2.1.10
This chapter is really about the ordinary young men fighting in the battle. We see the courage of the soldiers in great display despite the setback of the trench they are still fighting. We see how they die, we get more of their names as well. For the Anglo-Dutch army as well, we get the little details like the Scotsmen dying playing their national instrument and thinking of their homeland that make us care about and feel sorry for the lives lost.
The French cuirassiers are brave, and the English soldiers are also equally matched, Hugo admires the soldiers fighting on both sides, and uses ‘the soldier changes to granite’ to refer to them and the descriptions of ‘lava battling against a storm’ for the two armies are very poetic and beautiful.
The battle keeps raging on, the Mont Saint Jean plateau is taken and retaken a number of times, some soldiers panic and desert the field, you see the range of human emotions displayed on the battlefield. Hugo humanizes and memorializes the ordinary soldiers fighting and makes us care about them and admire their courage in the face of odds stacked greatly against them, these soldiers who had families, who are injured in the battle and who died and, also the 18-year-old young soldier, Dehaze, who still lives.
