The Toilers of the Sea: 5

The Toilers of the Sea This is an amazingly transporting novel. As a small child I remember having a strong fear of the ocean at night, a fear of its darkness and depth and what creatures might lie within its waters. Victor Hugo has captured this fear and wrapped it around his novel,The Toilers of the Sea. The opening half of the novel plays like a calm and reflective field journal, taking the reader across the island of Guernsey through a minutia of flora and fauna, historical lives of islanders, and detailed Channel Island geography. Before we are introduced to Hugo's cast of characters and literary intentions, he envelopes us in the islands in such a way that we grow to love their serenity; deceitful as it often is. And then suddenly, without warning Deruchette and Galliat appear and a plot forms. This second half of the novel takes on Romanticism in a way that only Victor Hugo would attempt. All at once, man is pitted against Nature, Religion, Justice and himself. We soon see the power of the ocean closing in around Galliat as well as the powers of those men who would have him fail. Galliat finds himself in the darkest pit of the sea, struggling for his own survival, for the survival of what is right and what is good. As a reader, we taste the salty air and feel the torrential wet winds that attempt to tear down poor Galliat. We feel his every struggle and wish fervently for his success. Without a doubt, The Toilers of the Sea, is a wonderfully tragic novel that works on many levels. I used to think there was no better novel than Les Miserables, no greater literary character than Jean Valjean, but now I know better-read it and see what I mean.

This new edition of Victor Hugo's long-overlooked novel about a lone fisherman's heroic struggle to salvage the engine of a wrecked ship is long overdue. Its defects aside, it is an impressive work that deserves to bask in popularity alongside *Les Miserables* and *The Hunchback of Notre Dame*. What strikes me first is the sheer power of Hugo's mind. In *The Toilers of the Sea* no less than in his two more famous works, he wields his pen like a Zeus-thrown thunderbolt, hurling down his words from the lofty heights of his thought with electrifying intensity, grandeur and drama. Few writers living today, however talented, come close to achieving this effect. Nor have they Hugo's breadth of knowledge and ability to write with it as he can: the effect is one of scope and depth, and more; awesome, but hard for me to put into words. These qualities are in Hugo's straight narrative as well as his digressions, which are legion; readers who remember his long description of the sewers of Paris--stuck into the middle of *Les Miserables*, a novel about redemption--will know what I mean. The first fifty pages of *The Toilers of the Sea*, for example, are taken up in the geographical, historical and cultural background of the setting; later, several pages each are spent on such subjects as the nature of hypocrisy, the winds at sea, and the myth and mystique of that eight-tentacled demon of the deep, the octopus. Brilliant in themselves as these digressions are, they are seldom integrated seamlessly into the story. But I will not gripe, for they are well-written and give a contemporary readership much-needed context. Certainly they do not detract from the plot, however much they interrupt it. As always, Hugo tells a powerful tale, as gripping and suspenseful as can be found in today's best popular fiction, and in which wild natural imagery and thrilling action predominate more than in any of his other works. As Hugo states in his preface, "Religion, society, nature: these are the three struggles of man." Religion and society are the chief conflicts in *The Hunchback of Notre Dame* and *Les Miserables*. In *The Toilers of the Sea*, it is man versus nature. Fittingly, much of the action is set at sea, where a gently undulating blue expanse can turn into a dark, crashing tempest on short notice and a single human being is most isolated. When the crunch comes, therefore, the novel's hero has nobody to rely on but himself--a mind with muscles pitted against an immensity of unconscious, inexhaustible forces. To witness his struggle--in which, stoic and determined in the face of obstacles and setbacks that would drive most men to despair, he draws on incredible ingenuity, endurance and willpower ultimately to triumph in his undertaking--is reason enough to read this book. The exalted experience such a tale of heroism gives us of itself needs no justification. Flaws, however, do, and one reader review here has argued for their presence in

I own the Collected Works of Victor Hugo, 15 vols. Last summer I found the time to read all of them. I must say that The Toilers of the Sea, in the end, strikes me as the best book Hugo ever wrote. Sure, we have The Hunchback of Notre Dame. And Les Miserables. But Toilers of the Sea got to me more, okay? Somehow I identified with Gilliat more than with Quasimodo and Jean Valjean combined. He's a very realistic character, unlike the overly miserable hunchback or the overly saintly Valjean, and his struggles are very realistic, which makes the reader care far more about whether he succeeds or not. Hugo had spent some years in Jersey/Guernsey, where the book takes place, and I suppose that observing the sea was all there was to do there, since in the book it's clear that he knows every little aspect of it. The sea is just as prominent a character as Gilliat, and just as realistic, and has even more space devoted to it than any of the humans. It's hard to think of it as inanimate after reading this book. The imagery of the storm is certainly unforgettable.This book is more touching than Hugo's others, maybe because the author focuses more on telling a story rather than a Big Important Social Message About the Plight of the Poor. There's humor, there's tragedy, there's drama, and the result is a very immersive read.

True, the characterization is not as good as in other Hugo novels. And true, the love story is not as tragic as in other Hugo novels. But in my estimation this novel stands apart from all others in the literary world. There are principally two characters in this novel: Gilliatt the seaman, and the ocean. It is one versus the other. Can a single man triumph over the most powerful and unforgiving force on the planet? Hugo shows us he can.

This is a common Victor Hugo Theme. He always likes to torture his characters untill the reader breakes out in sweat. While not nearly as famious as his other greats, this book is no less briallent, exciting, and intreging. It's really great. Trust me.