Jean Valjean’s motive of self-sacrifice in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables: An analysis on the main character’s self-sacrifice in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables based on Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalytic theory

ABSTRACT

Self-sacrifice is common thing in the society. It has also been the main topic of some great fictions in the world. One of the novels that focuses on the self-sacrifice as the main theme is Les Misérables. In this research paper, there are two questions the researcher wants to find the answer. Related to this matter, and to answer the questions in the statements of the problem, this study is designed to discover Jean Valjean’s self-sacrifices and to analyze which part of personality structure influences the self-sacrifice made by him.

In proportion to the purpose of the literary study, the suitable research design for this study is literary criticism. Literary criticism is an effort to estimate and comprehend the creative writing, the literature of an author. Literary criticism is usually expressed in the form of critical essay. This study is literary criticism since in this study the researcher conducts a discussion of one of literary works, a novel, which is related to psychological condition of the main character, Jean Valjean. That is why Sigmund Freud’s theory of personality is chosen as a means to do the analysis.

For the findings, the researcher found that in doing such sacrifices, Jean Valjean’s personality is driven by his id, his ego and also his super-ego which influence the self sacrifice done by him. When Jean Valjean makes sacrifices in his life, some of the sacrifices are influenced by one of the three personality structures. Then the assumption that goodness always deals with the super-ego is not absolutely right. Some goodness can also deal with the id and ego since the person’s mind, in doing either goodness or badness, can be influenced by the id, ego and super-ego.