The Man Who Laughs By Victor Hugo Book Analysis

Unlock the more straightforward side of The Man Who Laughs with this concise and insightful summary and analysis! This engaging summary presents an analysis of The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo, a grandiose and poetic novel, in which a man who has been terribly disfigured as a child represents the fate of the people. Torn between carnal passion and pure love, struggling for his survival, hindered by his laughable face, the hero’s destiny is rich in tragedies and unexpected twists. Hugo wrote the novel while living on the Channel Islands, after he had been exiled there following his controversial, politically-charged writing. The Man Who Laughs has since been adapted for screen and stage many times, and continues to entertain audiences around the world. Find out everything you need to know about The Man Who Laughs in a fraction of the time! This in-depth and informative reading guide brings you: • A complete plot summary • Character studies • Key themes and symbols • Questions for further reflection Why choose BrightSummaries.com? Available in print and digital format, our publications are designed to accompany you in your reading journey. The clear and concise style makes for easy understanding, providing the perfect opportunity to improve your literary knowledge in no time. See the very best of literature in a whole new light with BrightSummaries.com!

Moving away from the explicitly political content of his previous novels, Victor Hugo turns to social commentary in The Man Who Laughs, an 1869 work that was made into a popular film in the 1920s. The plot deals with a band of miscreants who deliberately deform children to make them more effective beggars, as well as the long-lasting emotional and social damage that this abhorrent practice inflicts upon its victims.

Christmas Summary Classics This series contains summary of Classic books such as Emma, Arne, Arabian Nights, Pride and prejudice, Tower of London, Wealth of Nations etc. Each book is specially crafted after reading complete book in less than 30 pages. One who wants to get joy of book reading especially in very less time can go for it. About The Book The Man Who Laughs "The Man Who Laughs" ("L'Homme qui Rit") was called by its author "A Romance of English History," and was written during the period Hugo spent in exile in Guernsey. Like "The Toilers of the Sea," its immediate predecessor, the main theme of the story is human heroism, confronted with the superhuman tyranny of blind chance. As a passionate cry on behalf of the tortured and deformed, and the despised and oppressed of the world, "The Man Who Laughs" is irresistible. Of it Hugo himself says in the preface: "The true title of this book should be 'Aristocracy'"--inasmuch as it was intended as an arraignment of the nobility for their vices, crimes, and selfishness. "The Man Who Laughs" was first published in 1869. For more eBooks visit www.kartindo.com

A tragic tale of romance, oppression, and depraved nobility in seventeenth-century England by the author of LesMisérables. First published in 1869, The Man Who Laughs is an impassioned plea for recognition of the humanity of society’s outcasts and an indictment of the callous crimes of the aristocracy. It tells the story of Gwynplaine, a boy whose face was disfigured by order of the king into a ghastly, permanent smile. Outcast and homeless, Gwynplaine finds refuge with travelling carnival merchant Ursus and falls in love with a blind orphan girl named Dea. One day while performing a popular carnival routine, Gwynplaine captures the attention of bored and jaded Duchess Josiana. Used as a pawn by an agent of the royal court, Gwynplaine’s true identity and noble parentage is soon revealed. But when he is reinstated as a member of the aristocracy, Gwynplaine makes visible the monstrosity of the upper classes

The Man Who Laughs is a novel by Victor Hugo, originally published in April 1869 under the French title L'Homme qui rit. There have been several dramatic adaptations of The Man Who Laughs. These include a popular film, directed by Paul Leni and starring Conrad Veidt, Mary Philbin and Olga Baclanova. Hugo wrote The Man Who Laughs, or the Laughing Man, over a period of fifteen months while he was living in the Channel Islands, having been exiled from his native France due to the controversial political content of his previous novels. Hugo's working title for this book was On the King's Command, but a friend suggested The Man Who Laughs.

URSUS. I. Ursus and Homo were fast friends. Ursus was a man, Homo a wolf. Their dispositions tallied. It was the man who had christened the wolf: probably he had also chosen his own name. Having found Ursus fit for himself, he had found Homo fit for the beast. Man and wolf turned their partnership to account at fairs, at village fêtes, at the corners of streets where passers-by throng, and out of the need which people seem to feel everywhere to listen to idle gossip and to buy quack medicine. The wolf, gentle and courteously subordinate, diverted the crowd. It is a pleasant thing to behold the tameness of animals. Our greatest delight is to see all the varieties of domestication parade before us. This it is which collects so many folks on the road of royal processions. Ursus and Homo went about from cross-road to cross-road, from the High Street of Aberystwith to the High Street of Jedburgh, from country-side to country-side, from shire to shire, from town to town. One market exhausted, they went on to another. Ursus lived in a small van upon wheels, which Homo was civilized enough to draw by day and guard by night. On bad roads, up hills, and where there were too many ruts, or there was too much mud, the man buckled the trace round his neck and pulled fraternally, side by side with the wolf. They had thus grown old together. They encamped at haphazard on a common, in the glade of a wood, on the waste patch of grass where roads intersect, at the outskirts of villages, at the gates of towns, in market-places, in public walks, on the borders of parks, before the entrances of churches. When the cart drew up on a fair green, when the gossips ran up open-mouthed and the curious made a circle round the pair, Ursus harangued and Homo approved. Homo, with a bowl in his mouth, politely made a collection among the audience. They gained their livelihood. The wolf was lettered, likewise the man. The wolf had been trained by the man, or had trained himself unassisted, to divers wolfish arts, which swelled the receipts. "Above all things, do not degenerate into a man," his friend would say to him. Never did the wolf bite: the man did now and then. At least, to bite was the intent of Ursus. He was a misanthrope, and to italicize his misanthropy he had made himself a juggler. To live, also; for the stomach has to be consulted. Moreover, this juggler-misanthrope, whether to add to the complexity of his being or to perfect it, was a doctor. To be a doctor is little: Ursus was a ventriloquist. You heard him speak without his moving his lips. He counterfeited, so as to deceive you, any one's accent or pronunciation. He imitated voices so exactly that you believed you heard the people themselves. All alone he simulated the murmur of a crowd, and this gave him a right to the title of Engastrimythos, which he took. He reproduced all sorts of cries of birds, as of the thrush, the wren, the pipit lark, otherwise called the gray cheeper, and the ring ousel, all travellers like himself: so that at times when the fancy struck him, he made you aware either of a public thoroughfare filled with the uproar of men, or of a meadow loud with the voices of beasts—at one time stormy as a multitude, at another fresh and serene as the dawn. Such gifts, although rare, exist. In the last century a man called Touzel, who imitated the mingled utterances of men and animals, and who counterfeited all the cries of beasts, was attached to the person of Buffon—to serve as a menagerie.

The Man Who Laughs (also published under the title By Order of the King) is a novel by Victor Hugo, originally published in April 1869 under the French title L'Homme qui rit. It was adapted into a popular 1928 film, directed by Paul Leni and starring Conrad Veidt, Mary Philbin and Olga Baclanova. It was recently adapted for the 2012 French film L'Homme Qui Rit, directed by Jean-Pierre Améris and starring Gérard Depardieu, Marc-André Grondin and Christa Theret.

In 1855, Victor Hugo began a 15-year-long exile on the island of Guernsey, where he completed his longest and most famous work, "Les Misirables" and also "The Man Who Laughs" (L'Homme qui rit; 1869), also known as "By Order of the King," a historic novel with fictional characters, set in England 1688-1705: Nothing could be more happily imagined than the adventures of Gwynplaine, the itinerant mountebank, snatched suddenly out of his little way of life, and installed without preparation as one of the hereditary legislators of a great country. It is with a very bitter irony that the paper, on which all this depends, is left to float for years at the will of wind and tide. What can be finer in conception than that voice from the people heard suddenly in the House of Lords? The mask--a horrible laughter--stamped for ever "by order of the king" upon the face of this strange spokesman of democracy, adds another feature of justice to the scene.