Brick!Club 4.15.2-3 Awesome Gavroche and the problems of a Conscience
4.15.2
It's unfair really what Hugo is doing here. He's making me adore Gavrcoche and I know what's going to happen and it's going to be painful and Hugo is being horrid by rubbing in his evilness with this look of see how precocious and sassy and wonderful this gamin is and he's heading back to the barricade so we know what could happen... and even if I hadn't seen the musical I have read Bleak House and it means I don't trust authors of works making social points to not kill off characters to make a point of some sort... poor Jo.... poor poor Jo.... *tries not to think of Richard and Ada and what was never to be as that is the evilness of Dickens that Hugo hasn't yet resorted to.* Anyhow I digress... alot.
I'll leave the discussion of Valjean to others as I'd rather concentrate on being bemused by the interaction between him and Gavroche.
Gavroche and the lamp. And the suggestion of building another barricade. It makes me smile...
And when Valjean gives him the money and Valjean says he can still break lamps... I love it.
And then messing up his mysterious exit with breaking another lamp.
No analysis here. Just enjoying the loveliness of a fairly not sad chapter while I can.
4.15.3
"Pleased with the darkness like an owl that holds his prey." Wha...? I am somewhat confused by this analogy... I think a more a propos thing to say would be a quote of some 13 dwarves "We like the dark. Dark for dark business." and reading some one elses note and being kind of glad that the writer will die so you and Cosette will be together is dark business.
I'm getting though this delightful mental image of Valjean marching out of his house kind of stuffily with this sorta annoyed expression of "you know having a conscience really sucks sometimes." I could be reading into things a bit but the fact that he's gloomy after considering "Hey he'll die and my problems will be over!" really suggests that his innate goodness is getting to him and he can't act selfishly even if he wants to. Hence my current mental image of a pouting annoyed Valjean marching to possibly go help.