DONE READING LES MISERABLES

[sophia_sol]

RIGHT MY THOUGHTS ON VOLUME FOUR, I WAS GOING TO DO THOSE.

HAHAHAH like I remember any of my thoughts, it took me WAY TOO LONG to read this volume. I mean, I had thoughts! Lots of thoughts! And I kept on having them all the way through the volume! But now I am CAUGHT UP IN MY EMOTIONS FOR VOLUME FIVE and like CAN WE TALK ABOUT RELIGION AND JAVERT'S DEATH?

OKAY. SO. in the musical Javert is overtly religious, the most religious of all the characters, and then at his suicide he's all "and must I now begin to doubt". And in the BOOK, Javert's into THE LAW and nothing else, certainly not religion, and at his suicide he's all "CRAP THERE'S A HIGHER POWER THAN THE LAW?????" and begins to BELIEVE. And of course he can't handle it and stuff and okay I'm actually currently RATHER FURTHER than this in Volume V so I no longer remember all the details of Javert's suicide but that COMPLETE AND UTTER REVERSAL of Javert's opinion on religion between the book and the musical is just like WHAT WERE THE MUSICAL WRITERS ON. I already knew that it was ridiculous that the musical writers had chosen JAVERT as their venue for inserting religion back into the story, but now that I've read Javert's book-suicide IT IS EVEN MORE RIDICULOUS. WHAT.

Also can we talk about how the entire thing about the sewers, and also the book version of the Thenardier-Valjean interaction in the sewers, is PERFECT AND AMAZING IN EVERY WAY OH MY GOD.

Also I want to talk about DIFFERENT EMOTIONS THAT CHARACTER DEATHS CAN INSPIRE. Because dude I am kind of fascinated by looking at my own reactions! I reacted with very strong emotions both to the various barricade deaths and to Valjean's death, but the specifics of the emotion were actually very different? When Valjean died I CRIED. When the Amis died I didn't even feel close to crying, but instead was all...ugh, idek how to describe it. GAH WHY AM I SO BAD AT TALKING ABOUT EMOTIONS. (oh right because my entire family is bad at talking about emotions :P) It was a more violent emotion, like being PUNCHED in the feels. Or something. IDEKKKK. But it was interesting anyways!

ANYWAYS THIS HAS NOT BEEN MY PROPER POST OF THOUGHTS AND REACTIONS TO EITHER VOLUME IV OR V BUT I HAD THINGS I WANTED TO SAY. SO. HERE YOU GO. HOPEFULLY YOU WILL GET MORE AND BETTER THOUGHTS LATER.

Comments

[cahn]

Hm! This never bothered me at all about Javert and his death, because although the musical makes him religious, I think of it as shorthand -- I suspect it's way easier to quickly paint a picture of a single-minded religious person than a single-minded THE LAW IS MY RELIGION person, and it's the single-mindedness that is the real characterization of Javert.

Also, he's not irreligious in the novel; he'd say he was a believer. It's just that... he's never THOUGHT about it. Which is kind of what Javert does in the musical too :) (Shall his sins be forgiven?? Shall his crimes be reprieved?? That's someone who might be a religious Christian but who has clearly never done a lick of thinking about Christianity!)

Although because I had read the book before watching/listening to the musical, I totally have always parsed his "Must I now begin to doubt" as "Must I now begin to doubt that following THE LAW is the right path" rather than "Must I now begin to doubt religion," which... now that you mention it... may not be what everyone else in the world is getting from it :) (Although "My heart is stone, and still it trembles" is almost a direct quote from the book! To be stone, and to tremble! [ETA: Gutenberg translation gives "To be granite and to doubt! to be the statue of Chastisement cast in one piece in the mould of the law, and suddenly to become aware of the fact that one cherishes beneath one's breast of bronze something absurd and disobedient which almost resembles a heart!" I don't have the Signet translation with me, which I think is slightly different. So doubt is in fact in there!] GO MUSICAL WRITERS!)

Uhh... also also... Javert's suicide is like my favorite song ever, so I expect I have Strong Feelings about doing what I need to do to twist it to be book-compliant! :)

Also, and I guess I mentioned this before, it's kind of interesting that Valjean's death makes me bawl like anything, and Javert's death elicits an "oh hey that was AWESOME WRITING there, Hugo!"

[sophia_sol]

You make some good points!

And yeah, I would agree that Javert's probably a believer in the novel, in that "why wouldn't I be", never-thinks-about-it way that lots of people are believers in a society where there's one expected religion.

and I mean none of what I said is to say that I don't LIKE what the musical does, because SUCH A GOOD SONG, SUCH A GOOD SCENE, SO MANY JAVERT FEELS. I think this all is just me doing some more flailing awkwardly at the fact that THE MUSICAL AND THE BOOK ARE REALLY DIFFERENT WHATTTT and I'm trying to get my head around two conflicting-yet-connected-and-both-awesome versions of the story.

And I had EXACTLY THE SAME REACTIONS AS YOU to Valjean's death vs Javert's death, although the back of my mind was also busy admiring Hugo's awesome writing in Valjean's death too, because this book is basically full of me going HUGO HOW ARE YOU SO GOOD AT THIS WHOLE WRITING THING.

[carmarthen]

Also, he's not irreligious in the novel; he'd say he was a believer. It's just that... he's never THOUGHT about it.

YES, this.

I think in the musical he is doubting everything: he's a guy who has always looked to a clear-cut Law (probably some combination of civil and religious), so that he never has to make hard choices. There are no shades of gray, no doubt, no ambiguous situations. So he can't cope with the possibility of having to--as Valjean does--evaluate every choice for rightness without a tidy external standard.

That's my take on it, anyway, although I don't think it's terribly clearly thought-out in the musical.

I am curious what y'all think of the French Concept lyrics, which I think have a very very different feel to them.

[cahn]

I think in the musical he is doubting everything: he's a guy who has always looked to a clear-cut Law (probably some combination of civil and religious), so that he never has to make hard choices. There are no shades of gray, no doubt, no ambiguous situations. So he can't cope with the possibility of having to--as Valjean does--evaluate every choice for rightness without a tidy external standard.

This! I'd say this is what he thinks in the book too, really, except that religious faith is much more in the background in the book. But THIS.

I just bought the French Concept album... I will listen to it and get back to you :)

[carmarthen]

The musical in its current incarnation does make it more about Valjean specifically, though, at least on the surface.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

Javert and religion: what about the bit in M-sur-M about how he respects religious authority and is religious in [adjectives, one of which was "superficial"] ways? I mean, I did read that as meaning that Javert's faith is not a particularly deep well, but not necessarily a complete lack of religion. This has been addressed in the other post.

I think in the musical Valjean and Javert are both pretty religious, but they were going for a fuzzy New Testament vs. wrathful Old Testament thing, and it's...rather simplistic, isn't it? IDEK, though. I am not sure what happened between book and concept, much less concept and the present form of the musical.

The original French Concept is, I feel, much closer to the book in a lot of ways. There's less Javert in it, but no "Stars," and Jacques Mercier actually sounds like I imagine Javert (and also like a guy who enjoys his job and is a bit sassy, heh. I kind of feel like book!Javert would secretly revel in being a musical theatre villain).