#(;_:)

[mikimeiko]

[secretmellowblog]

One of the most heartbreaking moments in Les Mis is when, after travelling through the sewers until he’s nearly dead, Valjean reaches the end only to discover the sewer’s outlet is locked -- using the same kind of locks they use in prisons-- and he can’t get out.  As he collapses we’re told that:

“He had only succeeded in escaping into a prison.“

I get so emotional over how that one line, that one moment, summarizes his entire story. 

Valjean really does just.... constantly escape from one prison into another prison, over and over and over again.

Valjean’s years in Toulon were made up of desperate escape attempts where his hours of “freedom” are described as:

He wandered for two days in the fields at liberty, if being at liberty is to be hunted, to turn the head every instant, to quake at the slightest noise, to be afraid of everything,—of a smoking roof, of a passing man, of a barking dog, of a galloping horse, of a striking clock, of the day because one can see, of the night because one cannot see, of the highway, of the path, of a bush, of sleep. 

And are these escape attempts all followed by years added to his prison sentence.

After he was freed from Toulon he suffered “the imprisonment of his name,” being turned away and punished and starved because of his background. After he robbed Petit Gervais and became a wanted man again, he returned to that state of paranoia mentioned during his Toulon escapes: aware of how tenuous his “freedom” was and paranoid it would be taken away. He lived in that paranoia even when he was happy in M-sur-M--- until the Champmathieu trial happened, his world collapsed around him just as he always feared it would, and he was imprisoned again. 

Then he escapes THAT prison (twice), and picks up Cosette while he’s actively on the run from the police. He climbs over the wall of a convent to escape being imprisoned by Javert, and then it turns out--the convent is yet another prison!

(The convent) was the second place of captivity which he had seen. In his youth, in what had been for him the beginning of his life, and later on, quite recently again, he had beheld another,—a frightful place, a terrible place, whose severities had always appeared to him the iniquity of justice, and the crime of the law. Now, after the galleys, he saw the cloister; and when he meditated how he had formed a part of the galleys, and that he now, so to speak, was a spectator of the cloister, he confronted the two in his own mind with anxiety.

Even when Valjean is living with Cosette in Paris the threat of prison is always hanging over his head. I mentioned before how one thing that struck me while rereading the Brick was how  hyper-militarized the country is, how the police/the National Guard/prison are basically omnipresent.

 Valjean tries to take Cosette  on a peaceful walk to see the sunrise and they encounter a chain gang. Valjean tries to take Cosette on a peaceful walk in the Luxembourg gardens and he’s followed home by a young man who begins interrogating his porter about his past, making Valjean assume he’s a police spy. He’s captured by Thenardier and can’t call for help because he’s afraid the police will come--- when the police accidentally “save” him he barely escapes being arrested. Valjean and Cosette live in the Rue Plumet right next to barracks of soldiers. Cosette falls in love with a boy and then, right after Valjean discovers this secret romance, he discovers the boy is in danger of being killed by the National Guard. He escapes the barricade by climbing into the sewer.  There are police hunting for insurgents in the sewers too, and he escapes the police. He journeys through the sewers for hours and hours and hours, until he’s nearly dead, and when he reaches the end!

The tunnel ended like the interior of a funnel; a faulty construction, imitated from the wickets of penitentiaries, logical in a prison, illogical in a sewer (....) The door was plainly double-locked. It was one of those prison locks which old Paris was so fond of lavishing.

There’s something so horrible, eternal, and cyclical about it.

 Valjean is talented at escaping! He’s literally an escape artist. He’s inhumanly strong, ridiculously cunning, highly skilled and quick-thinking enough to make a thousand daring escapes in a thousand impossible ways—

Its just that every time he does, the place he escapes to is always another prison. And he has to find a way to escape, again.

Valjean compares himself to Sisyphus and Prometheus at different points, and...agh, yes. It’s like he’s stuck in a time loop, suffering this repeated pointless useless punishment again and again, aging and growing more tired, for all eternity. The moment when he collapses at the grate of the sewer, unable to continue, having completely given up....  I’ve gone back and forth on how much the barricade drama affects Valjean, but after rereading it I really think it DOES make a big impact on him. I think it’s the turning point where finally he becomes too tired to continue, where he stops finding the strength to continue pushing the boulder up a hill. I also think this is why Javert letting Valjean go is so impactful to me.  With the help of Thenardier, Valjean he escapes the sewer-- only to immediately encounter Javert. Once again, he’s escaped one prison only to fall into another prison. He’s accepted it. He’s resigned to it. He promises Javert to come quietly if Javert helps him take Marius home, and he fully intends to honor that promise. But like! Every previous time Valjean went to prison, he was determined to escape. He attempts to escape repeatedly from Toulon; and when he’s re-arrested in M-Sur-M he goes to prison with the full intention of escaping at the first opportunity. (And he does! Twice!) But here we see Valjean surrender himself to prison without any intentions of escaping.  He surrenders himself to Javert’s custody with no plans to free himself. He considers everything “over for him,” in a way that’s compared to suicide.  And that’s when there’s a “concussion in the absolute”-- when Javert Finally (FINALLY) realizes the laws he’s enforcing are wrong, refuses to do his job, and refuses to arrest Valjean.

The moment where Javert lets Valjean go free is a brief unexpected flash of hope. After all the horrors National Guard and the sewers you believe, for a moment, that the cycle can be broken! That maybe there’s still a chance! After Valjean’s spirit was crushed and he finally resigned himself to prison-- he finally gave up on escaping-- he was given one miraculous last chance at freedom.

And there’s a brief moment of hope that maybe this time he will actually get it!

But he doesn’t; his self-loathing and Marius’s bigotry end up imprisoning him again. Valjean begins to see death as the only way he can escape:

“The dead are not subjected to surveillance. They are supposed to rot in peace. Death is the same thing as pardon (....) would that I could die!”

Which echoes what Javert thinks before his suicide: 

 Legally, death puts an end to pursuit.

And it’s so frustrating because none of this needed to happen.  Valjean should never have been arrested in the first place; and the parallels between his story and the over-incarceration of people today are heartbreaking. Valjean’s punishment was never just, it was never right, it was never reasonable, and yet it just kept going endlessly until his death. It really makes you want to grab the book and create a better ending, and to get angry at the pointless cruelty and injustice of the world around you; which I guess is the entire point.

[gradelstuff]

Dabi from the MVA key visual (2021)

[temunade]

valve please bring back barney he is my friend and i miss him thank u !

[lyon-beast-king]

Hearty Learning How to Gpose: Taking a rest

Take 6 of ?

(Do not take, edit, or use in anyway)

@magitekhearted

[justintaco]

[starlostfish]

Sorry your feeling down. I don't how much this is worth or if it'll help any, but ijust wanna say that your drawings don't look like garbage at all. I really like you style and love the content you put out. And, while I totally understand the feeling, please try not to feel bad for not always being super active. You gotta do what's best for you and there's nothing wrong with that. I hope you feel better asap and, until then, go easy on yourself ❤

aaaa youre too kind \(;_;)/Thank you so much, its very reassuring! Im very glad you enjoy it my art its just ive been feeling frustrated, ill try my best to feel better ! :’)  ❤️ ❤️   

[twofacedbitchesneverlie]