(no subject)

[skygiants]

So I keep wondering why Enjolras expects Marius to show up and be helpful in the Barriere du Maine scene; after all, we're told that after the Great Napoleon Debacle, Marius essentially storms off in a huff and never goes back to revolutionland again. Also, he is Marius. Myself, I can think of about four reasons:

1. Unreliable/ambiguous narrator: Marius had been hanging out with the gang before Napoleongate way more than the text implies.

2. Marius has not been hanging out with the gang, but Courfeyrac trusts him enough that he asks him to run errands sometimes when it would be useful to have an unfamiliar face show up, which he does because of the debt he feels he owes Courfeyrac, and Enjolras interprets this as Marius being way more interested in revolution than he actually is. This would actually be an interesting fic-premise -- Marius Pontmercies his way through a revolutionary errand he knows nothing about; hijinks ensue!

3. Enjolras really is JUST THAT DESPERATE. Maybe all the redshirt revolutionaries have gone home for the summer holidays. Or are dying of cholera.

4. Enjolras is not actually talking about our Marius at all, but about a friend of his named Jean or Pierre or Guifford Marius. Jean Marius has been very lax about showing up to meetings recently and we are VERY DISAPPOINTED in him.

Comments

[elsane]

Yes, this, exactly -- clearly Marius is part of their social circle, frex Joly even brings Marius up as a topic of gossip on the morning of Lamarque's death. I think the picture we're supposed to get is that Marius is an ideologically uncommitted social hanger-on, sort of like Grantaire except more Pontmercy and less...R. But I, like you, find this hard to reconcile with Marius' deep self-absorption. I find the carried away idea very plausible -- doesn't Hugo describe Marius as falling into immobile contemplation of a tree for an hour, in Cosette's company? This is hard to take literally.

Enjolras thinking of Marius at all makes me suspect Marius has been coaxed back to hang out in the Cafe Musain, which isn't, after all, the most formal of political meetings. So if the choice was between two social hangers on, Marius and Grantaire, it's still ludicrous to pick Marius who has no political coherence at this point, but if the other option is Grantaire...

[skygiants]

Re: Marius being part of the social circle, I have been trying to fanwank ways to reconcile everybody knowing him and thinking of him as present with what Hugo tells us about him NEVER BEING THERE< and I've come up with, again, two aspects:

- Marius actually did graduate from law school, so presumably he did go to classes with a bunch of these guys, or at least the ones who ever bothered to turn up to class, and they got used to seeing him around there before he fell into his LONELY ROMANTIC DESPAIR

- Courfeyrac probably turns up ALL THE TIME at the Cafe Musain with "lololol my wacky roommate Marius" stories, so even after Marius goes incommunicado, everyone feels like they know him incredibly well. My brother's roommates and girlfriends totally form topics of family gossip, even though mostly we never meet them!

[elsane]

I love your second possibility! I'm sure all of the Amis feel they know Marius lolariously well whether they hang out with him in person or not.

He is canonically mentioned as hanging out with Grantaire, Bossuet, and Courfeyrac at least, and I can easily see him being on casually friendly terms with the more earthbound of the Amis, in the kind of way that he would take very seriously.

What I can't square this with is Enjolras, of all people, actually thinking of him as a plausible emissary to the Barriere du Maine. augh. I think I'm repeating myself, I'm circling around to the "Option 5: Marius Sue" bit again; do you suppose I'm supposed to imagine that Enjolras has been socially hanging out with Marius? I... find this rather hard to envisualize... and dreadfully awkward...