Jean Valjean: After being imprisoned for 19 years and then released, he tore up his yellow paper naming him as a former convict and broke his parole. Under the name of Monsiuer Madeleine, he become mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer, owner of the factory. He saves Fantine from jail and when she dies a few days later, sets off in search for her daughter Cosette and raises her as his own child, while still on the run from the law.
Javert: A police inspector, he follows the law to the letter, believing that no crime can go unpunished, even his own. While not on the lookout for Valjean, Javert keeps stumbling across him. When captured by the revolutionaries as a spy on the barricades, Valjean sets him free instead of killing him, leading Javert to eventually throw himself in the river Seine to escape his conflicting morals.
Fantine: Cosette's unwed mother. Trying to scrape enough money together to pay for Cosette's care, she is fired from the factory in which she works for having an illegitamite child. After being fired, she prostitues herself and is arrested by Javert. She dies in the hospital after being saved from jail by M. Madeleine. 
M. and Mme. Thenardier (ten-ahr-DYAY): The inkeepers that Fantine entrusted to take care of 6-year-old Cosette. However, instead of buying the little girl nice clothes, the Thenardiers took the money Fantine sent and spent it on their own daughters, Eponine and Azelma, all the while sending letters saying that Cosette was sick and they needed even more money for her medicine. Years after Valjean ahs taken Cosette away, they lose thier inn and go to live on the streets of Paris. Thenardier has a gang who regularly burglarizes houses and mugs people for money. Thenardier is saved at the end by Marius, who is in debt to him for saving his father's life on the fields of Waterloo.
Cosette: Fantine's daughter. She is trated like a servant by the Thenardiers, given only rags to wear while their own children are treated like princesses, yet Cosette maintains a hopeful demeanor. After Valjean takes her away from them to live in a convent, she grows up in the school there. After she graduates and they move to Paris, she falls in love with and eventually marries Marius.
Eponine: The oldest child of the Thenardiers, she is spolied as a little girl, then ends up on the street when the family inn goes bankrupt. She is part of her father's gang, at the same time having fallen in love with Marius, who sees her only as a friend. After showing him where his love Cosette lives, she dies on the barricades, throwing herself in front of a musket that is aimed at him.
Gavroche: The youngest child of the Thenardiers, he is ignored by them on the streets and helps out other street kids younger than he. Gavroche dies on the barricades, shot down while trying to gather more bullets from the bodies of the dead.
Marius: A prominent figure in the revolution whose father was saved at Waterloo by Thenardier. He falls in love with Cosette while watching her walk through the park every evening, and eventually gets Eponine to tell him where she lives, and they meet for the first time. He is shot and wounded on the barricades, saved only by a mysterious person whose identity he does not know carrying him to his grandfather's house. Thenardier, in trying to convince Marius that Valjean is a murderer, instead shows him a piece of cloth off one of Marius' own jacket, taken from the night of the barricades' fall, showing Marius that Valjean is the one who saved him.
Enjolras: The leader of the revolution, his only love is his country. His attempts to rally the people succeed at first, but end up with only a few students, leading the tiny army at the barricade to fall in only a few battles, with Enjolras dying while waving the flag.
Les Amis d'ABC: The followers of Enjolras and all that came to the revolution when the barricades went up. All were killed in the final battle.
Read my summary of the Story.
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© 1997 serrah@angelfire.com
