Jean Valjean is released from Bagne of Toulon prison after serving 19 years for stealing bread and repeated escape attempts.

Bishop Myriel welcomes the exhausted, turned-away ex-convict Valjean into his home and shares his dinner with him.

Police catch Valjean with the bishop's stolen silverware, but Myriel insists the silver was a gift and gives Valjean the candlesticks too.

Working under the name Madeleine, Valjean single-handedly lifts a crushing cart to save Fauchelevent, arousing Inspector Javert's suspicions.

Javert informs Valjean that an innocent man named Champmathieu is about to be tried and sentenced as Jean Valjean.

Valjean enters the courtroom and publicly declares himself to be Jean Valjean, freeing the innocent Champmathieu.

Fantine dies in the hospital after Javert confronts Valjean at her bedside and reveals his true identity.

Valjean saves a sailor from certain death during prison labour, then falls into the sea and is declared dead.

Valjean pays Thénardier 1,500 francs on Christmas Eve and walks away from the inn with Cosette.

Valjean and Cosette flee Javert through the streets of Paris and escape over a wall into a convent garden.

Fauchelevent recognizes Valjean in the convent garden and arranges for both Valjean and Cosette to live and study there.

Marius slips Eponine's handwritten note through a wall crack, confusing Thénardier's gang and allowing Valjean to escape the robbery.

Valjean volunteers to execute the captured Javert at the barricade but secretly unties him and lets him go.

Valjean carries the badly wounded Marius through the Paris sewer system after the barricade collapses.

Marius and Cosette rush to Valjean's bedside and reconcile with him before he dies peacefully.

Jean Valjean's story begins with his release from a brutal prison sentence and a transformative encounter with Bishop Myriel, whose gift of silver candlesticks sets Valjean on a path toward redemption. After building a new life as Mayor Madeleine, Valjean sacrifices his freedom twice — first by revealing himself at Champmathieu's trial and then by losing Fantine to the relentless Inspector Javert. He resurfaces to rescue Cosette from the abusive Thénardier family and builds a quiet life with her, evading Javert until they find sanctuary in a Parisian convent. Years later, the political revolution draws Valjean to the barricades, where he saves the life of the young man who loves Cosette. He carries the wounded Marius through the city's sewers to safety, and after a lifetime of sacrifice, Valjean finally receives the reconciliation and peace he sought his entire life.

The defining moments of Jean Valjean's lifelong pursuit of redemption.

Tholomyès and his friends abandon Fantine and her companions with a callous farewell letter at a dinner.

Fantine leaves her infant daughter Cosette in the care of the Thénardier innkeeper family.

Fantine is fired from Valjean's factory after co-workers expose her secret — that she has an illegitimate child.

Desperate to pay the Thénardiers' growing demands, Fantine sells her hair and her front teeth.

Under the assumed name Madeleine, Valjean arrives in Montreuil-sur-mer and revitalizes the town with a new manufacturing method.

Valjean encounters young Cosette struggling to carry a heavy water bucket alone on a cold Christmas Eve.

Marius finds a note from his deceased father asking him to track down and help a man named Thénardier.

Marius moves out of his royalist grandfather's house after their political disagreement grows too bitter to resolve.

Marius spots Cosette walking in a public park and falls immediately and deeply in love with her.

Marius watches through a crack in his wall as the Thénardier gang ambushes Valjean inside their apartment.

Javert and his officers raid the Thénardiers' apartment and arrest the gang, while Valjean slips away undetected.

Cosette tells Marius that she and her guardian are planning to leave Paris and move to England.

Marius visits his grandfather and begs permission to marry Cosette, but his grandfather refuses after an argument.

Soldiers storm the wine shop behind the barricade and execute the trapped revolutionaries, including Enjolras.

Marius fully recovers from his battle wounds and his grandfather changes his mind, granting permission to marry Cosette.

The novel's secondary storylines begin with Tholomyès abandoning Fantine, sending her into a spiral of poverty that forces her to leave baby Cosette with the cruel Thénardier family. Meanwhile, Valjean quietly establishes himself in a new town under a false name, setting the stage for his eventual rescue of Cosette on Christmas Eve. As Valjean and Cosette build their life in Paris, a young student named Marius is discovering his revolutionary father's legacy and falling hopelessly in love with Cosette from afar. When the Thénardier gang is arrested after their failed robbery, the collision of these worlds accelerates — and the lovers' happiness is soon threatened by Valjean's plan to flee to England. Marius survives the barricades and a devastating injury, and after his grandfather changes his mind, the young couple is finally free to marry.

Fantine's downfall, Cosette's rescue, and the road to revolution.

Valjean steals a coin from a boy named Petit Gervais and immediately breaks down weeping with remorse.

Javert arrests Fantine after a street incident, and Valjean uses his authority as mayor to order her immediate release.

Valjean spends a tortured night debating whether to confess his identity or allow the innocent Champmathieu to be condemned.

At Fantine's hospital bedside, Javert reveals Valjean's true identity as a convict, and Fantine dies in shock.

After escaping prison and being declared dead, Valjean secretly retrieves a fortune he had buried before his recapture.

Valjean steps out of the inn and buys the doll Cosette admired in a shop window, then gives it to her.

Marius joins the revolutionary student group the Friends of the ABC and develops deep admiration for their leader Enjolras.

Marius recognizes the philanthropist visiting his neighbors through the wall crack as the same man he saw with Cosette in the park.

Eponine leads Marius to Cosette's address on the Rue Plumet, despite being in love with Marius herself.

Eponine confronts and threatens her father's gang outside Valjean's house, forcing them to abandon their planned burglary.

Elderly Mabeuf climbs to the top of the barricade to raise the fallen revolutionary flag and is immediately shot dead.

Mortally wounded Eponine, disguised as a young man, reveals herself to Marius and hands him a letter from Cosette.

Valjean intercepts Marius's letter from Gavroche, reads it, and decides he must go fight alongside the revolutionaries at the barricade.

Gavroche is shot and killed by soldiers while gathering ammunition from fallen enemies outside the barricade.

Thénardier's attempt to extort Marius accidentally reveals that Valjean was the man who carried Marius to safety through the sewers.

Les Misérables is driven by a series of pivotal decisions and shocking revelations that alter the course of every character's life. Valjean's earliest turning points — his anguished theft from young Petit Gervais and his tortured night weighing Champmathieu's fate — reveal a man determined to choose conscience over self-preservation, even at devastating personal cost. The Thénardier family's schemes create cascading crises, while Marius's growing radicalism and his recognition of Valjean at the Jondrettes' apartment draw all the major storylines into collision at the revolutionary barricades. The deaths of Eponine and Gavroche, each sacrificing themselves for others, mark the tragedy at the heart of the uprising. The final revelation — delivered inadvertently by the scheming Thénardier in a failed extortion attempt — at last restores Marius's understanding of Valjean's true character and gives the dying man the forgiveness he has sought his whole life.