Top 5 Moronic Marius Moments

(I was so pleased when I came up with the title of this post, aren’t alliterations awesome!)

Have I mentioned before on this blog that I hate Marius Pontmercy? I think it’s come up…. Anyway,  just In case I haven’t made it clear how much I dislike him I thought I’d compile a list of the five biggest moments in Les Miserables (Novel and musical) that I thought Marius acted like a complete moron. It was really hard cutting it down to just five moments, but good God if I listed every moment where he acted like a moron I’d be here all night! I don’t think there’s enough time in the world for that!!!

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(I have a handy key now to illustrate when I’m talking about Les Mis the novel or Les Mis the musical or both, since it’s been brought to my attention that I don’t always make myself clear)

5: Pretending to be poor when he’s not (Novelverse)

So….for all the times that I’ve mentioned that I hate Marius I can kind of understand his conflict with his grandfather. Yeah, the man pretty much stole him from his father and lied to him throughout his entire childhood, that sucks. However I don’t agree with how Marius behaved when he found out the truth.

There was no need for him to run away from his home and pretend to be poor. At that point in the book his grandfather was like 90 years old, all he needed to do was to just suck it up and deal with it because the odds are he wouldn't have to live with it much longer anyway.

There was no need for him to act like a twat and pretend to be something he’s not; in fact I think that’s what bothers me most about Marius as a character. In the novel there’s a whole big section of the story devoted to Marius’s “suffering” but to me he never suffered like some of the other characters did, like Fantine for example. All he ever needed to do was swallow his pride for once in his life and go home and be a bourgeois again, and to me that isn’t suffering, that’s just moronic.

4: “Cosettes” Handkerchief (Novelverse)

This was actually only a minor moment in the book, but I find it so hilariously moronic that I have to mention it.

In case you don’t remember about the handkerchief basically at one point during his stalking of Cosette Marius finds a handkerchief left on the bench she usually sits on in the Luxembourg gardens, with the initials U.F sewn onto them, naturally Marius assumes it must be hers and that Cosettes name must be Ursule because it’s the only girls name beginning with U. He then goes onto covet the damn thing like it’s the only piece of Cosette he can hang onto in life since he doesn’t know where she lives.

Awww, well that’s kinda sweet right? WRONG!! Because the handkerchief actually belongs to Valjean! U.F was the initials of the fake name he was using when he was living with Cosette in the convent. Marius has totally been fawning over an elderly mans handkerchief for months, that’s both gross and kind of hilarious at the same time!

I would have really loved to have seen his reaction when he found out whose handkerchief it really was, it would have been so awesomely horrifying for him because you know he was totally whacking off into that thing every night. I know Victor Hugo wrote Marius and Cosette as personality free innocent beings, but come on; he was totally jackin’ himself onto that thing on a nightly basis and you know it.

I hope Cosette knows about the handkerchief and uses it against him for the rest of his life, I really do. I hope she’ll save that little piece of information for the first time she has a fight with him; I want her to whip it out as ammo whenever she’s pissed off at him and say “Oh by the way, you were whacking off into my dad’s handkerchief for months you moron!”

3: Banishing Valjean (Both)

Whilst I think this moment was also a moronic act on Valjeans part too I think Marius acted the worst out of the two of them when he found out about Valjean being an ex-con. I still don’t think Valjean should have said anything, but at the same time I don’t think Marius had any right to decide to essentially banish him from his home.

It continues to boggle my mind as to why Marius thought he had the right to banish Valjean after he revealed his criminal past, I guess I just find it really hard to see how he thought he could take the moral high ground with Valjean considering Marius himself is guilty of treason, I know Marius had his reasons for being at the barricades (as stupid as those reasons were) but to be honest, I think treason is a worse crime than theft, so Marius should have just shut his damn mouth.

2: Trying to blow himself up at the barricade (Both, but mostly musical)

Oh yes, you know I’ve brought this up before my fellow readers!

I was actually quite pleased when this moment showed up in the recent movie musical, because it just proved how big a moron he really is. Did Marius really have nothing else in his life that he was willing to kill himself because of the loss of a girl he barely knew? He sings about how his life would be nothing without Cosette, yet his entire life up until that point had been without her and he seemed to be doing fine. Didn’t it occur to him at any point to look for Cosette? She couldn’t have left the country in that short amount of time! Even in the novel it had only been two days since he’d last seen her, she couldn’t have gotten to England in that time, there was no reason for him to overreact like he did. Young love is so annoying.

I think Marius must be one of the most overemotional men I’ve ever encountered in fiction; there are much better ways of dealing with the loss of your “girlfriend” than by trying to blow yourself up. I really felt like Marius made a mockery out of the cause the other students were fighting for when he finally joined their rebellion, he wasn’t really that enthusiastic about the cause anyway and when he did join his friends it was because his stupid heart was broken. That is the act of an utter moron!

And yet I don’t think it’s the number one moronic moment, for I feel there is another even more moronic moment to take the top spot.

And the number one moment in Les Miserables where Marius acted like a moron is……

1: Failing to stop The Thenardiers from robbing and nearly murdering Valjean (Novelverse)

This was actually a major plot point that is omitted completely from the musical, but it shows just how moronic Marius really is.

Basically, at one point The Thenardiers have lured Valjean into their flat with the intent on robbing him (and possibly killing him too) and Marius, who is living next door to them, had made a deal with Javert to sound the alarm when it all goes down. However when Marius finds out that it’s the same Thenardier who “saved” his father he decides not to do anything about it because he made a promise to one day find Thenardier and to help him in any way he could, thus honouring his dead father at the same time.

Yeah I know that all sounds complicated when I say it like that, but believe me it all makes sense if you’ve read the book.

What makes Marius the most moronic here (wow, that was fun to say!) is the fact that he wouldn’t do anything to save Valjean when he was clearly in danger. Just the fact that he even hesitated to do anything makes him a moron, Yeah I know he had an allegiance to his dead father, but he clearly could see that Thenardier was planning to hurt Valjean (and by extension Cosette) so why he even thought this was a dilemma is beyond me.

Thenardier was basically planning on murdering Valjean, the father of the girl he claimed to love and he was too much of a moron to realise who he should help! Seriously….what was he going to do? Was he just going to let Valjean get murdered right in front of him? How would he have explained that to Cosette? Was he just going to go back to her garden again later that day and say “Oh sorry I just let your father be murdered because I’m too much of a moron to know any better, but let’s get married anyway!”
Call me crazy but where I come from when you like a girl you don’t stand by and watch her father get stabbed to death by a known criminal!

I understand him wanting to honour his father, but my point is that you can’t protect those who are already gone, he never even knew anything about his father and Thenardier was clearly a despicable human being so I just don’t understand his hesitation one bit. Marius is a moron, and to me he’ll always be a moron.

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I’m sorry to keep picking on him; I just really truly hate Marius Pontmercy. Maybe I’m being unfair to him, I know he has some good points as well………I can’t think of any at the moment though! I know there are people out there who are Les Miserables fans and like Marius, so if you’re one of those people please get in contact with me because I’d really like to know what you see in him.