Javert - Moral Character

Moral Character

There are those who attack Javert's actions, and others who defend them. Victor Hugo intentionally created his protagonist and antagonist so that neither were entirely on one side of the boundary separating Good and Evil. Here is how he describes Javert:

Probity, sincerity, candor, conviction, the sense of duty, are things which may become hideous when wrongly directed; but which, even when hideous, remain grand: their majesty, the majesty peculiar to the human conscience, clings to them in the midst of horror; they are virtues which have one vice, – error. The honest, pitiless joy of a fanatic in the full flood of his atrocity preserves a certain lugubriously venerable radiance. Without himself suspecting the fact, Javert in his formidable happiness was to be pitied, as is every ignorant man who triumphs. Nothing could be so poignant and so terrible as this face, wherein was displayed all that may be designated as the evil of the good.

Javert has been described as a legalist, in that his "moral foundation ... is built strictly on legalism". He is "one of the most tragic legalists in Western literature" and "the consummate legalist."