# III: The Ankle-Chain Must Have Undergone a Certain Preparatory Manipulation to Be Thus Broken with a Blow from a Hammer explained — Les Misérables

> Chapter companion for Les Misérables by Victor Hugo.

## What happens

The chapter opens with a historical reflection on the 1823 Spanish war, criticizing its political and moral implications for France. It then describes the arrival of the ship Orion at Toulon after heavy weather. Amidst a detailed depiction of a ship of the line, a convict on the Orion heroically saves a sailor who has fallen from a yard, but in the process, the convict himself falls into the sea and is presumed drowned. The chapter ends with a newspaper report identifying the drowned convict as Jean Valjean, number 9,430.

## Themes in this chapter

### Suffering and Sacrifice

Jean Valjean's act of saving a sailor at the cost of his own life exemplifies sacrifice and suffering.

### Social Injustice and Poverty

The critique of wasteful military spending while the poor die of hunger highlights social injustice.

## Character check-ins

### Jean Valjean

The convict who saves a sailor but falls into the sea and is presumed drowned; identified by number 9,430.

## Key lines

> All this time the poor were dying of hunger.

Meanwhile, the impoverished were starving.

_Highlights the contrast between military extravagance and societal neglect._

> Yesterday, a convict belonging to the detachment on board of the Orion , on his return from rendering assistance to a sailor, fell into the sea and was drowned. The body has not yet been found; it is supposed that it is entangled among the piles of the Arsenal point: this man was committed under the number 9,430, and his name was Jean Valjean.

The newspaper reported that a convict from the Orion, after helping a sailor, drowned and his body was missing; he was Jean Valjean, prisoner number 9,430.

_Official account of Valjean's apparent death, setting up his potential escape._

## Links

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