skygiants | (no subject)

All right. Book Four: "Saint-Denis and the Idyll of the Rue Plumet," otherwise known as BRACE YOURSELVES, EVERYONE, WE'RE UP TO THE BARRICADES.

Before I get to that, though, I want to talk a bit about Eponine, and also Gavroche

But let's start out with Eponine.

So guys, remember that time that Eponine stopped her father and a bunch of extremely angry convicts from breaking into Valjean's house? "What the devil!" she says, "this summer, I'll be hungry; this winter, I'll be cold. Are they some fools, these geese, to think they can scare a girl?" She laughs at them, as they menace her with knives "What is it to me whether somebody picks me up tomorrow on the pavement of the Rue Plumet?" She says: "I just cry out. They come, bang! You're six, but I'm everybody."

And six of the baddest dudes in Paris just turn tail and slink away -- because yeah, they're big and scary, but what can you do with a girl who is actually starving to death, who has only not thrown herself in the river yet because it's too cold and there are easier ways to die, who knows that life can be better, because it has been better, but it won't ever be better for her again?

So remember that time that Eponine tells Marius that his friends are fighting on the barricade (and Marius was like "???? I have friends? NEWS TO ME," but we'll get to that later) because she can't have anything of her own, and she's going to die one way or another, and if she's going to die she might as well get him to die too; remember that time she jumps in front of a bullet because it turns out she doesn't actually want him to die, probably, or at least not yet?

If Jean Valjean has a shadow double in Les Mis, I think it's Eponine. They're two people who know enough to know very well their own capacity for evil; who think that love for someone else might save them, might make them better, except it turns out that love can be incredibly selfish as well as incredibly transcendent. Valjean deals with it better than Eponine, but then, he's a lot older. And no one ever bought Eponine's soul for God.

-- and now, moving onto other people who are also doomed and starving to death, LET'S TALK ABOUT GAVROCHE.

So the first time we really get a good sense of Gavroche is when he happens to be hanging out in an alley when a pretty-boy robber named Montparnasse makes the mistake of trying to rob Jean Valjean.

Jean Valjean of course takes the kid down in like two seconds, and uses the opportunity to just UNLEASH ALL HIS PRISON PTSD on Montparnasse. "Don't steal! BECAUSE PRISON IS THE WORST THING THAT CAN POSSIBLY HAPPEN TO YOU AND LET ME TELL YOU WHY IN EXCRUCIATING DETAIL why no I have never been to see a therapist, why do you ask?" And then after like twenty minutes of ranting he just throws his purse at a stunned Montparnasse and storms off.

Gavroche, who thinks this is basically the most hilarious thing to ever happen -- and rightly so -- promptly pickpockets the purse off Montparnasse and throws it to an old man who's starving, because why not, and then bounces off.

Some other things Gavroche does over the course of this section:
- patriotically throws stones through every window and lamp he comes across -- you can't have lights on during a revolution, after all!
- adopts a couple even younger kids off the street and marches them off to live in his elephant (they are secretly his brothers, but he doesn't know that)
- rescues some dude from prison who turns out to be his father
- insults basically every old lady he meets
- gets into bitchfights with Enjolras ("Why don't you give me a musket?" "When there are enough for the men, we'll give them to the children." "Well, if you're killed before me, I'll take yours!")
- then denounces Javert as an inspector (mostly so he can get his hands on Javert's musket)
- accidentally terrifies a whole regiment of National Guard into thinking he's a full revolutionary force while trying to drag a cart off to the barricade

AND SPEAKING OF THE BARRICADE!

Okay, basically my favorite scene in the whole book is the one where Joly (the hypochondriac), Bossuet (the unlucky one) and Grantaire (the drunk one) are hanging out in their favorite cafe when a gamin brings a letter to Bossuet from Enjolras.

BOSSUET: Hey, Enjolras says Lamarque is dead and his funeral is going on like right now.
JOLY: But I have a cold and it is raining. :(
BOSSUET: I guess we can miss the funeral without missing the revolution . . .
JOLY: I mean, I'm totally in for the revolution! But funerals are basically boring, and I am le tired. :(
BOSSUET: Fine, we can have a nap and THEN join the revolution.

(Meanwhile, Grantaire is having a hissy fit because Enjolras didn't write and tell him about the revolution, and Joly and Bossuet are like "but didn't you just spent three pages ranting about how the revolution is stupid?" and Grantaire is like "WELL NOW I THINK IT'S EXTRA STUPID >:| >:| >:|")

Anyway, after they've drunk a bit more wine, they see their friends marching down the street -- distinguished from all the other bands of revolutionaries by the one in the rear shouting "POLAND FOREVER!" despite the fact that the revolution has nothing to do with Poland -- and they lean out the window and are like 'HEY GUYS WHERE ARE YOU GOING?'

ENJOLRAS: We're starting the revolution!
BOSSUET: But we are lazy and don't want to move! Let's just start the revolution HERE.

So . . . they start the revolution there. Because Joly was le tired, and WHY NOT.

This is also a beautiful example of how these beautiful idiots (whom I love) are not one hundred percent thinking things through; they keep telling the innkeeper that they are fighting for HER RIGHTS and she is like "guys, I would like to have the right to have an inn that is not full of dead revolutionaries. THANKS."

So they're all starting up the revolution, and an old man who is Marius' only friend tragically dies --

-- which, by the way, I am pretty sure is personal vengeance on me, because I made the mistake of making a comment to someone the other day that "well, at least after everyone dies on the barricade, Marius will still have M. Mabeuf!" I TOTALLY DID NOT REMEMBER HIS TRAGIC DEATH. He kept books and was a botanist! He did not care about the revolution AT ALL! I am not convinced that Victor Hugo did not change the text from beyond the grave just to spite me --

-- and finally, finally, Marius turns up, after the whole mess where Cosette has moved away and now he's in despair and so on. (Courfeyrac had tried to tell him about Lamarque's funeral earlier and Marius was like ????? is this relevant ????? See above, re: Marius has friends?)

A sidenote on Marius, by the way; Marius spends a lot of this book in serious depression, like actual depression, like I think Victor Hugo knew what he was talking about depression, the kind where you spend all day sitting around thinking "I'm going to do things!" and then can't get up the energy to do anything. So that's what's going on with Marius.

He has also just quarreled with his grandfather again, because his grandfather made the mistake of suggesting he take Cosette as his mistress, and Marius is like *CLUTCHES PEARLS* "MY VIRGIN EARS! MY BELOVED COSETTE!" and flounces away in a huff.

Anyway, Marius turns up at the barricade, because he's in despair as mentioned, and watches everything going down, and weighs his pros and cons, and his pros and cons look like this:

PROS OF FIGHTING ON THE BARRICADE:
- help one remaining sort-of-friend (roommate Courfeyrac)
- die

CONS OF FIGHTING ON THE BARRICADE:
- Dad and Napoleon would probably not approve of the revolution :(

And he basically twiddles his thumbs over this moral dilemma, as is per the Marius course, until Courfeyrac and Gavroche are both about to die and basically going "SURE WOULD BE CONVENIENT IF SOMEONE LEAPED IN TO SAVE US RIGHT NOW!" At which point Marius does. And then he does his dramatic "I WILL BLOW UP THIS BARRICADE SO HELP ME," and Eponine dies, and he gets Cosette's new address from her, and also remembers belatedly that, oops, Eponine and Gavroche are both Thenardiers and he sort of owes a debt of life to the Thenardiers, and . . . Eponine is already dead . . . oops?

But hey, maybe he can save Gavroche! So he gives Gavroche the letter to take to Cosette.

Gavroche is like "sure! I can do that and get back in plenty of time to die at the barricade! :D SEE YOU LATER, MARIUS, SAME DOOMED TIME, SAME DOOMED PLACE" and scampers off.

Once again: NICE GOING MARIUS. A+ HERO WORK, THERE.

The last thing to mention about the barricade is Javert, who cannot actually tell a lie. So he's basically skulking around hoping no one will ask him who he is. And as soon as someone actually does, he's all "I AM A POLICE INSPECTOR. Better tie me up and shoot me!" OH JAVERT.

But the only person Enjolras actually shoots at this time is someone who shoots a civilian. After which Enjolras declaims that shooting people is terrible, but fortunately he has pronounced sentence on himself also, and he's going to die at the barricade, so that's all right then! OH ENJOLRAS.