#love these morally ambiguous self-destructive furries

[secretmellowblog]

I’ve been thinking about the Javert/Eponine parallels lately and like!!! I completely forgot that the line where Enjolras tells Javert “your friends have just shot you” is immediately followed by the chapter where Eponine dies of her gunshot wound

I know other people have written posts (and i probably will too) about the parallels between Javert and Eponine— how they’re both described as “guard dogs whose parents are wolves,” how they turn against their criminal parents to defend “society,” how Eponine is described using police metaphors, how Eponine often talks about drowning herself and Javert is supposed to die at the barricades but then they “trade deaths” so that Eponine dies at the barricades and Javert drowns himself, Javert seeing Eponine’s corpse right before he’s about to be executed and remarking that he feels like he knows her, and so on

But I’m really emotional about the parallel between....... how Javert and Eponine are the “guard dogs” of a person or institution that Doesn’t Care About Them, and barely even knows they exist.

Eponine gives her life for Marius, but he doesn’t even notice! She has to crawl over to him to make him talk to her because otherwise, he wouldnt even know she saved his life. She did so much for him and gave up so much for him, and he barely remembers she exists. She’s at his feet after taking a bullet for him and he doesn’t even recognize her.

Javert gives his life for the society he serves, and is calm/resolute while facing his execution. Then the National Guard has an easy opportunity to save Javert’s life — they just have to pull a hostage exchange, giving Jehan in exchange for Javert. They could easily save the life of the police officer who has done everything “right” for them, who has been completely submissive and obedient his entire life, who has dedicated his entire soul to his work, who has turned himself into a cruel empty friendless husk for his work, who has sacrificed everything for them— but they don’t. Because they don’t care!

Because Javert is to the National Guard what Eponine is to Marius— if he’s not literally crawling up to them and begging them to notice him, he might as well not exist.

Les Amis instantly notice and care when Jehan Prouvaire is missing. but Javert goes missing and is instantly easily forgotten/discarded, because he’s not important and no one cares and the police/military don’t value human life.

There’s a line later on where Javert’s behavior as he awaits execution is described like this:

“A spy of the first quality, who had observed everything, listened to everything, and taken in everything, even when he thought he was to die; who had played the spy even in his agony; and who, with his elbows leaning on the first step of the sepulcher, had taken notes.”

And I’ve seen people try to argue that line shows how Heroic /noble Javert is, and I’m here like no! :((That line isn’t heroic, it’s just….deeply pathetic and pitiable.

To me that line has the same Feeling as Eponine slowly dying and, “with her elbows leaning on the sepulcher,” using the last of her strength to crawl over to Marius and try to make him notice her.

One major difference is that Marius is ignorant but he does ultimately Feel Something about Eponine and tries to take care of her as she dies, while the police/national guard do not care about Javert at alllllll........when he returns to the police station and gives a brief report of what happened to him, they indifferently just put him back on duty again without even telling him to take a break first. :|

Javert’s executioners (Valjean and even Enjolras) ultimately show far more concern for him than the people who are supposedly “on his side,” because unlike cops they actually value human life, lol

But I don’t know. Even beyond this specific metaphor, there’s just something so sad about the way both Javert and Eponine are so “unimportant” to the other characters, so quickly forgotten by them. Almost immediately after Eponine dies Marius moves on to reading Cosette’s letter; Valjean reads about Javert’s suicide in the newspaper and says “he must’ve been crazy” and then forgets about him. Eponine and Javert have these deep complicated thorny emotional relationships with the other characters that they literally destroy/kill themselves over, but those deep emotions aren’t returned/requited at all, in a really bitter horrible awful way.