#les mis letters

Valjean's death in the final song of the musical pretty much always makes me cry. Once Fantine starts singing, it's over for me. However, when I read this scene in the book? UUUGGHHH!!! I am so vexed by this chapter. It's so bad, I can only laugh.

It's the way Valjean only cares about his children making use of his money, and that he thinks that his last earthly minutes are best spent info-dumping about his factory from 10-20 years ago instead of, you know, anything about himself or Cosette's childhood or Fantine or how/why he saved Marius, or the bishop. He even fails at bragging in this scene and ends up underselling just how successful he really was. This is not the way to convince Marius that you obtained the money legally. These are the nonsensical rants of an extremely repressed old man.

It's been 6 months, but I can't shake the image of Valjean passing out/dying and coming-to/resurrecting repeatedly just to talk about black jet manufacturing practices. I went into the chapter expecting to cry in public/at work and instead I just wanted him to get it over with.