(Image ID: screenshot of two replies by @alicedraws-kostyalevin. saying: Funnily enough eponine works for thenardier but doesn’t actually sacrifice herself for him (or at least, not anymore) but gavroche almost dies for him, and he doesn’t even recognize who it was. Absolutely brutal. Les mis has a thing? for people recognizing others and there must be some symbolism here that I never thought about.)
(Context: this post about he parallels between Eponine and Javert)
I never thought about it until just now either and you’ve made me realize— Javert’s weird power in Les Mis is just, his ability to recognize people?
Javert has a borderline magical ability to know who everyone Really Is, to know everyone’s True Names, regardless of their disguises.
There’s a common fandom joke that Javert is bad at recognizing people, but in canon it’s the exact opposite. Javert’s whole Thing is that he sees through disguises and recognizes the people that no one else is able to recognize, the people that everyone else forgets and overlooks.
And instead of using that power for good he uses it for evil. Javert could use his borderline magical skills to help all these forgotten people, but instead he uses it to condemn them and make them all suffer.
Javert even arrogantly shows off this semi-magical skill during the Gorbeau House ambush. All the members of the gang are masked; Javert orders them to keep their masks on, and then lists off their names one by one, to prove that he knows who they are even when they’re disguised.
“Why?” for the drama of it all
The six pinioned ruffians were standing, and still preserved their spectral mien; all three besmeared with black, all three masked.
“Keep on your masks,” said Javert.
And passing them in review with a glance of a Frederick II. at a Potsdam parade, he said to the three “chimney-builders”:—
“Good day, Bigrenaille! good day, Brujon! good day, Deuxmilliards!”
Then turning to the three masked men, he said to the man with the meat-axe:—
And to the man with the cudgel:—
And to the ventriloquist:—
“Your health, Claquesous.”
God Javert is such a diva
And as mentioned on the other post: no one recognizes Eponine. Cosette sees adult Eponine and doesn’t recognize her/thinks she’s just a random boy, Marius doesn’t recognize Eponine even after she takes a bullet for him, Thenardier doesn’t recognize Eponine when he sees her in the Rue Plumet garden, etc.
But when Javert is about to be executed, he’s like “oh, it’s her. I know her.”
“Javert gazed askance at the body and, profoundly calm, said in a low tone:
“It strikes me that I know that girl.”
And when Valjean drags a muddied half-dead body away from the barricades– Javert recognizes it as Marius:
He bent over, drew from his pocket a handkerchief which he moistened in the water and with which he then wiped Marius’ blood-stained brow.
“This man was at the barricade,” said he in a low voice and as though speaking to himself. “He is the one they called Marius.”
(ok I literally never noticed the parallel between the way he recognizes Eponine and Marius’s bodies………….quietly saying ‘oh I know this person’ to himself in a low voice, while Valjean looks on)
But the biggest example is obviously Valjean. Javert recognizes Valjean when no one else does, when everyone else thinks he’s crazy for recognizing him, when everyone else thinks a mayor couldn’t possibly be a felon, etc. He’s the only one who recognizes Valjean when he’s wealthy and a mayor, not just when he’s a prisoner dressed in rags.
At the Champmathieu trial no one believes Valjean’s testimony. They think he’s gone mad, even his own prison-mates don’t seem to know him, they think he can’t possibly be Valjean because he’s too rich and educated, etc. Valjean gets Upset and says:
“I wish Javert were here; he would recognize me.”
Nothing can reproduce the sombre and kindly melancholy of tone which accompanied these words.
And I don’t know how feel about this aspect of Javert????? But it’s….a Thing!!!
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