Les Miserables: the end
Lo, I stand before you a god among men! For I have finished reading Les Miserables!
Eventually I will have coherent thoughts about other things that happened in the book, specifically EPONINE, who remains my favorite, because she is so deliciously messed up, poor Eponine, I want to write all the AUs where she lives.
I think the simplest way is to have Marius get shot by the soldier that Eponine stops in the book. Thus Marius won't save the barricade; it will fall quite early on. Unlucky Enjolras will be deprived of his glorious last stand, but he will get to shoot Javert, as Valjean won't be there to save anyone...
BUT FIRST I HAVE TO VENT MY FEELINGS ABOUT THIS ENDING which will of course involve spoilers
MARIUS, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? Perhaps if I thought about this dispassionately I would see that keeping Jean Valjean away from Cosette, who he had raised and loved as a daughter, was a perfectly reasonable reaction to learning (from Jean Valjean himself! which ought to suggest that Valjean is trustworthy, no?) that Valjean was a convict -
- um, but right now I am mostly furious and not dispassionate at all, because that was clearly a rotten thing for Marius to do, especially given that if he had just asked Valjean how he got his money he wouldn't have had to worry about whether he and Cosette were living off ill-gotten gains!
Admittedly, Valjean is partly at fault for this, because of course it was rather silly of him to be all, "So Marius, I am a criminal. But don't worry, the enormous amount of money I just gave you and Cosette is totally legit! I just don't feel like explaining how I got it right now..."
And probably he should have mentioned that he saved Marius's life, too. But "Valjean is self-sacrificing to the point of self-destructiveness" is a well-established character trait at this point, so of course he doesn't.
Also, Valjean has the excuse of being eighty years old and heart-broken because the only person he loves, Cosette, has (in his eyes) rejected him in favor of Marius; he thinks, however wrongly, that he's doing the noble thing by letting her go. I guess he thinks that the fact that Cosette now loves Marius means that she can't love Valjean at all? Valjean, despite his universal benevolence, is - not surprisingly, given his history - a little stunted at personal relationships.
IN CONCLUSION, Valjean could have come and lived with them and been an excellent grandfather if only Marius had found it within himself to actually ask about the source of Valjean's money instead of being a self-righteous twit. Instead Valjean basically starved himself to death in a garret because he was STARVED FOR COSETTE'S LOVE, and it's all Marius's fault.
IN CONCLUSION: I now need to decide which French classic to read next. Should I stick with Hugo, who (despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that he makes me write screeds about some of his decision) is clearly a winner, and read The Hunchback of Notre Dame? Or should I branch out into Dumas with The Count of Monte Cristo, and thus consider the "prisoner who escapes unjust imprisonment" genre from a different angle?
Eventually I will have coherent thoughts about other things that happened in the book, specifically EPONINE, who remains my favorite, because she is so deliciously messed up, poor Eponine, I want to write all the AUs where she lives.
I think the simplest way is to have Marius get shot by the soldier that Eponine stops in the book. Thus Marius won't save the barricade; it will fall quite early on. Unlucky Enjolras will be deprived of his glorious last stand, but he will get to shoot Javert, as Valjean won't be there to save anyone...
BUT FIRST I HAVE TO VENT MY FEELINGS ABOUT THIS ENDING which will of course involve spoilers
MARIUS, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? Perhaps if I thought about this dispassionately I would see that keeping Jean Valjean away from Cosette, who he had raised and loved as a daughter, was a perfectly reasonable reaction to learning (from Jean Valjean himself! which ought to suggest that Valjean is trustworthy, no?) that Valjean was a convict -
- um, but right now I am mostly furious and not dispassionate at all, because that was clearly a rotten thing for Marius to do, especially given that if he had just asked Valjean how he got his money he wouldn't have had to worry about whether he and Cosette were living off ill-gotten gains!
Admittedly, Valjean is partly at fault for this, because of course it was rather silly of him to be all, "So Marius, I am a criminal. But don't worry, the enormous amount of money I just gave you and Cosette is totally legit! I just don't feel like explaining how I got it right now..."
And probably he should have mentioned that he saved Marius's life, too. But "Valjean is self-sacrificing to the point of self-destructiveness" is a well-established character trait at this point, so of course he doesn't.
Also, Valjean has the excuse of being eighty years old and heart-broken because the only person he loves, Cosette, has (in his eyes) rejected him in favor of Marius; he thinks, however wrongly, that he's doing the noble thing by letting her go. I guess he thinks that the fact that Cosette now loves Marius means that she can't love Valjean at all? Valjean, despite his universal benevolence, is - not surprisingly, given his history - a little stunted at personal relationships.
IN CONCLUSION, Valjean could have come and lived with them and been an excellent grandfather if only Marius had found it within himself to actually ask about the source of Valjean's money instead of being a self-righteous twit. Instead Valjean basically starved himself to death in a garret because he was STARVED FOR COSETTE'S LOVE, and it's all Marius's fault.
IN CONCLUSION: I now need to decide which French classic to read next. Should I stick with Hugo, who (despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that he makes me write screeds about some of his decision) is clearly a winner, and read The Hunchback of Notre Dame? Or should I branch out into Dumas with The Count of Monte Cristo, and thus consider the "prisoner who escapes unjust imprisonment" genre from a different angle?