(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

[melannen]

The section around the Barriere du Maine is actually the only part of the Amis & Marius section of the brick that I've read yet, and I was honestly confused by that bit - I've just been assuming that brick!fandom's insistence that Marius wasn't involved with the Amis much at all was an exaggeration to counter the musical version, because it definitely gives the impression that Marius was spending a fair amount of time with them, and even running errands, until the last few months. I am with the people who believe 1) but want 4) to be true.

(everybody's first name is either Jean or Jeanne, this is trufax.)

[skygiants]

Everything that implies Marius has been hanging out with the Amis -- mostly all the Amis talking about him like they're good friends -- is directly contradicted by the stuff we get that focuses on Marius, which is all about how he is antisocial and avoidant and alone.

. . . . although, wow, now that I think of it, if Hugo was more of a direct-POV writer, that's is yet again a really good representation of the kind of warped perception you get about your relationships when you're really depressed.

(If enough people believe in Jean Marius, he becomes real!)

[melannen]

It is! If we buy into the conceit in which the narrator occasionally remembers that he's supposedly writing history from primary sources, it would make sense if he's working from stories Marius told him for large parts of the Marius sections to be unreliable about this, Marius' memories of the time being distorted by his depression....