The Wretched, Tome 1, Books 1-3.
So! I am now 10% of the way through The Wretched. Yay! Go me! I have finished Books 1-3 of Volume 1.
So far...
Book 1.
The Bishop is awesome. Hooray the Bishop! My favorite bit was, I think, when he was off seeing to his parishioners, and because he's donated all of his salary + travel expenses to the poor, he could only afford to hire a donkey to travel. He gets to the town, and the peeps are all astonished that a bishop would show up on a donkey, because... bishops are rich! And he's all, ah, yes, ¡qué escándolo!, I know, please don't think I'm being arrogant because I'm riding the same animal Jesus did. BURN!
En français:
--Monsieur le maire, dit l'évêque, et messieurs les bourgeois, je vois
ce qui vous scandalise; vous trouvez que c'est bien de l'orgueil à un
pauvre prêtre de monter une monture qui a été celle de Jésus-Christ. Je
l'ai fait par nécessité, je vous assure, non par vanité. (1.4)
Book 2.
And then there is no room for Jean Valjean at the inn. Or the other inn. Or at a house. OR EVEN IN A DOGHOUSE HE IS SO WRETCHED. "--Je ne suis pas même un chien!" (Okay, I LOLed a little. Sorry, Valjean. Sorry, M. Hugo.) But luckily the Bishop always has room even if he did switch houses with the hospital so that he has less room for vagrants.
And then Valjean, after some soul-searching but not enough, clearly, steals the Bishop's silver. Who's all, "Nah, that's cool. I don't own things; they're for the poor, and that dude was clearly a poor man. Hey, have some candlesticks to go with!"
But Valjean takes a while to convert (the process needed to run overnight), and so on his way to becoming an honest man he steals money from a baby! Whoops. He didn't mean to; it was just his bestial nature, you know. But he's better now, yay?
Book 3.
The year 1817 was a really good year. Or important year. Or bad year. Or something, IDK. I wouldn't have known in English either; this was one of the most incomprehensible things I've ever read, seriously. There's a person mentioned every sentence, pretty much, and I'd heard of, like, three of them (Talleyrand! I actually even have some idea of why he's important! Chateaubriand, but isn't he a food? And the Duc de Berry, I think I've heard of, but I have no idea who he is, so). Sorry, M. Hugo, I don't think your history digression here really cleared anything up for me, no matter what you say about centuries being made up of individual years. So... at any rate, Napoleon's in exile (for good) and there's a king, and the people of Paris are too lazy to revolt, or something.
Anyway, back to the story. Fantine goes on a picnic with her boyfriend and their friends! She's behaving immorally, but hey, she thought it was TWU WUV. Her friends know better than to mistake this for wuv, because they wear more revealing clothes than she does. It's a lovely picnic, and then they have dinner. Her boyfriend is a self-important jerk, man, and someone needs to tell him to stop showing off his Classics knowledge. A horse collapses and dies, and only Fantine thinks this is sad. And then, the surprise that their boyfriends have been promising the girls for a year. The boys leave to go get it, and, SURPRISE! they're breaking up (via letter). They're all going back to their rich families to become important society peeps, it's been real, see ya never. Fantine is sad, even though the other girls (see above, re, TWU WUV) think it's sort of funny. Also she's sad because back at her (WRETCHED) room, she has... a baby. (Who's been watching baby Cosette, anyway, while Fantine has been picnicking?)
END BOOK 3
So I am indeed enjoying The Wretched so far, even if it takes foreeeeeeever to read (French! Incomprehensible references everywhere!), but I'm pretty sure that all of the wretched people's problems could be solved** by safe, reliable, easily available birth control. F'rex, Valjean's sister's seven kids: they wouldn't have been so hungry* if she hadn't had so many, now would they? And Fantine, clearly her problems would've been solved if she hadn't had The Jerk's baby. I'm sure the Bishop would understand how important it is despite what the pope says, even if he is an ultramontanian pope-supporter and not one of those gallicans...
*Also the part where Valjean was like, 'Yeah, no one would've died if I hadn't stolen the bread then because it takes a long time to actually die of hunger. We were just uncomfortable and stupid society is unfair', which it totes is. So much more reasonable, actually, than musical!Valjean ("my sister's child was close to death"). Also no one has ever cuddled him, which is sad, but at least he finally cries for the first time in 19 years after he steals the little kid's money and can't find him to give it back.
**Normally, I would say education is the answer, but the WRETCHED prison camp workhouse thing (bagne, whatever the English is) apparently taught Valjean to read, write, and do arithmetic, and that wasn't enough to solve his problems or make him less angry at the unfair world, so that is clearly not the answer here.
So far...
Book 1.
The Bishop is awesome. Hooray the Bishop! My favorite bit was, I think, when he was off seeing to his parishioners, and because he's donated all of his salary + travel expenses to the poor, he could only afford to hire a donkey to travel. He gets to the town, and the peeps are all astonished that a bishop would show up on a donkey, because... bishops are rich! And he's all, ah, yes, ¡qué escándolo!, I know, please don't think I'm being arrogant because I'm riding the same animal Jesus did. BURN!
En français:
--Monsieur le maire, dit l'évêque, et messieurs les bourgeois, je vois
ce qui vous scandalise; vous trouvez que c'est bien de l'orgueil à un
pauvre prêtre de monter une monture qui a été celle de Jésus-Christ. Je
l'ai fait par nécessité, je vous assure, non par vanité. (1.4)
Book 2.
And then there is no room for Jean Valjean at the inn. Or the other inn. Or at a house. OR EVEN IN A DOGHOUSE HE IS SO WRETCHED. "--Je ne suis pas même un chien!" (Okay, I LOLed a little. Sorry, Valjean. Sorry, M. Hugo.) But luckily the Bishop always has room even if he did switch houses with the hospital so that he has less room for vagrants.
And then Valjean, after some soul-searching but not enough, clearly, steals the Bishop's silver. Who's all, "Nah, that's cool. I don't own things; they're for the poor, and that dude was clearly a poor man. Hey, have some candlesticks to go with!"
But Valjean takes a while to convert (the process needed to run overnight), and so on his way to becoming an honest man he steals money from a baby! Whoops. He didn't mean to; it was just his bestial nature, you know. But he's better now, yay?
Book 3.
The year 1817 was a really good year. Or important year. Or bad year. Or something, IDK. I wouldn't have known in English either; this was one of the most incomprehensible things I've ever read, seriously. There's a person mentioned every sentence, pretty much, and I'd heard of, like, three of them (Talleyrand! I actually even have some idea of why he's important! Chateaubriand, but isn't he a food? And the Duc de Berry, I think I've heard of, but I have no idea who he is, so). Sorry, M. Hugo, I don't think your history digression here really cleared anything up for me, no matter what you say about centuries being made up of individual years. So... at any rate, Napoleon's in exile (for good) and there's a king, and the people of Paris are too lazy to revolt, or something.
Anyway, back to the story. Fantine goes on a picnic with her boyfriend and their friends! She's behaving immorally, but hey, she thought it was TWU WUV. Her friends know better than to mistake this for wuv, because they wear more revealing clothes than she does. It's a lovely picnic, and then they have dinner. Her boyfriend is a self-important jerk, man, and someone needs to tell him to stop showing off his Classics knowledge. A horse collapses and dies, and only Fantine thinks this is sad. And then, the surprise that their boyfriends have been promising the girls for a year. The boys leave to go get it, and, SURPRISE! they're breaking up (via letter). They're all going back to their rich families to become important society peeps, it's been real, see ya never. Fantine is sad, even though the other girls (see above, re, TWU WUV) think it's sort of funny. Also she's sad because back at her (WRETCHED) room, she has... a baby. (Who's been watching baby Cosette, anyway, while Fantine has been picnicking?)
END BOOK 3
So I am indeed enjoying The Wretched so far, even if it takes foreeeeeeever to read (French! Incomprehensible references everywhere!), but I'm pretty sure that all of the wretched people's problems could be solved** by safe, reliable, easily available birth control. F'rex, Valjean's sister's seven kids: they wouldn't have been so hungry* if she hadn't had so many, now would they? And Fantine, clearly her problems would've been solved if she hadn't had The Jerk's baby. I'm sure the Bishop would understand how important it is despite what the pope says, even if he is an ultramontanian pope-supporter and not one of those gallicans...
*Also the part where Valjean was like, 'Yeah, no one would've died if I hadn't stolen the bread then because it takes a long time to actually die of hunger. We were just uncomfortable and stupid society is unfair', which it totes is. So much more reasonable, actually, than musical!Valjean ("my sister's child was close to death"). Also no one has ever cuddled him, which is sad, but at least he finally cries for the first time in 19 years after he steals the little kid's money and can't find him to give it back.
**Normally, I would say education is the answer, but the WRETCHED prison camp workhouse thing (bagne, whatever the English is) apparently taught Valjean to read, write, and do arithmetic, and that wasn't enough to solve his problems or make him less angry at the unfair world, so that is clearly not the answer here.