talk about how fucking gorgeous the finale of les mis is
Like these isnt a single part of this song that isn’t just amazing
I particularly love “take my love for love is ever lasting, and remember the truth that once was spoken to love another person is to see the face of god” like if that isnt the most beautiful gorgeous shit ever then what the fuck is. Like just this whole musical is amazing and I love it with all my heart and I just every single character is amazing and essential to the story and just fuck man.
I also think it is also very interesting because now you finally see Valjean just.. tired.. He has lost everything, then gained everything, then lost everything again over the course of his life. He is tired his life has been hard and difficult and honestly I think this adds so much more meaning to the words “come with me where chains will never bind you, all your grief at last at last behind you, lord in heaven look down on him in mercy” Up until the end he is constantly on edge that he is going to be sent back to prison in his mind the law is always chasing him and he is waiting for it to catch back up to him because honestly in the end I don’t think he still fully believes he deserves to be free and that’s why he is willing to give himself up to Javert as soon as he makes sure Cosette and Marius are okay and that Cosette is going to be safe. He doesn’t stay out of jail because he believes that he is a good man who deserves to be out of jail he stays out of jail because Cosette needs him an he loves Cosette. In death he is being freed by this fear of going back to jail and fear that he deserves to go back to jail as Fantine extends out her hand with this offer of come with me, come to a place where chains will never bind you. She then goes on to say “ all your grief at last at last behind you” His whole life has been full of grief from the very beginning, I mean he stole bread to help his sister and then his sister fucking abandoned him, although he wasn’t super close to Fantine he genuinely cared about everyone and losing her was a pain in itself especially cause he blamed himself (or at least probably blamed himself for this loss) he was there when all the barricade boys died, he thought he lost his daughter and son in law. She is once against extending this hand to allow him to put away his pain his grief his fucking hard as fuck life and go be happy finally and truly I mean this poor man. I then find the line “lord in heaven look down on him in mercy” then continued by him saying “forgive me all my trespasses and take me to your glory” fascinating because like idk maybe this just is me not understanding something about mainstream Christianity cause turns out my cult was a bit different but in the end Valjean was a fundamentally good man even down to the reason he was in prison, he might not believe it but his whole life was centered around helping other people, he didn’t care for his own life he wasn’t selfish even before jail, did jail harden him a bit yes but the bishop melted away that hardness and you see this amazing selfless man who just wants to help other people emerge and I think thats amazing. I don’t really see what needs forgiving and this might be coming from the same person who didn’t understand why we needed to repent every single day but I don’t think he really has anything that needs forgiving he was the literal definition of a g o o d person. Idk if anyone made it this far in this post and understands that line feel free to explain it.
The song then segments into some of my favorite lines in the entire show “take my hand and lead me to salvation, take my love for love is ever lasting, and remember the truth that once was spoken to love another person is to see the face of god” Now part of what is so fascinating about these lines is who says them The first line and second lines are said by Eponine and Fantine and the third line is said by Valjean, Eponine, and Fantine. Now I find this fact particularly fascinating because If you think about it Eponine and Fantine both lived lives that were God damn hard and might even be seen as bad lives or get them marked as bad people by others but in the end they were fundamentally GOOD people who both were given a terrible hand in life and died young. Fantine probably died around 23 ish the brick is really unclear on it but she was young she couldn’t have been older then 17 when she had cosette she was basically the equivalent of some teen who “falls” for a college dude gets knocked up and dumped but on top of that she also was an orphan living on her own. She then needed to provide for her child whom she had living with other people to avoid stigma and she loved her child so deeply that she was willing to give her life to help her child potentially have a better one. She ends up wrongfully getting fired and has to turn to prostitution in order to help her child, she didn’t want to turn to prostitution but she had no other choice this is a 21-22 year old CHILD we are talking about here. She ended up dying without ever seeing her child again even though she desperately wanted to this was the child she gave her life for and she never got to see her again and she was only about 23. Now there’s Eponine Eponine appears to be the antithesis to Cosette, where cosette had a childhood but a good life 8+ Eponine had a relatively good childhood but a terrible life after about the time cosette left. there lives parallel each others in a way but not really at the same time but what makes it that she only appears to be the antithesis to Cosette is the fact that she is a very good person who genuinely cares about the people that she loves very much like cosette. They show the audience and reader how how and where someone was raised really determines so much in their life and in the end compliment each other rather quite lovely if you think about it. But Eponine was handed a very bad hand in life a hand that led to her dying at no older then probably about 16-17 (I don’t remember is her exact age is if stated) to an outside viewer she was a scammer and a thief when in fact she was a good caring person in a bad situation being abused by her father and just doing what she had to in order to survive and in the end she ended up dying with no one to really truly remember her with in a few years. Now this makes the fact that the two of them are the ones who are saying “take my hand and lead me to salvation, take my love for love is ever lasting” very very interesting because of two reasons 1) because “lead me to salvation” they’re both people to who outside people look like beyond saving I mean you have a prostitute and a thief most people will look at that and judge and think they can’t be saved but here they are looking out to salvation looking to make it to salvation who will make it to salvation because they’re at heart really good people and were doing what they had to in order to survive and help the ones they love 2) “take my love for love is everlasting” Love is all they had to give its all they had to offer but they obviously loved fiercely because thats all they have to give but it is everlasting and is what really really matters in the end. Look at Fantine and Cosette and Eponine and Azelma and Eponine and Marius. Love is all they really had to offer those people but they gave every ounce of love they had and they did everything in their power to help those people cause they loved them dearly. I think it is also very important that it is the two of them saying it cause it gives these words so much more meaning then if literally any other character had been saying it because of their extremely specific life circumstances and how they ended up living and dying. Now we get to the third line “and remember the truth that once was spoken, to love another person is to see the face of God” This is said by all three of them if I ever get a phrase fucking tattooed on me its gonna be this one because h o l y f u c k okay so like Valjean pitches into this one. these three characters have arguably gone through the most out of almost every single other character in this story their lives have been thing after thing after thing gone wrong and hardship after hardship. Now I would say it means more that valjean stayed out of the last one because he had money he had the ability to give more then just love even though he did give so much love it gives the words more meaning that thats all the other two really had to give. But with this line he pitches in to love another person is to see the face of god, the highest best thing you can do is to love another person. In loving another person you see the face of god himself, it is the closest you can get to seeing god’s hand in all of this and I find that beautiful. These three loved with all their might they saw the face of god through all the pain all the suffering because they loved. It speaks to the importance of love because in the end this story would not be the same without the love that is intertwined throughout it, the love that shown through the suffering. In the end honestly I would say this can be applied to our own lives because love trumps all and that’s something I feel like the world has always failed to see love can and will win in the end and you really see this with this beautiful musical.
So then (sorry y’all thought I was done but nope bitch I’ve got more to say) the music transitions to the kinda reprise of do you hear the people sing. “do you hear the people sing lost in the valley of the night it is the music of a people who are climbing to the light. For the wretched of the earth there is a flame that never dies. Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise. They will live again in freedom in the garden of the lord. They will walk behind the plow shed they will put away the sword. The chain will be broken and all men will have their reward. will you join in our crusade who will be strong and stand with me somewhere beyond the barricade is there a world you long to see, do you hear the people sing say do you hear the distant drums it is the future that they bring when tomorrow comes. will you join in our crusade who will be strong and stand with me somewhere beyond the barricade is there a world you long to see do you hear the people sing say do you hear the distant drums it is the future that they bring when tomorrow comes” Okay oh boy oh boy oh boy do I have stuff to say about this part. Okay so theres a lot to this and I doubt y’all want to hear another 2000 words from me but lets start from the beginning of this. What I find so cool about this is that it really connects the little blurb at the beginning of the brick “So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation which, in the midst of civilization, artificially creates a hell on earth, and complicates with human fatality a destiny that is divine; so long as the three problems of the century - the degradation of man by the exploitation of his labour, the ruin of women by starvation and the atrophy of childhood by physical and spiritual night are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words and from a still broader point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, there should be a need for books such as this.” to the musical because it really is a call to action to us now. They don’t end the musical with Valjean dying to they choose to reprise do you hear the people sing they don’t let the story end because the story isn’t fucking over. Nothing ever got solved in the book because it is a story about the miserables, about the poor, about the disadvantaged, the hurting the people of france. There are no “bad guys” in the book because all of them are suffering and there is no clean ending to it all because they were all still suffering and still are. Thats why this story drags in so many fans even now over 100 years later because all of this still largely holds true today because there are still injustices people are still hurting and need help and we need to fucking do something. That future is still on the horizon it is still coming and we need to do something about helping it bring it to past. I could do deeper analysis on each of these lines and the connections in les mis but that would easily be another 2000 works and so I will spare y’all this time. Sorry for the long post I hope y’all enjoy it.
kaledo-art
theartofmadeline
dailybridgerton
titsay
dededos
germansingergirl
