Uuuuugh. I feel ya, Grantaire buddy.
I feel terrible for breaking my self-imposed rule of uploading new art every week, but I really need to study/finish my final projects/actually start working on my piece for the Miserable Holidays exchange. If any art gets uploaded at all in the next few weeks, it will be laughably rough study break doodles (see above). I’M BAD AT TIME MANAGEMENT, GUYS. :(
the warmest thing grantaire ever got from enjolras was the heat of his blood as the bullets pierced their bodies
no the smile Enjolras gave him just before that was much warmer
Banner for Grantaire Ship Week! To celebrate all the other really beautiful ships between Grantaire and characters other than Enjolras. You can read more about it here. I will be participating all week long!
Clockwise starting from Grantaire, we have Jehan, Feuilly, Bahorel, Eponine, Combeferre, Joly, and Bossuet. I covered most of the amis. We’ll just assume Courfeyrac is already hiding out in the Captains quarters. ahaha. It starts tomorrow, Happy Shipping!
Okay, so, background: I’ve been rereading Les Mis for the first time in about ten years. Ten years ago, I didn’t read French well enough to be able to consult the French text online, and I also had very naive and unformed ideas about things like faith, patriotism, and death. So this is quite a different experience, and I have been collecting a lot of thoughts.
One particular thing that interested me, and that I haven’t seen previously discussed (although for all I know it may have been, in fact probably has been) is the idea of Grantaire as a kind of virtuous pagan. This struck me quite forcefully.
this i think has a major taste in it of why grantaire as a character is so goddamn popular and why so many people can relate to him — that remark at the end about this generation not being shown orthopraxy and therefore having difficulty with orthodoxy.
many of us are searching for the kind of unity of thought and action that enjolras symbolically embodies and that’s why we idolize him, often in the way that grantaire does. we love grantaire because we see pieces of ourselves in him, and we love enjolras because grantaire does — or for the same reasons that grantaire does. enjolras is what we hope is “the right,” embodied arete, embodied beauty and goodness and power all at once. he is at once moral and at odds with traditional morality, he is progress pressed through the lens of the classical hero, he is the pietas of aeneas mixed with achilles’s furor.
grantaire focuses on thought, gets lost in thought, and cannot believe in anything because he doesn’t know how to connect it to action until enjolras and until he sees enjolras about to make his ultimate sacrifice. grantaire sees, grantaire is transfigured, and he can act. he can at last access right action because he doesn’t have to think about anything anymore.
you don’t have to believe in democracy and liberty when the person you care about most in this world, the person to whom you have attached yourself as though to a backbone, is about to die for it. love overcomes all, and you can choose to act and die at that person’s side.
it call comes down to love spurring right action. from the bishop’s generalized love of mankind redeeming valjean with kindness to grantaire’s personal love for enjolras allowing him to act and choose to die with him, love is what creates the right.
Sometimes I cry because the last thing Enjolras told Grantaire before dying is: “Grantaire, you are incapable of thinking, of willing, of believing, of living, and of dying”.
Then I remember that in Hugo’s manuscript, his last words actually were “Take my hand”And then I CRY HARDER OHMyGOD
Here’s the source, as found and translated by many folks cleverer than me!
Also worth reading for Hugo’s descriptions of E and R’s final fates: “They both die. Grantaire happy and heroic, Enjolras seeking his hand.”
Lots of people on my dash are having bad days so I made some Encouraging/Sympathetic/Calming Grantaire. (heavily based on the Calming Manatee.)
Some of them are even roughly in character, but whatever they actually are I hope they help
A Little Help From My Friends – a Grantaire-Joly-Bossuet fanmix
Cover art by Nisie!
1. Help Is On The Way – Rise Against | 2. I Love You Cos I Have To – Dogs Die In Hot Cars | 3. Friendship – Tenacious D | 4. Don’t Stop Me Now – Queen | 5. Magic Hours – Explosions In The Sky | 6. Have Fun – The Beautiful South | 7. Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own – U2 | 8. Open Arms– Elbow | 9. You’re Not Alone – Marie Miller | 10. Little Bit Of Love – Free | 11. If I Had $1000000 – The Barenaked Ladies | 12. Catch Me When I Fall – Ashlee Simpson | 13. Anywhere You Go – Gin Blossoms | 14. One More Drink Before The War – Ramin Djawadi | 15. You Raise Me Up – Josh Groban | 16. With A Little Help From My Friends – The Beatles
