Les Misérables Volume 5, Chapter 20 Summary

Summary

The chapter opens at the Rue de la Chanvrerie where the barricade’s death agony is about to begin; the scene is set by clashes, cannonades, and an almost sacred stillness broken by distant battle noises. The narrator emphasizes the two rows of closed houses that form hostile walls, explaining how inhabitants, seized by fear or self-interest, close themselves off and leave insurgents to die. The physical image of the city—shuttered windows, sealed doors—becomes a moral indictment: houses that could save become judges that condemn.

From this particular setting the narrator pivots into sustained moral and philosophical reflection. He examines the tension between the individual’s right to preserve life and the collective march of Progress, arguing that revolutions are halting-places in humanity’s long trajectory from evil to good. The insurgents are defended as confessors of Utopia: even in failure their sacrifice is noble and religious. The text contrasts artistic, progressive nations with those consumed by dogma or commerce, insists that science must support art, and concludes with an explicit statement of the novel’s overarching theme—moving from matter to soul, from the hydra at the beginning to the angel at the end.

Key events

1. The barricade’s final moments are described with sounds of battle and a gilded sky.
2. Houses on the Rue de la Chanvrerie are depicted as closed, indifferent walls refusing aid.
3. Narrator analyzes why the people and houses withdraw from insurrection, blaming fear and self-interest.
4. Extended meditation on Progress vs. individual life, the nature of Utopia and revolution.
5. Defense of insurgents as heroic, sometimes tragic actors whose failures can be sublime.
6. Reflections on art, science, national character, and the book’s moral aim from matter to soul.

Analysis

This chapter functions less as plot development and more as thematic exposition: it transforms the immediate scene of the dying barricade into a wide-ranging moral and philosophical commentary. By juxtaposing the concrete image of closed Parisian houses with abstract meditations on Progress, Hugo makes the urban landscape a moral barometer—walls and shutters symbolizing societal indifference. The narrator’s language shifts between vivid sensory description and polemical essay, blending realist scene-setting with rhetorical argumentation. This technique loosens chronological narrative to allow a panoramic view of revolution’s meaning; the chapter thus serves as an interlude that justifies and sanctifies the insurgents even as it concedes the costs and contradictions of violent action.

Symbolically, the closed house stands for private interest and the inertia of the majority; the barricade and its doomed defenders represent prophetic, utopian striving. Hugo also links national character, art, and science to the capacity for progress, crafting an argument that civilization advances when imagination and exactness cooperate. The chapter foreshadows the moral framing that will shape readers’ sympathy for those who die on the barricade: martyrdom becomes a mode of historic pedagogy. Narrator intrusion and didactic tone remind readers that the novel’s true subject is humanity’s movement from material to spiritual states rather than only individual fates.

Important quotes

“"God is dead, perhaps," said Gerard de Nerval one day to the writer of these lines, confounding progress with God, and taking the interruption of movement for the death of Being.”

Gerard de NervalA cited remark introducing the chapter’s meditation on progress and the danger of mistaking temporary stasis for final death.

“"I exist," murmurs that some one whose name is All.”

NarratorAn example of individual self-interest used to explain why many refuse to join or aid insurrectionary movements.

“The hydra at the beginning, the angel at the end.”

NarratorFinal, concise formulation of the novel’s moral trajectory from monstrous beginnings to spiritual culmination.

Characters in Volume 5, Chapter 20

• Gerard de Nerval
• John Brown
• Pisacane
• Garibaldi