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How did Victor Hugo oppose the death penalty in The Last Days of a Condemned?
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Victor Hugo
French poet, novelist, and dramatist Victor Hugo, photograph by Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon). Hugo's best-loved works are the novels Notre-Dame de Paris (1831; The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) and Les Misérables (1862).
In his 1829 novel The Last Days of a Condemned (Le Dernier Jour dâun condamnĂ©), Victor Hugo opposed the death penalty by crafting a powerful humanitarian protest. The narrative focuses on the internal experience of a prisoner during his final day, effectively humanizing the condemned individual and forcing the reader to confront the psychological toll and moral implications of state-sanctioned execution. By centering the story on the prisoner's perspective, Hugo moved beyond abstract debate to highlight the cruelty and injustice inherent in the practice.1