Brick Club 5.1.19
“They distinguished in a heap of dead, a livid face, a flowing head of hair, a wounded hand, and a woman’s breast half naked. It was Eponine.” A gruesome reversal of Liberty Leading the People.
Javert is so thoroughly dumbfounded that Valjean is letting him go that he accidentally musters up some respect for him. It really is something that Javert is only able to find any reason to respect Valjean once Valjean personally does him a good turn. Not the fact that he singlehandedly repaired the economy of an entire town, set up education and jobs for the working class, and by every account is a good, compassionate man. It’s only now that he’s having real misgivings.
Javert: Kill me, you coward Valjean: Go away
There’s an interesting parallel that occurred to me between Javert and Enjolras actually in the idea that certain wrongdoings, even in the pursuit of ‘good,’ can be justly punished. Enjolras believes that the act of murder demands punishment and it doesn’t matter whether it’s in the pursuit of justice or in perpetuating oppression, he is just as culpable as a member of the Guard. Javert believes he has a right to punish Valjean, but it’s also part of the natural order of society that Valjean should find it just to punish him. Not quite the same, but there’s a pervasive idea of equal and opposite retaliation. It’s groundbreaking then that Valjean deliberately refuses to take part in this exchange. There’s both positive and negative implications in the long run—opting out of the system and perpetuating the system are not necessarily opposites—but, to Javert, who cannot fathom anything outside the system, this is an unheard of reversal of the natural order.
I can only imagine how mind boggling this is for Marius to witness. The father of the woman he is in love with just personally requested to murder that one policeman that arrested the thief who saved his father at Waterloo that one time. Like, what in the world could possibly be going on?
