Brick!Club 5.1.23: Orestes DEAD and Pylades DEAD
It’s
it’s over
all of it
the barricade and the last of the amis and everything they shared and everything they stood for
and the stragglers tried to lift the omnibus back up, but they were shot down because the bus is going nowhere, not today, and Progress will rise again but for now she is
they’re all
they’re dead
it’s
over
*WAILS*
Okay, but serious talk. I know this chapter’s been done to death on tumblr, but please let’s talk about how Grantaire, by loving Enjolras, came to love what he stood for. And honestly I’ve always been a bit uncomfortable with this scene, because how much of it is “Suddenly I see the light” and how much is “Everyone I love is dead, might as well join them.” But I guess on a more literary/symbolic level, the people he loves are the Republic, and it always was that way, and if anyone’s worth his life then they are, and if anything’s worth his life then this is. “I am one of them.” I stand for a society that allows me to be one of them, that recognizes my value as much as the next person’s, that makes a place for us.
And Enjolras permits it, Enjolras would never deny a place to someone who wants to be a part of it, and now there are two of them, now he doesn’t have to die alone, now they form their own little Republic right there in front of the firing squad and they both die a part of something and
*deep breaths*
Okay, it’s not a real fizzpost if I don’t talk about Jesus. So. Jesus. Back when I started getting into all this, right after the movie came out, I’d just finished up a class on the Eastern theology of grace and deification. (I’m making that sound way more fancy than it is. It’s actually a 200-level C.S. Lewis class. But the primary focus was how C.S. Lewis addressed that concept.) Anyway, the idea is that people, by growing closer to God, can partake of the divine nature and become more like God ourselves. Without becoming less human, because God, by the Incarnation, sanctified human nature and made that sacred in itself, and our human nature is fallen and not quite what it should be so when we become more like God we also become more like ourselves and vice versa, and I can and will ramble about this all day but not in this post.
We have Godjolras here, and we have the Fallen Man, who finally sees the Ideal and wants to be a part of it. And when he makes that decision, he’s more himself than he’s ever been in his life. He fulfills that potential that Godjolras always saw in him and never gave up on. All he has to do is ask, and the Ideal gladly welcomes him, and presses his hand (“shakes”, FMA?), and lets him become one of them.
Here Day embraces Night, and says: “I will die with you, and you will be born again with me.”
And, come to think of it, I may have seen this mentioned before? But there’s the line, “darkness ending is like a curtain torn away.” (Not just drunkenness. Darkness. All the despair and the bitterness and). But there’s this beautiful, beautiful line in the Bible, as soon as Christ breathes his last: “And then the veil of the sanctuary was torn in two.” Old Testament theology was very much about separating the sacred from the profane, and that’s exactly the purpose the veil served. But then God ate and drank and sweat and cried and bled and suffered, and then embraced death, the least divine thing there is. And suddenly eating and drinking and sweating and crying and bleeding and suffering and dying were profoundly sacred things. Suddenly Day had Embraced Night, and Night had Embraced Day, and Night was holy now.
I’M NOT HANDLING IT WELL.
THIS IS ALSO A REALLY SOLID AND IMPORTANT INTERPRETATION, and I was really REALLY hoping you’d cover it! It was Brooke I’ve seen mention the veil thing before, and that’s definitely an allusion I’d miss without other people around! But yes please talk about the divinity of humanity, it seems really important here!
Or, you know, just have some hot tea and join us in the Wailing Blankets, that’s good too.
I was just thinking the other day, “Hey, the Brick!Club must be nearly up to OFPD by now.”
I was not disappointed.