Gavroche provides us with an excellent example of Hugo's technique in character development. Hugo introduces him to us first simply as a member of a species, the Paris gamin, and gives us to understand that he possesses the courage, impertinence, and ingenuity of his kind, but he says little about Gavroche as an individual. He remains for us only the silhouette of a boy with his hands in his pockets who passes us in the street whistling. In Part Four, however, Hugo begins to fill in this outline with precise details of speech and behavior. Gavroche wears a woman's shawl and gives it away on a cold day; he steals soap and buys bread for little boys; he helps criminals escape but steals from them to help poor old men; and he lives in an elephant. He becomes a contradictory, colorful, lively personality, totally unlike anyone but himself.
But this realistic character study also carries social and spiritual overtones. The picture of Gavroche aiding his little brothers and his father, quite unaware of their relationship to him, underlines a social tragedy—the disintegration of the family under the pressures of poverty. And his comment on his two little lost wards—"All the same, If I had children, I would take better care of them that that"—is a masterpiece of dramatic and social irony. This waif of the streets, to whom society has never given any material help or moral training, has a far deeper compassion for childhood and a far sharper sense of his moral responsibility toward the unprotected than an average adult French citizen like the barber.
Gavroche is also, however, a spiritual symbol. Without comment and without sentimentality, Hugo through him unfolds to us the natural simple Christianity of the gospels. With cheerful patience, Gavroche makes fun of his own troubles, but he is keenly sensitive to the sufferings of others. Hungry, he feeds M. Mabeuf; cold, he clothes the shivering girl he meets on the street. Whatever he has, he shares with the poor. He is kind to those who spitefully use him, and he even manages, against all odds, to honor his father and mother. Unlike Jean Valjean, who has to struggle with himself to achieve good, Gavroche comes by it naturally—even gaily; but neither is inferior to the other. Both are types of the Christian spirit triumphing over adversity.
