(Part One)
Ok let’s break it down. Reasons I love this scene:
Since it’s not in the musical this part in the book was almost entirely new to me, and I was seriously on the edge of my seat the whole time (mostly going Marius nooooo!) I think I actually cheered when Javert walked in. You should be getting a sense by now of who the contender for my favorite character is…
SPEAKING OF Javert does nothing but walk in the door, doesn’t even draw a weapon, and this room full of hardened criminals who are armed to the teeth (we’ve already spent a number of paragraphs describing how dangerous and well-armed they are) take one look look at him and are like- Welp, it’s Javert. Whaddya gonna do? and give up immediately.
It’s one of the first times we really get to see Javert in his element, which is TAKIN’ DOWN THE BADDIES. Up until this point we’ve mostly just seen him being frustrated by merciful bread thieves, but here he’s very comfortable interacting with criminals, knows all their names and how to reason with them, and even has a witty cop banter thing going. He even- did I read that right?- smiles when he delivers that hat zinger?
The Patron-Minette gang are 100% my favorite minor characters. The jack-of-all-trades, the thug, the impoverished teen fop who murders for fashion, and the cloaked masked night-dwelling ventriloquist (ask me about my headcanon that Claquesous is actually the Phantom of the Opera because he really really is.)
Also featuring some epic moments for everyone’s favorite torture-resistant wall-scaling pacifist, Jean Valjean; the only person who is possibly as badass as Javert.
Possible inaccuracies:
Montparnasse wasn’t in the room, but in my head he was.
Pretty sure everything else is exactly how it went down…
