Author(s): Halil AYTEKÄ°N
In his work, Hugo talks about the last day of a twenty-six year old condemned man. As in other works, in this work also he depicts a man who is poor and lonely but defends the universal values and who has still hopes for the future. In this work his major character is exactly one of the miserable man of the work named "Les Misérables" that he will later published in the future. Because Hugo has used the adjective of miserable for the first time in this novel. The hero who is portrayed in the work is a figure a humanity comedy. The use of the first person narrator in the narration has added a distinctive feature to the work. We don't know what the hero is accused of. In this tragic story, the experiences of a condemned man and the thoughts that go through his mind are narrated by the author "convict-narrator". This novel which is written with an internal point of view gives a diary impression that a condemned man wrote the last 24 hours of his life. In this diary the convict tells the fearful moments that he has experienced from the beginning of the case until its end. The terrible thought of the supreme punishment and the guillotine has almost turned into a grub who has been gnawing his mind. In this record of thoughts who are dying in agony, in an endless anguish, in a condemned man's mind autopsy, Hugo tries to give important messages to human being. The reader knows neither his name nor his crime. He mentions just "I am a real murderer, a miserable man who has shed blood, me". The author tries to make French society sensitive by describing the sense of the justice in the period and the inhuman practices in the prisons. He wants to convey tragically both the mood of the condemned man and his thoughts, his sufferings in the shortest unit of time, in the temporal dimension where the seconds turn into hours, and the moral and physical collapses he has suffered.
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