"While this was taking place near Tanis, the beggar was travelling toward Crollon." Just the beggar at this point, not Tellmarch yet.
"dreaming rather than thinking, for thoughts have an aim, but dreams have none," Not sure what the narrator thinks of this distinction. Thoughts are more practical, but maybe also more limited?
"perhaps hearing the noise of men but listening to the songs of the birds." Humans are noisy, birds are songful. And Tellmarch focuses on the latter.
"Nothing is more gentle than smoke, nothing more frightful." Lots of hyperbole I guess. This fire is equated with "terrible"/terror a couple times. A destructive force, but just a force in and of itself, requiring outside human agency to direct it for better or for worse.
"According to the Bible story, the sight of a conflagration changes a human being to a statue;" Story of Lot's wife? She was punished for looking back at the destruction behind her, instead of moving forward. (Looking this up, this comes shortly after Abraham tries to bargain with God to be merciful, saying "well if there are even n righteous people left in the city, for their sakes, you shouldn't destroy it," and continues negotiating for smaller and smaller values of n.
"What had become of this little people?" Little how? Unimportant? Or contrasted with the marquis' literal height (he was compared to a giant in the previous chapter). Even though the Vendeeans might be backwoodsy types from the perspective of the more urbane characters/narrators, these are the ones who were killed for supporting (or merely taking in) the Paris batallion.
"Tellmarch passed the corpses in review without omitting a single one; all were riddled with bullets." Is he literally checking everyone to see if there are any survivors? This does seem to be a commendable, unnecessary level of goodness on his part.
"These feet had shoes on;" The soldiers were barefoot, the shoes or lack thereof have come up a couple of times before. (I don't think this is actually relevant to anything, but it's sort of funny. Do the Marquis' troops just feel awkward about making women take their shoes off because cooties or something?)
"One of these women wore a sort of uniform;" Very vague. Maybe this is from Tellmarch's perspective and he doesn't really care about what the different uniforms signify?
"He looked at her livid breasts." Livid?! More of Hugo's weird femininity stuff? Well, she's supposed to be nursing a baby who's been abducted by the people who just tried to kill her, I guess that'd make anyone angry.
"How one thanks God in times like these for not having a family!" Ouch. But yeah, the possibility of "being loyal to one's family" creates a complicating motivation at times when people might want to keep things as simple as possible--in this case, "stay alive, that's the only goal in mind."
"They killed the mother and carried away the children." Even though Tellmarch has just said that she's still alive, they can't really take it in, they're still relying on their own interpretation of what they saw.
"Yes, for he is our marquis." They still think of themselves as his.
Well, this has been Book One: depressing in places, but at least it had some semblance of a plot or two. Join us again next time in Book Two!
The thing about the shoes, okay, is that NONE of the armies around here have them. It'll come up again in very near chapters, but basically the soldiers are not super-well-equipped, even coming from Paris; and the insurrectionists against the Republican government even less so. The Marquis' men took the soldiers shoes because they can WEAR those. They didn't take the women's because they most likely can't use them.
But now I'm very upset because I have read ahead (sorry, but this isn't story spoilage, just history detail) and there's a whole thing about civilians sending the army shoes; shoes were a luxury. But the Bonnet Rouge made sure Michelle had good shoes in the little time they knew her.
…at least Michelle is still alive? And can seek out her children, and maybe kill the hell out of Lantenac in the process? (Hey, a girl can dream).
If I had known, says Tellmarch, shaken by the atrocities he’s unwittingly enabled. If he had known, would he have done any differently? And how could he not have known? How could he not know that he’s in a country in turmoil, a country that’s officially a republic, that the royalist émigrés are trying to invade and take over? That if the Marquis de Lantenac reappears in his native land despite a price on his head it is because he plans to violently reclaim his lost power? Tellmarch cares nothing for politics and only pays attention to the beauties of nature and his next meal, but how could he not have known?
His ignorance is a deliberate choice, a deliberate ignoring, just like he hears the shouts of men in the woods but only listens to the singing of birds.
Tellmarch’s refusal to let second-order consequences affect his decisions is very much like Jean Valjean. Valjean will always do the immediately merciful thing, regardless of what happens next. Valjean is more socially aware and engaged than Tellmarch, but they share this focus on the immediate to some degree, and comparing Tellmarch to Valjean brings Valjean’s limitations (they’re not really flaws, they’re more like inconvenient virtues) into greater relief. You can’t just listen to birdsong; you have to pay attention to the sound of the battle. Tellmarch is also a reverse-Enjolras. Enjolras ignores the birdsong to focus on the battle, and that has its own problems. But if you ignore the battle to focus on the birdsong, you end up joining the battle anyway, and maybe not on the side you’d prefer.
I will miss you, Houzarde and Radoub. Houzarde would have given Lantenac something to drink if he’d been lying wounded and thirsty on a battlefield. This did not stop him from slaughtering her.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2014-05-10 05:51 pm (UTC)"dreaming rather than thinking, for thoughts have an aim, but dreams have none," Not sure what the narrator thinks of this distinction. Thoughts are more practical, but maybe also more limited?
"perhaps hearing the noise of men but listening to the songs of the birds." Humans are noisy, birds are songful. And Tellmarch focuses on the latter.
"Nothing is more gentle than smoke, nothing more frightful." Lots of hyperbole I guess. This fire is equated with "terrible"/terror a couple times. A destructive force, but just a force in and of itself, requiring outside human agency to direct it for better or for worse.
"According to the Bible story, the sight of a conflagration changes a human being to a statue;" Story of Lot's wife? She was punished for looking back at the destruction behind her, instead of moving forward. (Looking this up, this comes shortly after Abraham tries to bargain with God to be merciful, saying "well if there are even n righteous people left in the city, for their sakes, you shouldn't destroy it," and continues negotiating for smaller and smaller values of n.
"What had become of this little people?" Little how? Unimportant? Or contrasted with the marquis' literal height (he was compared to a giant in the previous chapter). Even though the Vendeeans might be backwoodsy types from the perspective of the more urbane characters/narrators, these are the ones who were killed for supporting (or merely taking in) the Paris batallion.
"Tellmarch passed the corpses in review without omitting a single one; all were riddled with bullets." Is he literally checking everyone to see if there are any survivors? This does seem to be a commendable, unnecessary level of goodness on his part.
"These feet had shoes on;" The soldiers were barefoot, the shoes or lack thereof have come up a couple of times before. (I don't think this is actually relevant to anything, but it's sort of funny. Do the Marquis' troops just feel awkward about making women take their shoes off because cooties or something?)
"One of these women wore a sort of uniform;" Very vague. Maybe this is from Tellmarch's perspective and he doesn't really care about what the different uniforms signify?
"He looked at her livid breasts." Livid?! More of Hugo's weird femininity stuff? Well, she's supposed to be nursing a baby who's been abducted by the people who just tried to kill her, I guess that'd make anyone angry.
"How one thanks God in times like these for not having a family!" Ouch. But yeah, the possibility of "being loyal to one's family" creates a complicating motivation at times when people might want to keep things as simple as possible--in this case, "stay alive, that's the only goal in mind."
"They killed the mother and carried away the children." Even though Tellmarch has just said that she's still alive, they can't really take it in, they're still relying on their own interpretation of what they saw.
"Yes, for he is our marquis." They still think of themselves as his.
Well, this has been Book One: depressing in places, but at least it had some semblance of a plot or two. Join us again next time in Book Two!
no subject
Date: 2014-05-10 08:08 pm (UTC)Oh geez.
The thing about the shoes, okay, is that NONE of the armies around here have them. It'll come up again in very near chapters, but basically the soldiers are not super-well-equipped, even coming from Paris; and the insurrectionists against the Republican government even less so. The Marquis' men took the soldiers shoes because they can WEAR those. They didn't take the women's because they most likely can't use them.
But now I'm very upset because I have read ahead (sorry, but this isn't story spoilage, just history detail) and there's a whole thing about civilians sending the army shoes; shoes were a luxury. But the Bonnet Rouge made sure Michelle had good shoes in the little time they knew her.
...THIS IS THE WORST CHAPTER.
1.4.7
Date: 2014-05-17 05:02 am (UTC)If I had known, says Tellmarch, shaken by the atrocities he’s unwittingly enabled. If he had known, would he have done any differently? And how could he not have known? How could he not know that he’s in a country in turmoil, a country that’s officially a republic, that the royalist émigrés are trying to invade and take over? That if the Marquis de Lantenac reappears in his native land despite a price on his head it is because he plans to violently reclaim his lost power? Tellmarch cares nothing for politics and only pays attention to the beauties of nature and his next meal, but how could he not have known?
His ignorance is a deliberate choice, a deliberate ignoring, just like he hears the shouts of men in the woods but only listens to the singing of birds.
Tellmarch’s refusal to let second-order consequences affect his decisions is very much like Jean Valjean. Valjean will always do the immediately merciful thing, regardless of what happens next. Valjean is more socially aware and engaged than Tellmarch, but they share this focus on the immediate to some degree, and comparing Tellmarch to Valjean brings Valjean’s limitations (they’re not really flaws, they’re more like inconvenient virtues) into greater relief. You can’t just listen to birdsong; you have to pay attention to the sound of the battle. Tellmarch is also a reverse-Enjolras. Enjolras ignores the birdsong to focus on the battle, and that has its own problems. But if you ignore the battle to focus on the birdsong, you end up joining the battle anyway, and maybe not on the side you’d prefer.
I will miss you, Houzarde and Radoub. Houzarde would have given Lantenac something to drink if he’d been lying wounded and thirsty on a battlefield. This did not stop him from slaughtering her.