Philo Analysis

JESSIE L. LABISTE, JR. BSED 4A (English) MW/1:00-2:30/EB107 PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS (BISHOP MYRIEL) Man must see that nothing really is, but that everything is always becoming and changing. Nothing stands still. Everything is being born, growing and dying. The very instant a thing reaches its height it begins to decline. The law of rhythm is in constant operation. There is no reality. There is no enduring quality, fixing or substantiality in anything. Nothing is permanent but change. The character of Bishop Myriel is drawn with great force, and is full both of direct and subtle satire on the worldliness of ordinary churchmen. This man, who embodies all the virtues, carries his goodness so far as to receive into his house a criminal whom all honest houses reject, and, when robbed by his infamous guest, saves the life of the latter by telling the officers who had apprehended the thief that he had given him the silver. This so works on the criminal's conscience, really! Later, Jean Valjean "becomes a good and pious man," starts in a manufactory, becomes rich, and uses his wealth for benevolent purposes. This is what Bishop Myriel is looking forward from Valjean knowing his past. He determined the co-existence of the goodness of Valjean and had succeeded in his plans. Truly in his quite a short pert in this great novel, Bishop Myriel exemplified a man who sees nothing but change for the part of Valjean. He never gave up after being smashed in the middle of the night after the ex-convicted criminal successfully robbed their house. From the bare abstract, the story does not seem to promise much pleasure to novel-readers from the character of Bishop Myriel, yet it is all alive with the fiery genius of Victor Hugo, and the whole representation is so intense and vivid that it is impossible to escape from the fascination it exerts over the mind. Bishop Myriel can be anchored to the philosophies of Moral Evolutionism where morality changes and improves. He ever believed that Valjean has a lot of doors for change and making his life a well-coveted life for others. This is Bishop Myriel who took care of the protagonist and renewed his image and personality. He who happened to believe that man has all the resources to change only if people will not prejudge and make an early assumption that is baseless. Man must see things evolving from other things and resolving him to other things, a constant action or reaction, inflow or outflow, building up or tearing down, creation or destruction, birth, growth and death. Nothing is real and nothing endures but change.