#5.1.15

Gavroche makes the same choice that everyone on the barricades has been coerced toward: buying scant minutes of time with unimaginable sacrifice. It’s being in a position where you’re forced to claw and scrape out any forward progress. And whether it’s you or someone standing in your way, something has to give. For every cartridge Gavroche manages to gather, “there is another who will do us no more harm.” That same thesis showing up again. I can’t directly compare this to Enjolras, but, at some point, the distinction between distributing bullets and firing them isn’t meaningful. Think of it as the difference between attack and defense, one bolsters your allies, the other eliminates your enemies, but both ultimately have the same result.

It’s also worth thinking about the difference in consequence. In one sense, Gavroche gets the worse outcome, death is much worse than a grim conscience. But, from a more spiritual perspective, dying without the mark of the sin of murder on your soul is imminently preferable, and we already know that Enjolras has judged himself for his actions.

This is…a much worse scene than even Jehan’s execution. Jehan was killed as an enemy combatant and an active threat and was not a child. His last words were a rallying cry to revolution, Gavroche’s are a playful song (not without its allusions of course). “It was the sparrow pecking at the hunters…The National Guards and the soldiers laughed as they aimed at him.” The Guard is playing a game and for all that Gavroche is teasing, he’s not playing with them. As soon as he’s hit, his song takes a deliberate shift in tone, “I have fallen to the earth…with my nose in the gutter.” C'est la faute à les gardes nationaux. There’s so much imagery of flight and falling, sinking only to rise again. Even when Gavroche falls for the last time, he isn’t grounded, “that great soul had taken flight.”

“To be wandering and to seem free is to be lost.” Oof. There’s something laughably ironic about the public gardens only being accessible to those who can afford private space. No poor homeless children allowed in this public space.

The gardens come back. “In the morning all is streaming, in the afternoon all is dusty. Nothing is so admirable as a verdure washed by the rain and wiped by the sunbeam.” I like the phrase “pitilessly content,” to describe this type of person who ignores “sublime toil” in favor of the infinite. It has less to do with being literally absorbed to distraction by the immensity of nature and the cosmos, and a lot more to do with being in such a position where one can ignore the context and subsequent impact of their thoughts and actions. You don’t get to believe that you have an entirely objective existence, it only means you’ve never looked down before. This feels like a critique of religion, philosophy, and science all in one go.

Courfeyrac sees Gavroche outside the barricade, filling up a basket with cartridges from the bodies in the street.

The street is filled with smoke, so Gavroche remains relatively hidden for quite a while as he advances into the street.

Then a bullet hits the body he’s looting. Two more shots come, and Gavroche stands and faces the National Guard. He sings to them about Voltaire and Rousseau. They continue shooting at him, and he continues singing and collecting cartridges.

But then he is hit, and he staggers. The barricade cries out. He sits up, throws his arms in the air, and continues to sing.

:’(   :’(   :’(

The singing and getting too close to the soldiers were not good tactical decisions, but Gavroche remains faithful to his style. All hail!

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;_;

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