Word: moralizes
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...stealing a loaf of bread to save his sister's starving child, he remains unrepentant. Given shelter by a bishop, the hardened Valjean robs him, only to be recaptured by police; when the clergyman backs up his false claim that the booty was a gift, Valjean undergoes a moral transformation. He also undergoes a legal one: he destroys his papers, takes a new name and eventually becomes a wealthy man. Twice he risks all to save other men; then, having befriended the dying prostitute Fantine, he once more eludes Javert to devote himself, in hiding, to the welfare of Fantine...
Just as the moral center of Hugo's Les Miserables is Valjean, so the driving force of the stage show is Colm Wilkinson. An Irish singer largely untrained as an actor until he originated the role in London, Wilkinson, 43, has a superb pop-rock voice, whether in the assertive Who Am I or the wistful Bring Him Home. Unexpectedly, he encompasses the outsize moral stature of Valjean, making believable both his general saintliness and his outbursts of animal ferocity. Only one other member of the original cast is in the U.S. company: Frances Ruffelle, who as a tomboyish adolescent...
...desert island castaway, throws one of the longest shadows in literature. For more than two centuries, he and his black companion Friday have provoked countless imitations, parodies, cartoons and advertisements. But from the earliest days, in addition to the parasol and firearm, the beachcombers have also carried some heavy moral baggage. Rousseau considered Daniel Defoe's 1719 novel vital to the education of ambitious youth; Coleridge regarded Crusoe as the "universal representative"; and Karl Marx found the plot an illustration of basic economics...
...without doubt gave much more in much more important fields than we received." Said Prime Minister Shamir of the convicted spy: "The State of Israel didn't hire him and didn't assign him espionage missions." As for Pollard, Shamir observed, his plight was a "human problem, maybe a moral problem," but it was "not a problem that the State of Israel must concern itself with...
...Committee, declared, "Many of us feel that what Pollard did was a mistake, wrong, a crime, a sin . . . and what the Israeli officials did was wrong to initiate and even dumber to continue." Even normally pro-Israel U.S. legislators were embarrassed by Pollard's protestations that he had a "moral obligation" to spy for Israel. Such statements, said Florida Democratic Congressman Lawrence Smith, "are deeply distressing to American Jews, particularly those in the Government or close to it." On the other hand, Smith added, "much of the furor comes from circles that would be just as happy if there were...