Les Misérables

The criminal conscience as the novel's center — but Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov is tormented where Valjean is tranquil; Dostoevsky dramatizes moral crisis where Hugo dramatizes moral resolution

Revolution, sacrifice, and redemption across the same historical period; Dickens is more satirically English, Hugo more philosophically French, but both are arguing that the poor are owed a different world

The question of whether law or love is the foundation of civilization — Father Zosima is to the Karamazovs what the bishop is to Valjean, a mercy that sets everything in motion

The French novel that picks up where Hugo left off — the industrial poor, the failed strike, the question of revolution. Zola is darker and less hopeful; Hugo and Zola together define the full range of French social fiction

Law, justice, and mercy in a community that chooses law; the question of whether a good person can change a bad system from inside it — Atticus Finch as a quieter, more constrained Valjean

The same year, the same French prison system, the same unjust imprisonment — but where Hugo answers injustice with mercy and transformation, Dumas answers it with revenge and spectacle