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The Last Day of a Condemned Man: Difference between revisions
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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
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 [[
The book is in the form of a journal, and it chronicles about six weeks, although the span of time in which the journalling is accomplished is more like one week.
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* [[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.
* [[No Name Given]]: The protagonist is never named, nor do we ever learn the circumstances of his crime. This is not to say that he does not have a nuanced personality -- if he were [[True Neutral]] he'd be boring -- but Hugo kept many of the variables of his character as vague as possible, so he could represent every person ever put to death. He treads the middle ground in many details: not an atheist, but not religious enough that a belief in God can console him; not desperately poor or a member of the underclass, but not aristocratic either (if he were he probably wouldn't have gotten the death penalty anyway); not uneducated, but not really an intellectual either (although he does write like Victor Hugo...).
* [[Off
* [[Posthumous Character]]: The book is a journal whose author {{spoiler|is dead.}} I don't know if that's really a spoiler though.
* [[Primal Fear]]: [[Captain Obvious|Death.]]
* [[Ripped from the Headlines]]: There are numerous references to real criminals and functionaries, which lend texture, ground it in real life, and establish time and place.
* [[Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped]]: Hugo was a master of this trope. The fact that the book had such a singular purpose, however, meant that it was not as well done as a masterpiece like ''[[Les Misérables (
* [[Sympathetic Murderer]]: We can't help but identify with the main character and his universal, human feelings. Also, the fact that he adores his toddler-age daughter, and worries desperately about what is going to happen to her, does a lot to make him sympathetic.
* [[Tear Jerker]]: The whole book, really... but also certain scenes, especially the one with his daughter.
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