By now we are used to Hugo's dramatic technique of shifting us abruptly from the known to the unfamiliar, in a plot dislocation that is more apparent than real, and we are confident that if we are patient he will eventually bring us back to Jean Valjean.
The problem of the abandoned child has already been evoked with Cosette. Hugo reverts to it here by introducing Gavrocbe, who is—in more ways than one, as we shall see—a sort of little brother to Cosette but even more unlucky than she. Where misfortune stupefied her, however, it has only sharpened Gavroche's wits.
In 1830, the average life expectancy of a bourgeois' child was eight years; of a worker's, two. This statistic goes a long way to explain the phenomenon of the Paris gamin: those children who survive parental neglect and the urban death rate have already proved themselves remarkably flexible and sturdy and are, in a sense, the pick of the crop. With keen observation and tender empathy, Hugo portrays their courage and their sufferings, their irreverence and their audacity, and glorifies them as symbols of that spirit that makes Paris the capital of the world. And finally, he uses them as a telling argument in favor of universal schooling: If they, unlettered, show so much ingenuity, intelligence, and wit, what could they not achieve with education?
