Sweet Christ i don't think i can take any more backstory! If i make it to the afterlife me and Victor Hugo are gonna have a chat, a very very very long chat.........there may be punching involved too.
You know I've heard a lot of people
say that the musical Les Mis is a very faithful adaptation of this book
but i haven't seen anything that resembles the musical in ages. There's too much backstory! Stop it Victor Hugo, you're hurting me!!!
We're dealing with the backstory of Marius Pontmercy at the moment and to be fair, it's not entirely awful. I'm not an expert of French history and some of the stuff that came up in these pages went straight over my head but i think i can dumb it down enough to explain whats going on.
Basically Marius's grandfather supported one side during the french revolution, and Marius's father (the guy Mr Thenardier rescued when he was robbing dead bodies earlier in the book) supported the other side, this makes the grandfather hate the father. When Marius's mother died the grandfather told the father he would disinherit Marius if he didn't hand hand over the boy to the grandfather and never contact them again. Marius grows up under his grandfathers rule and when his father dies only then does he discover what kind of person his father was and it makes Marius sympathetic to the ideals that his father fought for, this doesn't please the grandfather very much and he kicks Marius out of his house.
At first glance this seemed like kind of a dull detour but actually as i read more i really felt a lot of sympathy for Marius and his father, (DAMMIT VICTOR HUGO WHY DO YOU HAVE TO MAKE ME CARE, I WAS HAPPY BEING DEAD INSIDE!!). The first time i read this part of the book i was bored by the backstory but as i read more of it I actually really cared about how the father was treated by the rest of Marius's family and i was actually happy when Marius changed sides after he died. I kind of regret now thinking like that at first without giving it a proper chance.
I can actually relate to Marius a little bit, i hate it when parents shove their views on their children and never let them make up their own minds, my own upbringing was a bit like that, but then i grew up and developed my own opinion about things and my mother didn't like it!
I'm not sure exactly how i feel about Marius yet though, i don't have an overwhelming opinion either way about him, he seems likeable but I've only seen the musical version of him so far and in that i thought he was kind of......meh! Just, Meh! Hopefully I'll grow to like him in the book, he has potential to be liked, show me what you've got boy!
By the way at this point in the blog I'm officially caught up to where i stopped in the book so from now on it's all new territory for me. I've mostly liked it all up until now so I'm hoping the rest will be equally as good. When will Cosette and Valjean be back? What happened to the Thenardiers? Whats to become of Marius? Whens the revolution going to start? What of Javert??? What of him!! I have so many questions!!!
Ah, Les Tragedy of Marius Pontmercy. When he's introduced he has so much potential and likeability as a character . . . and then Victor Hugo goes and squanders it all. Where's the character development? Where's Marius going hungry and realising that this isn't a game and other people are much worse off then he is? Where's Marius critically examining Bonapartism and Monarchism and full-on Republicanism?
ReplyDeleteAnd the romance. I mean . . . It should have been the beating heart of the second half! Cosette should have had a personality! Marius should have become a better person for having met and known and loved her!
Instead of all that we get Les Miserables. Le Sigh.
And thanks for the blog, Brandon. Yeah, Cosette deserved more page time. Like, a lot.