Sometimes I wonder what Hugo was trying to say when he wrote Grantaire and his relationship with Enjolras (goddamn that novel, everything in its billion trillion pages was making a point)…

In a book where a lot of the characters are proper Heroes (with a capital H), willing to fight and die for things like freedom and justice, Grantaire’s not really that. He spends most of his page time drunkenly monologuing and then he manages to sleep through all the noble speechifying and glorious battles. He annoys people and he wastes his potential and his chosen nickname is just one letter. Spiritually, he’s about as low as you can get, except that he deeply loves, in whatever way, someone else.

Loves Enjolras so much, in fact, that he doesn’t want to live in a world without him- but also places him, and by default his ideals, so high above himself that he asks permission before getting in the way of his ‘fine death’.
Grantaire’s love is almost completely unselfish and that’s his redemption- Enjolras finally accepts him once he realises that the thing Grantaire was thinking, believing, willing, living and dying for was him.

So the point was, I think, “yeah, you can be cynical and depressive and a bit of a pain in the arse, but if you really love someone none of that matters, you’re worth something, you’re heroic.’ So that’s nice. I’m just gonna go cry now….