Book Review - 'The Last Day of a Condemned Man' by Victor Hugo

‘A first-person diary of a prisoner’s final day before being executed for an unspecified crime, Victor Hugo’s poignant tale vividly conveys the mental anguish of a man confronted with the intransigent mechanism of justice, as his mind seeks refuge in recollections from his past and philosophical musings on his inevitable fate.
As relevant today as when it was first published in 1829, ‘The Last Day of a Condemned Man’, is an eloquent plea for compassion and a masterpiece of realist fiction.’

Victor Hugo is possibly considered France’s greatest writer with his two most known novels being ‘Les Misérables’ and ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’.

Apart from being a novelist, poet and painter, he was also a human-rights activist, something that is reflected in this book.

I first read this book about 10 years ago and, despite knowing how the story ends, I still found it a fascinating read.

This isn’t a long story at all; my copy, part of the ‘Oneworld Classics’ series, is only 132 pages, and the story itself is contained in 75 pages.

The prologue, as it were, titled ‘A Comedy about a Tragedy’, is in dialogue form and was only included in the third edition.

The story, narrated in first person by the unnamed convict, begins in Bicêtre prison where we read his first words, ‘Condemned to death!’

He has already been in the prison for five weeks, ‘always alone with [this thought]… always bent under its weight.’

Although he admits to having committed the crime for which he will be executed, we never learn what the circumstances of that crime are.

Despite the title, ‘The Last Day…’, the story covers a period of about six weeks, from the condemned man’s time in Bicêtre prison to the Conciergerie, the (former) prison, part of the Palais de Justice, where the execution will be carried out.

Throughout, he discloses fragments of his life, in the form of his thoughts and writings in a journal, with the narration moving back and forth, from his experiences in the prison to thoughts of his young daughter and what her fate may be without a father, to his past, something of his early life, even his first love.

Yet, we never learn much of the man, and in that sense, we don’t know enough of him to decide if he is a sympathetic character or not, much as we would with the main character in any other novel.

It might well be that that was Hugo’s point for he was very much against capital punishment; the details of the convict and the crime are irrelevant because nothing, in Hugo’s opinion, justified that inhumane punishment as an option.

Having said that, being privy to the man’s innermost thoughts and fears, witnessing his mental and emotional changes as he counted down the days, then the hours, to his end, I found it hard to be unsympathetic.

Personally, I’m not against the death penalty, but only for certain crimes, especially those involving children, yet I can see Hugo’s point.

‘The Last Day of A Condemned Man’ is not an easy read and not something that can be labelled, ‘enjoyable’, but, I think, it is an important story, much like ‘The Enchanted’ by Rene Denfeld.

I suppose what can be called enjoyable is Hugo’s writing; as always, I like to give a few examples.

When the convict is being escorted across the courtyard to his sentencing:
‘The brisk morning air revived me. I looked up. The sky was blue and, interrupted by the tall chimneys, warm rays of sunlight traced patterns at the top of the tall dark walls of the prison. It was beautiful.’

In the courtroom just before his sentence is delivered:
‘The windows were open… the room was bright as if for a wedding; here and there cheerful sunbeams traced the brilliant outline of the casements along the floor, across the tables, sometimes broken up in the corners; and from the dazzling diamond shapes of the windows each ray carved out a great prism of golden dust in the air.’

His first sight of the prison:
‘… the closer you get the more dilapidated the palace turns out to be… it’s as if the walls have leprosy.’

Other prisoners teach him their slang:
‘It’s a whole language grafted onto everyday speech like a sort of hideous growth, a wart.’

Should he pin his hope on his appeal?
‘An appeal is a rope on which you dangle above the abyss; every second you hear it fraying until it snaps.’

During his journey from the prison to the Conciergerie:
‘… pale, fine drizzle… traced through the air like the strands of a spider’s web…’

There are also unexpected moments of humour, most of it dark.

This is definitely a story that makes you think, as you’re reading it and for a long time afterwards.