Brick Club 5.3.5, 5.3.6, 5.3.7
The quicksand chapter is, to put it mildly, a microcosm of horror. It’s like how to cook a frog except for humans. This is the spiritual sister to that one chapter waaay long ago about the sailor who falls overboard into the merciless sea.
“If enlizement is terrible on the shore of the sea, what is it in the cloaca?” I really am cursed because my entire life has led to me reading these words thusly. Not only are you in slow, agonizing fear for your life, you’re also horribly embarrassed the whole time. What you should do in quicksand is 1) not thrash around and agitate everything and 2) try to lie on your back to spread your weight. Besides, Mythbusters did an episode proving that killer quicksand is a myth, humans are just too damn floaty to fully sink into dense sand. I’d now like a follow up episode that tests sewers and sewer waste.
I couldn’t find Blaise or Nicholas Poutrain and the only Vicomte D’Escoubleau that popped up in my search was decidedly not a young consanguineous rake, but notable Archbishop and French naval commander Henri de Sourdis, who died in Bordeaux and not in the Parisian sewers. Maybe it’s a less noted )or fictional) descendent. I suppose the apple can fall far from the tree…and roll down the street…and drop through a grate…into a sewer.
We’ve entered into a Dante’s circles of hell situation. Every turn of this place is more nightmarish and dangerous than the last. “It produced the effect upon him of the first step of a staircase reascending towards life….On coming out of the water, he struck against a stone, and fell upon his knees. This seemed to him fitting, and he remained thus for some time, his soul lost in unspoken prayer to God.” Is Valjean carrying Marius back to the light or delivering him further into the the grip of hell? Virgil he is not.
I think this technically makes Javert the ninth circle, if not Satan the fallen angel himself. That’s definitely an interesting interpretation I could run with. Lots of very rich discussions to be had here on the nature of good and evil, what it means to fall from grace, what it means to serve humanity versus to care for humanity.
It’s also compelling in an unexpected way to see Valjean fighting this hard for something. We’ve seen him struggle, sure, but usually from a more passive or at least societally driven standpoint. This odyssey feels almost entirely individual, it has very little to do with the outward pressures of society.
Eight hours of sewer later and Valjean, once again, finds himself behind bars in possibly the cruelest twist of fate in this entire book. “It was over. All that Jean Valjean had done was useless. Exhaustion ended in abortion…This was the last drop of anguish.” Truly, no good deed goes unpunished. Especially if you’re the main character of a French Romantic novel.
