everybody knows, people executed by guillotine ''know about winning lottery numbers in advance'', and would he mind being a mensch and paying him a visit when he's dead? The main character responds that he'd be glad to, on one condition: that the gendarme change clothes with him. Unfortunately for him, the gendarme may be dumb but he divines the main character's intentions, and he understands the logic of his own idiot superstition enough to want him to be dead.
{{quote|
* [[Justified Criminal]]: Hugo was extremely fond of this. The recidivist whom the hero meets at the Conciergerie seems to have been a precursor to [[Les Misérables|Jean Valjean]], what with the stolen loaf of bread and the way no one will give him work. He also shows what might have happened if Valjean had never met the bishop. This character was practically doomed right from the start.
{{quote|
* [[Last-Minute Reprieve]]: Cruelly averted.
* [[Last Words]]
* [[Literary Agent Hypothesis]]: The original conceit, when the authorship was (sort of) unknown, was that the journal was possibly real. Hugo even went to far as to publish a handwritten "facsimile" of a page from the "original manuscript"; this facsmile is distinct from simply being a reproduction of a page from a fiction writer's manuscript due to the lengthy explanation posted with it.
* [[Mr. Imagination]]: The main character characterizes himself as "a dreamer, and passionate." His imagination amplifies his own psychological torture, not only because he thinks about his own death over ... and over ... and over again, but also in that it makes his brain feverish and excitable, escalating agitation into hallucination. After taking a look at the names, inscriptions and graffiti on the walls of his dungeon, a cartoon of a guillotine coupled with the carved names of some infamous killers pushes him over the edge, and he hallucinates that they're all standing in his cell grasping their disembodied heads. Here are some lines from the first chapter that establish his default state as being imaginative, constructing other lives and fantasies:
{{quote|
* [[Narm Charm]]: The book can be kind of melodramatic, but this troper did not. Laugh. Once. It's more likely to make you feel ill than to make you laugh.
* [[Nightmare Dreams]]: The nightmare the main character has in the Conciergerie, about an old woman hiding in his cupboard who bites him on the hand. Dostoyevsky <s>plagiarized</s> paid homage to this dream.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:
[[Category:The Last Day of a Condemned Man]]
[[Category:French Literature]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Last Day of a Condemned Man, The}}
[[Category:Literature]]
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