I understand Javert character arc rationally. But it makes me a little sad and a little angry when he finally realizes he was wrong about his own beliefs, that he was actually a jerk to people and not the other way around, so when he can finally change his perspective, repent and change his attitude, he chooses to kill himself?
And not because he regretted the things he did, but because he wanted to be "irreproachable" for life, and just the prospect of not having been and seeing someone else with more morals than him (Jean saves his life when he has the opportunity to kill him, and Javert can't accept that the guy he considered a "dirty and immoral fugitive" was actually someone capable of being just and merciful, showing that Javert's opinion of him was wrong. Javert himself seems to think that if the situation were reversed, he wouldn't have acted like Jean), so he prefers to die rather than accept that, he prefers to die than to live knowing that he has a life debt to someone he considered lesser than him.
Of course, he prefers that to accepting that the world is not as he imagined. Thinking about "inherently good police officers, and inherently bad criminals and miserables" and discovering that the world isn't so black and white, so Manichaean, causes him to fall into such a cognitive dissonance that he prefers to kill himself to escape it.
It's tragic. He had the chance to change and do things differently from everything he had done in his life up to that point, but he didn't!
He's a miserable person too, but in a different way.
I don't consider him a villain, but I don't consider him a victim either.
I think he's a good example of how some societal views can shape us in a misguided and distorted way regarding the world's ills. Of how it's not good to have a generalized view of groups of people. Of how not to lose empathy, nor degrade other people, even if somene or the system tell you that the other person/group is "scum who deserves bad treatment." We cannot lose sight of our sense of empathy and humanity.
We live in a world where vulnerable people are still marginalized by the system, still silenced, still targeted by hate speech that echoes radically. Javert is an example of what not to be.
Don't be someone who echoes hate speech against a group of people (in his case, prisoners, prostitutes, the destitute, the poor, etc.), but it can be any group. Don't let yourself be contaminated and echo hate speech, don'tstratify a part of the population, don't despise them, see all them as human beings, not as targets.
Killing yourself won't change what you did, or who you were. That's what Javert teaches me.
We have to see people as people, as equals, as humans like us, with empathy, with consideration, as someone who has the same right to dignity as we do, not as labels. Not as targets. Not must reduce them to mere insult words. We should try not to act in an insulting or abusive way towards others. Nor should we let ourselves be swayed by social stigmas.
Even with people who have made a mistake or who made bad decisions in their lives, we should try to be more lenient and compassionate.
The Bishop spared Jean because he saw in Jean a person to be saved, not a criminal; Javert never saw Jean as a person, only a criminal to be punished.
... (In the same way that he only saw Fantine as a prostitute, not as a vulnerable woman in need of help. Just as for him the line between poverty and indignity is almost indistinct. In the same way that he only saw the Amis as a group of troublemaking youths instead of people fighting against system).
He did not see them as diverse and complex human beings, but rather as categories, limiting himself to labeling and categorizing people. He ignored the uniqueness of each individual and reduced them to a single characteristic (sometimes negative or distorted by his own worldview)...
The bishop and Javert are characters whose behaviors are polar opposites; the bishop's behavior is written to give the reader an example of what we should try to be, while Javert's behavior is one that we should avoid replicating.
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