The Wretched Ones

Literature is like history. If we don’t learn the lessons from great literature, we are condemned to repeat them. Great literature can also tell us who we are or who we can be. Take Les Misérables. One subplot within the novel concerns Fantine, a poor, uneducated girl who falls in love with Tholomyès, a rich, well-to-do university student. He seduces Fantine, gets her pregnant, and then disappears.

For Tholomyes, it was just a few months of recreational sex. When he disappears, he doesn’t spare another thought for her. But for Fantine, he has destroyed her life. The story reminds us that choices we make affect other people.

In early 19th century France, no one would hire an unwed mother, so Fantine pays a wicked couple to watch her daughter so that she can get work in a different town. Still, at the factory, some jealous women find out her truth and report her to the boss; he cannot keep an unwed mother among the respectable workers, so he fires her. It’s one more tragic turn in her story.

As it goes for many women in poverty, she turns to sex work. Not the “empowering” work Hollywood sometimes tries to convince us of. It is dehumanizing — and sometimes violent. But Fantine is out of options to survive — and she needs money to send to the heartless couple who keep her daughter. Fantine is mistreated, beaten, and used up by evil men. She dies of disease and hunger, leaving her daughter an orphan.

I’m guessing Tholomyès went on to have a very comfortable and respectable life.

I think back to DOGE and Elon Musk, the man who said, “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” (Snopes) Trump entrusted that guy with “cutting waste and fraud” from the federal budget. I remember him in 2025 waving his chainsaw around at CPAC as a symbol of his cutting the budget. The crowd cheered. He had no clue how his cuts would affect real people.

What we call “cutting fat in our budget” has meant life or death to individuals worldwide. Still, if I told you these cuts have resulted in an estimated 500,000-700,000 deaths annually (Center for Global Development), that might not affect us much. As the saying goes, “The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.” * Instead, let’s consider the story of Lama, a transgender aid worker in Nepal.

USAID was part of the budget that Musk decimated. Lama’s job, funded by USAID, involved working in marginalized communities to help stop the scourge of AIDS. “After the United States slashed its foreign aid funding last year, Lama and more than 280,000 aid workers worldwide found themselves out of a job.” (AP)

Just as Fantine had few options in the harsh society she lived in, Lama found herself in a similar position. In Nepal today, there are few legal job options for transgender people, so to lose her job was an especially crushing blow. Lama went from working with the vulnerable in marginalized communities to being forced into to sex work to avoid starvation.

This is now her story: “On the side of the highway, the night is a cacophony of blaring horns and the shouts of drunken men. Lama, 28 years old, softspoken and shy, walks quietly among them, equal parts desperation and dread. Beyond her fear of HIV is her fear of violence, which she and nearly all her former colleagues who have taken to the streets have endured.” (AP)

Musk mostly disappeared after the decisions he made. Those aid workers are poor, LGBTQ+, or transgender, but I don’t think Elon Musk had another thought about them. In fact, he has destroyed their lives.

In Les Miserables, the hope came through another subplot in characters like Bishop Myriel. A kind priest, he shelters and feeds the newly-released criminal Jean Valjean, who has nowhere to stay. The next day, Valjean steals the Bishop’s silverware and physically attacks him to escape. When the police bring him back, the Bishop does something very Gospel-like: he insists the silver was a gift. In fact, his response is prodigal: he also gives Valjean some silver candlesticks and scolds him for not taking them the first time.

These gifts completely change the trajectory of Valjean’s life. Valjean goes on to live a life that helps the powerless, like Fantine and her daughter. He goes on to follow in the steps of Christ.

The gift of USAID not only rescued people like Lama; it had put her on a path to help others.

We are all someone in the large story. We can choose to be a Tholomyès, who doesn’t value other’s humanity. Or Elon Musk, who chooses to see the poor and powerless as a statistic beneath our notice. Or we can be Bishop Myriel, who looks beyond the labels society places on vulnerable people and helps them instead.

Our choices have consequences either way. And let’s be clear: the choice to cut USAID was a tragedy.

* This quote has been attributed to Joseph Stalin, but that has never been proven. Still, it’s a chilling perspective on human suffering.

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