Because this has been on my mind a lot, and we won’t reach the barricade chapters until next summer.
Characters as symbols. Normally, I’m very much against this, preferring to think of characters are people, with motivations and backstory and development and other, human, traits. But ever since that post about Jehan and Bahorel standing in for Hugo’s Romantic friends, and being the first members of their circle to die…I’ve come to accept how very elaborately symbolic these chapters are?
Anyway:
Grantaire: Cynicism was passed out to begin with. Everyone’s fighting for ideals at this barricade, so poor Grantaire is just unconscious in the corner from the start. He wasn’t invited, anyway.
Bahorel: The very first casualty [of our named group] is the one eager for fighting. Like, if this wasn’t obviously a meta-commentary on the experience of being in combat, it just became that. The first thing to go is joy in fighting.
Prouvaire: Gentleness and appreciation for beauty dies next. Innocence, in a way? Also, this makes 2/3 of our resident Romantics gone, sacrificing themselves for the future [which our third brooding Romantic hero will actually get to realize].
[Mabeuf, Eponine & Gavroche have their own things going on.]
Bossuet: Bossuet’s optimistic and very unlucky. In quick succession, we lose ‘good humor’…
Feuilly: …international brotherhood/looking at the big picture…
Courfeyrac: …friendship and joi de vivre…
Joly:..and the rest of our optimism. I sort of see Joly & Bossuet as different forms of optimism: liveliness facing fear (at least, fear of disease) and facing ill-fortune.
Combeferrre: Philosophy helps others to the end, and is also the last casualty of the street battle. From here (having lost all these characters/the good things they represent), Hugo makes it explicit that any sense of nobility is gone, and it’s all just awful, gory, and horrible–the descriptions of the fighting degrade into diabolical comparisons.
Marius: Our last romantic, and ‘the soul’ of the barricade, continues fighting while wounded. He’s incapacitated, but not killed, and lives to see the future.
Enjolras: The ideal of republican virtu, ‘the logic of the revolution’,remains completely unharmed even after everyone else is dead. Ideas are bulletproof, etc. At the extreme end, cynicism–Grantaire–finally wakes up, but only to voluntarily die at idealism’s feet. The fighting ends.
But the soul persists. It goes (literally) underground, it hides, it slowly recuperates. But it lives. And it will be happy.
nothing, I repeat NOTHING compares to the feeling of utter gut wrenching, chest smashing grief of watching JVJ die……it’s so fun to love the Amis and experience the euphoria of Do U Hear the Ppl Sing and let yourself believe for a moment that les miser-fucking-ables is about those kids and their passion for freedom BUT LOOK, ValJ out lives them all and once you arrive at the finish line of the EPILOGUE, once you’ve dragged yourself through the sadness of Fantine and Eponine and Gavroche and the Amis, and then YOU HEAR IT?? The DAMN REPRISE of Fantines death, WITH THE SLOW MOURNFUL OBOE THAT ECHOES MY WEEPING and “Now you are here….” begins and suddenly you just FUCKING REMEMBER JEAN VALJEAN and how we started with him two hours ago, angry and bitter and shaking his fist at the world and NOW WE ARE HERE watching a man who has overcome so much, DYING, watching a man who changes himself, who knew he couldn’t fix the whole world and decided to focus on just one woman, and then just one child’s happiness FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE
And you’re just sitting there in your seat, watching him die
and you think, with the hazy cloud of tears in your eyes and that damn melody echoing in your ears, that Les Miserables is about him, it’s about Jean Valjean. And how he loved so damn much. AND THEN IT HAPPENS. FANTINE IS THERE AND SO IS EPONINE AND HE STANDS UP AND HIS BLANKET COMES OFF AND HE’S HALOED IN WHITE LIGHT AND YOU KNOW HE’S GONE and then those fuckers say it……. the entire point of les Mis
To love another person is to see the face of God
and it’s over. You’re DONE. TEARS. because damnit, they’re right. And somehow SOMEHOW grief is suddenly replaced by some kind of pure redemptive light in your chest—no your SOUL—and it’s back ……..Do u hear the ppl sing.
Listen
nothing compares to the feeling of true, complete, overwhelming, bitter sweet, utter PEACE of knowing that Valjean’s life is over and that his fucking love that came from the Bishop and touched Fantine’s life and Cosette’s and Marius’ and even javert’s is gonna continue to live throughout the rest of TIME AND SPACE and even
live through you too
what a fucking show. damnit. Shit. Ain’t nothing like it my dudes
As soon as the faint rattling of the carriage
wafted up the promenade out of the fog rising from the river, the bell on the
main tower began to toll. The nightmarish sound echoed back from the moors,
leaving the will-o’-the-wisps shivering over their marshes. It reached the
edges of the dark forests where it got caught in the threatening arch of
spindling branches and trunks of the black barked beeches, birches and oak
trees in the rustle of a gust of wind. The last leaves clinging to barren twigs
sailed to the muddy ground on its back, long dead before they touched the bare
earth around roots that desperately hang on for what little footing the gaunt
earth promised them. Lastly, the eerie peal drifted down to the shimmering
lake, swirling above the surface for a moment before dipping under water,
muffled by the crystal waves. The sound of the bells resounded over the abandoned
manor house, clinking the window panes in their setting. It chased a couple of
ravens off their perch on the bell tower, followed them through the abandoned
gardens and settled on the wall surrounding the graveyard beyond the hill.
The ornate wrought-iron gates creaked open,
moved by an invisible hand to allow the carriage to enter the courtyard. Its
wheels scattered the light gravel in all directions as it took a turn in front
of the main entrance, a pale lantern dangling from the coachman’s seat. The figure
perched on it was swathed in a cloak that obscured both head and body, leaving
nothing to see but the gleaming eyes under the hood. Gloved hands held onto the
reigns of four black horses that seemed eager to run on, steam billowing from
their muzzles and ears dancing in excitement. The coachman restrained them with
obvious struggle. For a moment, the fight seemed undecided, then the horses
settled, huffing more steam into the crisp evening air. A door was opened, the
carriage house tilted to one side and gravel scrunched under boot soles.
overall: who? / i hate them / i dislike them / kinda wanna fight them / they’re alright / i like them / i love them / *accidentally drops thousands of pictures of them* opinion: again, who??? / the purest bean / cinnamon roll / who knows really / sinnamon roll / the problematic fav otp(s): Bossuet and Musichetta other ship(s): I can’t imagine him with anyone else #noromo ship(s): Grantaire, Combeferre crack ship(s): Those Nice Pants that Bahorel suggested fav headcanon(s): is the smallest in the JBM trio (perfect for the middle of a hug sandwich), is often asked by Jehan to get skulls from the medical institute, is very very soft
I actually have this head cannon that all of the Amis are from different French speaking parts of the world and thus they all have slightly different dialects that at one point all merge into one dialect. Like give me Haitian Combeferre, French Canadian Joly, Swiss Marius (speaking five languages), Moroccan Bahorel, from New Orleans Cajun French speaking Grantaire, and of course French Enjolras and Courfeyrac (best friends since childhood).
The head cannon also being:
One day Grantaire ticks off Enjolras, so Enjolras thus turns around and screams at Grantaire “Your French is terrible” Grantaire in response says “So is your English but you don’t see me complaining”
*If you have other suggestions for an amis and their dialect of French reblog with the addition*
Bossuet is probably from Acadian Nova Scotia. The accent confuses the hell out of people, or so I hear.
¯_( ಠ_ಠ)_/¯ 