In this second part of Les Miserables, the author presents a portrait of Jean Valjean, a good man but sentenced to prison for stealing bread to feed his family. Being in prison the man tries several times to escape so his sentence grows in every attempt. He is released after serving 19 years in prison. This time of confinement changes his life, he becomes a cold and distant man ...

In the third and fourth part, tells the story of Fantine, a girl who falls in love but is suddenly left by her lover while she is pregnant. Disconsolate, she decides to give a decent education to her daughter whom Cossette calls. But the single mother's life is harder than she expected and the finances are not enough. He then asks his family to take care of the child. This new situation transforms the life of both, the family demands a lot of money to Fantine for the care of its daughter, at the same time that they mistreat and they overwhelm to Cossette.

This fifth part speaks of a man who does not know how he is making a lot of money; Your name: Monsieur Madeleine. This man is actually Jean Valjean, has undergone a very important change in his life and has been doing business and investing. Here appears a man (Javert) who thinks he knows the true identity of Monsieur Madeleine; Realizes that it is Jean Valjean, but he has no way to prove it, so he summons a trial in which Valjean, seeing that he has no escape and to fix everything at once, confesses his true identity before the whole assembly.