thenardiers helping the author

THENARDIER'S

The different characteristics that the Thenardiers have are made for a purpose and that purpose is to help the author convey the central theme and tone of the novel Les Miserables. Victor Hugo uses the Thenardiers to help him set the tone for the book. In my opinion and based on what I read I can conclude that the tone we as readers percieve is a tone of suffrage and pain. Obviously being so cruel and heartless the Thenardiers help the book have this tone of suffrage. "We should have never taken you in the first place How stupid the things we do! Like mother, like daughter, the scum of the street"(Castle on a cloud). The Thenardiers being so cruel they make an enviorment in which Cosettes lives of pure horror and pain. She has never been happy since she has been living with them. Another way in which the Thenardiers help the author throughout the book becuase of the purpose this book was written to show how people would suffer before becuase they had no food or no place where to sleep or simply lived in horrible conditions. "When I told him the house, he appeared surprised and hesitated an instant, then he said: It is all the same, I will go"(Hugo 207). The Thenardiers are a poor family who struggle everyday for food and shelter but they are lazy and their business has just gone broke so they have to ask for money from everyone. This is probably the typical family in those times and Victor Hugo is trying to show the readers that this was the type of family that were always hungry for money.