How does "Les Miserables" prove or disprove that man is more a product of his environment than of his intrinsic nature?"Les Miserables" by Victor...

Hero and also the central pivot around whom the narrative plans articulate is Jean Valjean, whose tragic destiny turned irretrievably into a nightmare when, for stealing a loaf of bread, was sentenced to prison.

 Even after ten years of penal servitude, he is forced to hide under false identities of relentless persecution of the policeman Javert, unable to see beyond the law, the complexity of the human soul.

Convinced of his mission, inspired by Dante, to make from reality a hell, novelist structures in the sequence of epic scenes,the adventures through the hero passes  to save his life and to protect Cosette,daughter of a prostitute,which he considered his own daughter,who Valjean saved her from the house of Thénardier's, where she was subjected to inhuman treatment.

Without being a vindictive human and without trying to replace human or divine justice, Jean Valjean is following his troubled existence on the road to continuing ascent to absolute ethics. The thread of his biography is  woven with other destinies,entered also in the context of the same age, which makes from the novel building a true social fresco.

Surrounded by characters from all social circles, Jean Valjean has to overcome obstacles related to the history or the dual nature of man, varying as human being between good and evil; his path, although often interspersed with setbacks, is ascendant and triumphant in the moral order.

This world of "miserable", gathered around its representative echo,is including other characters, as vivid and credible in their dramas as Jean Valjean. The first episode is surprising Fantine- a young forced to abandon his daughter after the student who seduced her, dropped her - which bears on her forehead, as predestination,the stigma of  anonymity and pain. Little Cosette, reached in the hands of the couple Thénardier, reddit mother's story to share with readers the message the society of that time, that suffering is possible at any age.

Hugo's novel confirms his greatness by that it addresses the major issues of his century, human degradation caused by the pressing society.