Fraternity: Enjolras, Combeferre, Grantaire and Underage Tennis Players [Part 2]

[patria_ou_mort]

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Grantaire: And Eponine thought that she had it bad...

If Combeferre is Enjolras's not-boyfriend, Grantaire is his fanboy-stalker. Among Les Amis de l'ABC, Grantaire is the One Of These Things That Is Not Like The Others. Others are there for a variety of reasons, but mainly because they are of a common liberal ideology, share a common cause.

Grantaire's there for Enjolras. No, really.

So.

Among all these passionate hearts and all these undoubting minds there was one skeptic. How did he happen to be there? Through juxtaposition. The nake of the skeptic was Grantaire, and he usually signed with the rebus: R [grand-R, capital R]. Grantaire was a man who took great care not to believe anything. [. . .] He knew the good places for everything; beyond that, boxing, tennis, some dances, and he was a knowledgeable cudgel player. To top it off, a great drinker. He was particularly ugly [. . .] but Grantaire's self-esteem was not disconcerted. He stared tenderly at every woman, appearing to say about all of them: If only I wanted to; and trying to make his comrades believe that he was in general demand.

An entirely unwarranted interruption goes here for me to point this out: Grantaire plays tennis. And word from French-readers is that English translations of the text are actually inaccurate. Grantaire did not play tennis. No, Grantaire participated in Marseillaise-style kickboxing.

Okay, now that that's out of my system.

I think that I'm just going to quote the entire rest of Grantaire's introductory section, because really... it sums up so much of what can be said about the subject at hand. (My apologies for the longness and the fact that Victor Hugo apparently did not believe in paragraphs.)

All of those words -- rights of the people, rights of man, social contact, French Revolution, republic, democracy, humanity, civilization, religion, progress -- were very nearly meaningless to Grantaire. He smiled at them. Skepticism, that dry rot of the intellect, had not left one entire idea in his mind. He lived in irony. This was his axion: The one certainty is a full glass. He ridiculed all dedication under all circumstances, in the brother as well as the father, in Robespierre the younger as well as Loizerolles. "They're no further forward being dead," he exclaimed. He said of the cross: "A gallows that made good!" A rover, a gambler, a libertine, and often drunk, he annoyed these young thinkers by incessantly singing "I loves the girls and I loves good wine" to the tune of "Vive Henri IV."

Still, this skeptic had fanatacism. This fanaticism was not for an idea, nor a dogma, nor an art, nor a science; it was for a man: Enjolras. Grantaire admired, loved, and venerated Enjolras. To whom did this anarchical doubter ally himself in this phalanx of absolute minds? To the most absolute. In what way did Enjolras subjugate him? By ideas? No. Through character. A phenomenon often seen. A skeptic adhering to a believer is as simply as the law of complementary colors. What we lack attracts us. Nobody loves the light like a blind man. The dwarf adores the drum major. The toad is always looking up at the sky. Why? To see the bird fly. Grantaire, crawling with doubt, loved to see faith soaring in Enjolras. He needed Enjolras. Without understanding it clearly, and without trying to explain it to himself, that chaste, healthy, firm, direct, hard, honest nature charmed him. Instinctively, he admired his opposite. His soft, wavering, disjointed, diseased, deformed ideas hitched onto Enjolras as a backbone. His moral spine leaned on that firmness. Beside Enjolras Grantaire almost felt as though he had a heart became somebody again. On his own, he was actually composed of two apparently incompatible elements. He was ironic and cordial. His indifference was loving. His mind dispensed with belief, yet his heart could not dispense with friendship. A thorough contradiction; for an affection is a conviction. This was his nature. There are men who seem born to be the opposite, the reverse, the counterpart. They are Pollux, Patroclus, Nisus, Eudamidas, Ephestion, Pechméja. The live only on condition of leaning on another; their names are sequels, only written preceded by the conjunction "and"; their existence is not their own; it is the other side of a destiny not their own. Grantaire was one of these men. He was the reverse of Enjolras.

We might almost say that affinities begin with the letters of the alphabet. In the series O and P are inseparable. You can, as you choose, pronounce O and P, or Orestes and Pylades.

Grantaire, a true satellite of Enjolras, lived in this circle of young people; he existed within it; he took pleasure only in it; he followed them everywhere. His delight was to see these forms coming and going in the haze of wine. He was tolerated for his good humor.

Enjolras, being a believer, disdained this skeptic, and being sober, scorned this drunkard. He granted him a bit of haughty pity. Grantaire was an unaccepted Pylades. Always treated rudely by Enjolras, harshyl repelled, rejected, yet returning, he said of Enjolras, "What a fine statue!"

That was actually from Les Misérables, not ship_manifesto, I swear. I also swear that Grantaire really isn't a lost cast member from KHII. (Couldn't resist the joke. Just ignore my strike-outs, they're just me being a smart-ass.)

It's pretty damn explicit that Enjolras means a lot to Grantaire. Hell, existentially, Enjolras means pretty much everything to Grantaire. But both this description and their subsequent interactions suggest that this relationship is both heavily uneven and more complicated than completely one-sided, unrequited whatever-ing. Hugo does use the Orestes and Pylades reference, which is pretty damn gay, but he qualifies it, specifying that Grantaire is "an unaccepted Pylades."

Sucks to be Grantaire.

Grantaire is given most of III.IV.4, with a three-page long, one-paragraph monologue. A different translation from the one I'm using can be found here, because I'm not typing that entire thing out.

Basically? Grantaire is smart. He is an intelligent, well-read man. If he has the means to do nothing but hang around in bars and play games all day, he must be relatively privileged. And what's he doing? Er... well, hanging around in bars and playing games all day.

I imagine that must get under Enjolras's skin somewhat. Not the least because it's being shoved in his face on a nearly daily basis.

Again, we find ourselves at IV.I.6, Enjolras and His Lieutenants. For all that I make fun of this chapter, it is the odd interplay we get between Enjolras and Grantaire here that makes me want to take this chapter seriously. Everything we’ve been given up until this point makes the situation appear almost 100% one-sided. But here...

Enjolras is sending people off to places to talk with people and get a feel for the political climate. He finds himself one man short.

"[. . .] I have to have somebody for the Barriere du Maine. There’s nobody left."

"Me," said Grantaire, "I’m here."

"You?"

"Me."

"You to indoctrinate republicans! You, to warm up, in the name of principles, hearts that have grown cold!"

"Why not?"

"Can you be good for something?"

"But I have a vague ambition in that direction," said Grantaire.

"You don't believe in anything."

"I believe in you."

"Grantaire, do you want to do me a favor?"

"Anything. Polish your boots."

"Well, don't meddle in our affairs. Sleep off you absinthe."

"You're an ingrate, Enjolras."

"You'd be a fine man to go to the Barriere du Maine! You'd be capable of that!"

"I'm capable of going down to the Rue des Grés, of crossing the Place Saint-Michel, of striking off through the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, of taking the Rue de Vaugirard, of passing the Carmelites, of turning into the Rue d'Assas, of reaching the Rue du Cherch-Midi, of leaving behind me the War Ministry, of hrrying through the Rue des Vieilles-Tuileries, of striding through the Boulevard, of crossing the Chaussée de Maine, of crossing over the Barriere, and of entering Richefeu's. I am capable of that. My shoes are capable of it."

"Do you know anything about those comrades at Richefeu's?"

"Not much. We're on good terms, though."

"What will you say to them?"

"I'll talk about Robespierre, by God. About Danton, about principles."

"You!"

"Me! You don't do me justice. When I get going, I'm formidable. I've read Prudhomme, I know the Contrat Social, I know my constitution of the year Two by heart. 'The Liberty of one citizen ends where the Liberty of another citizen begins.' Do you take me for a brute? I have an old assignat in my drawer. The Rights of Man, the sovereignty of the people, ye gods! I'm even a bit of a Hébertists. I can repeat, for six hours at a time, watch in hand, superb things."

"Be serious," said Enjolras.

"I'm fierce," answered Grantaire.

Enjolras thought for a few seconds and gestured like a man making up his mind.

"Grantaire," he said gravely. "I agree to try you. You'll go to the Barriere du Maine."

Grantaire lived in a furnished room quite near the Café Musain. He went out and came back in five minutes. He had gone home to put on a Robespierre waistcoat.

"Red," he said as he came in, looking straight at Enjolras.

Then, with the flat of his huge hand, he smoothed the two scarlet points of his waistcoat over his breast.

And, going up to Enjolras, he whispered in his ear, "Don't worry."

He jammed down his hat resolutely and went out.

What. The. Hell. Was. That.

This chapter is so damn cracky; I find it almost impossible to take Enjolras seriously in this chapter. And then there are moments like "I believe in you." How do you just go and say that to someone? Of course, it's Grantaire, so he's constructed himself and his life so that nothing he says is taken seriously, but with the information that Hugo had given us earlier, we know that that is, in fact, true.

And then we have how Enjolras just completely shoots him down. At this point in the chronology, the Friends of the ABC have been meeting for years, they've been through the July Revolution of 1830 -- and Grantaire has presumably been tagging along as he useless, noisy self the entire time, ever the same.

But. Enjolras still gives him a chance.

Why.

Let's move on to the end of this chapter.

"Well now," [Enjolras] said to himself, "the Barriere du Maine isn't far out of my way. Suppose I go as far as Richefeu's? Let's take a little look at what Grantaire is doing, how he's coming along."

One o'clock sounded from the belfry of Vaugirard when Enjolras reached the Richefeu smoking den. He opened the door, went in, crossed his arms, letting the door go so it swung and hit his shoulders, and looked into the room full of tables, men and smoke.

A voice was ringing out in the mist, sharply answered by another voice. It was grantaire talking with an adversary whom he had found.

Grantaire was seated oppositre another figure, at a table of Saint Anne marble strewn with bran and dotted with dominoes; he was rapping the marble with his fist, and what Enjolras heard was this:

"Double six."

"Four."

"The beast! I can't play."

"You're done for. Two."

"Six."

"Three."

"Ace."

"It's my turn."

"Four points."

"Hardly."

"Your turn."

"I made an awful blunder."

"You're doing well."

"Fifteen."

"Seven more."

"That makes me twenty-two." Musing. "Twenty-two!"

"You didn't expect the double six. If I had played it in the beginning, it would have changed the whole game."

"Two again."

"Ace."

"Ace! Well, five."

"I haven't any."

"You just played, I believe?"

"Yes."

"Blank."

"Does he ever have the luck! Ah! You are lucky!" Long pause. "Two."

"Ace."

"Neither a five nor an ace. That's a nuisance for you."

"Domino."

"Bitch!"

End of chapter. The last we see of Les Amis until the uprising on 5 June 1832.

Now there's an aftermath that I'm curious about. Did Enjolras confront him? Did he leave before Grantaire saw him there? Did Grantaire see that he was there, but did Enjolras refuse to speak with him?

Given that we're dealing with Enjolras, for whom working for the rebirth of the French Republic means everything? Talk about a betrayal. It's also something of a perverse testament to Grantaire possessing a character of his own -- it shows that he's not bending himself over backward to fit Enjolras's whims, even if it seems as though he would like to. His character is too deeply in a rut for himself to overcome.

And going back to picturing the scene -- Enjolras hears a good amount of their dominoes game before the chapter ends. Notably, he doesn't immediately jump on Grantaire and chew him out for not doing his job. Rather, he gives him a chance, waits to see what's really going on -- which turns out to be, yes, Grantaire is just playing dominoes and whiling away the time. Either that or he's just staring in shock, implying that he'd expected Grantaire to maybe actually be doing something.

This is going further into personal character interpretation, but Enjolras doesn't strike me as the chance-giving type. He's presented as being so unbending, so unforgiving. I have difficulty seeing him extending a hand to someone. When Marius, new to the Friends of the ABC, begins ranting about Napoleon, Enjolras doesn't say, "Hm, well, you think that, but how about this idea?" Instead, he says, for all intents and purposes, "You're wrong. Shut-up." Later at the barricade, he's encouraging to the men, but they're people who have already risen up to the occasion; he even kills one of his own men for murdering a civilian.

With that picture of Enjolras in mind, this chapter does a lot for me to flesh out the relationship between Enjolras and Grantaire into, you know, maybe an actual relationship rather than Grantaire just hanging around like a barnacle and Enjolras ignoring him as best he can. I like the possibility of Enjolras wanting Grantaire to get his act together.

But I can't see Enjolras being willing to go any further than giving anything more than an intial chance, even if he would like to see Grantaire change. As I said: unbending and unforgiving.

Moving ahead. Volume IV, Book XII, Chapter 2: it's 5 June 1832, the uprising has started and Enjolras, Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Prouvaire, Feuilly and Bahorel are running through the streets of Paris. Joly and Laigle go to eat breakfast at the Corinth because they are gay together.

The bistro was empty; only two of them were there.

Fricassée, recognizing Joly and Laigle, put a bottle of wine on the table.

As they were at their first oysters, a head appeared at the hatchway of the stairs, and a voice said, "I was passing. In the street I smelled a delicious odor of Brie. I have come in."

It was Grantaire.

Seeing Grantaire, Fricassée put two bottles of wine on the table.

That made three.

"Are you going to drink those two bogtles?" Laigle asked Grantaire.

Grantaire answered, "Everyone is ingenious; you alone are ingenuous. Two bottles never sank a man."

The others had begun by eating. Grantaire began by drinking. A half bottle was quickly downed.

"Do you have a hole in your stomach?" resumed Laigle.

"You've surely got one in your elbow," said Grantaire.

And, after emptying his class, he added, "Ah, now, Laigle of funeral orations, your coat is old."

"I hope so," replied Laigle. "That makes us get along well, my coat and I. It has adopted all of my wrinkles, it doesn't bind me anywhere, it has adapted to all of my deformities, it is complaisant to all my motions; I feel it only because it keeps me warm. Old coats are the same as old friends."

"That's true!" exclaimed Joly, joining in the dialogue, "an old habit [coat] is like an old abi [friend]."

"Particularly," said Grantaire, "in the mouth of a man with a cold id his doze."

[They chat for a little bit, then Grantaire launches into one of his monologues. This one goes for a page before briefly being interrupted by:]

He held out his glass to Joly, who filled it again, then he drank and proceeded, almost without interruption by this glass of wine which nobody noticed, not even himself.

[...then we get two and a half more pages of monologue. His rambling is interrupted by a street kid coming in. The kid, Navet, was sent by Enjolras to tell Bossuet (a.k.a. Laigle) that the uprising was a Go. The kid leaves. And Bossuet, Joly and Grantaire... decide to stay in the bistro because it's raining outside and they can't be bothered to move. Oh, boys.]

The room was dark, great clouds were capping off the suppression of the daylight. There was nobody in the bistro, nor in the street, everybody having gone "to see the events."

"It is noon or midnight?" cried Bossuet. "We can't see a speck. Fricassée, a light."

Grantaire, melancholy, was drinking.

"Enjolras despises me," he murmured. "Enjolras said: Joly's sick, Grantaire's drunk. It was to Bossuet that he sent Navet. If he'd come for me I'd have followed him. So much the worse for Enjolras! I won't go to his funeral."

...now there's a sharp play on words, given that the uprising is centered around the funeral of General Lamarque and that, well, Grantaire, in his great cynicism, sees these uprisings as nothing more than a futile path to an early grave. Also, we know that the uprising is going to fail and these fellows are most likely going to die.

Given how we've already seen one example of Grantaire insisting that he would support Enjolras and not keeping his word, I think we can say that his reliability is, at best, questionable. He can't be trusted to do what he says; it has been suggested, though, that he says what he feels.

So... Grantaire is a sad panda. Well. Until they get some more booze into him.

With this decision reached, Bossuet, Joly, and Grantaire did not stir from the wineshop. Around two in the afternoon, the table on which they were leaning was covered with empty bottles. Two candlesticks were burning, one in a perfectly green copper candelstick, the other in the neck of a cracked decanter. Grantaire had drawn Joly and Bossuet toward wine; Bossuet and Joly had led Grantaire toward joy.

As for Grantaire, since noon, he had gone beyond win, an indifferent source of dreams. Wine, for serious drunks, enjoys only a limited success. There is, concerning inebriation, black magic and white magic; wine is only white magic. Grantaire was a daring drinker of dreams. The blackness of a fearful drunkenness yawning before him, far from checking him, drew him on. He had left the bottle behind and taken to the jug. The jug is the abyss. Having at hand neither opium nor hashish, and wanting to fill his brain with mist, he had taken recourse to the frightful mixture of brandy, stout, and absinthe which produces such a terrible lethargy. It is from these three vapors, beer, brandy, and absinthe, that the lead of the soul is formed. They are three shades of night; the celestial butterfly is drowned in them; and there arise, in membranous smoke vaguely condensed into bat wings, three mute furies -- Nightmare, Night, Death -- flitting above the sleeping Psyche.

Grantaire was not yet to this dreary phase; far from it. He was extravagantly gay, and Bossuet and Joly kept pace with him. They clinked glasses. To the eccentric emphasis of his words and idea Grantaire added incoherency of gesture; he rested his left wrist on his knee with dignity, his elbow at a right angel, and his tie untied, astride a stool, his full glass in his right hand, and he thrw out to the fat servant Chowder these solemn words: "Let the palace doors be opeened! Let everybody belong to the Académie Française and have the right to embrace Madame Hucheloup [the propriestress of the wineshop]! Let's drink."

And turning toward Ma'am Hucheloup he added, "Antique woman, consecrated by use, approach that I may gaze upon thee!"

And Joly exclaimed, "Chowder ad Fricassée, dod't give Grantaire ady bore to drigk. He spedds his bodey foolishly. Sidce this bordigg he's already devoured id desperate prodigality two fragcs didety-five cedtibes."

And Grantaire replied, "Who's been unhooking the stars without my permission to put them on the table in the shape of candles?"

The rest of Les Amis show up, and the boys take over the wineshop and begin building the barricade there on the advice of Bossuet, who is dead drunk by this point in time. Good going, boys. Anyhow, hooray, barricade. Grantaire bursts in again at the end of the next chapter, with a half-page-long monologue that finds itself rudely interrupted.

"Be still, wine cask!" said Courfeyrac.

Grantaire answered, "I am Capitoul and Master of Floral Games!"

Enjolras, who was standing on the crest of the barricade, musket in hand, raised his fine austere face. Enjolras, we know, had something of the Spartan and the Puritan. He would have died at Thermopylae with Leonidas, and would have burned Drogheda with Cromwell.

"Grantaire," he cried, "go sleep it off somewhere else. This is the place for revolution, not drunkenness. Don't dishonor the barricade!"

This angry speech produced a singular effect on Grantaire. It was as though he had received a glass of cold water in the face. He suddenly appeared sober. He sat down, leaned on a table near the window, looked at Enjolras with an inexpressible gentleness, and said to him, "Let me sleep here."

"Go sleep somewhere else," cried Enjolras.

But Grantaire, keeping his tender, troubled eyes fixed on him answered, "Let me sleep here -- until I die here."

Enjolras stared at him disdainfully.

"Grantaire, you're incapable of belief, of thought, of will, of life, and of death."

Grantaire replied gravely, "You'll see."

He stammered out a few more unintelligible words, then his head fell heavily on the table, and, a common effect of the second stage of inebriety into which Enjolras had rudely and suddenly pushed him, a moment later he was asleep.

Grantaire is that friend who doesn't walk the line between charming and obnoxious -- he dances on it, dances with it, and manages to be constantly in motion while, in the end, never moving at all. I can completely understand why Enjolras can't stand him.

...but then Grantaire has to go and whip out the puppy eyes. Whether it's the Tatsumi in me or that playing Tatsumi has messed up my brain, but... puppy eyes. ;_;

Anyway, then we have 150+ pages where the barricade, among other things, happens.

Moving ahead to Volume V, Book I, Chapter 23: Orestes Fasting and Pylades drunk.

The barricade has been breached. The insurgents have retreated to inside the Corinth -- Enjolras got everyone inside, though Marius was lost in the chaos outside -- up to the second floor. The National Guard followed them and finally cornered Enjolras in the billiard room.

"Shoot me," said Enjolras.

And, throwing away the stump of his carbine, and crossing his arms, he presented his breast.

The audacity to die well always moves men. The moment Enjolras had crossed his arms, accepting the end, the uproar of the conflict in the room and all that chaos suddenly hushed into a sort of sepulchral solemnity. It seemed as though the menacing majesty of Enjolras, disarmed and motionless, weighed on that tumult, and as though, merely by the authority of his tranquil eye, this young man, who alone had no wound, superb, bloody, fascinating, indifferent as if he were invulnerable, compelled that sinister mob to kill him respectfully. His beauty, augmented at that moment by his dignity, was resplendent, and, as if he could not more be fatigued than wounded, after the terrible twenty-four hours just elapsed, he was fresh and healthy. Perhaps it was of him that the witness spoke who said afterward before the court-martial, "Three was one insurgent whom I heard called Apollo." A National Guard who was aiming at Enjolras dropped his weapon, saying, "It is as though I'm about to shoot a flower."

Twelve men formed in platoon in the corner opposite Enjolras and readied their muskets in silence.

Then a sergeant cried, "Take aim!"

An officer interfered.

"Wait."

And addressing Enjolras, "Do you wish your eyes bandaged?"

"No."

"Was it really you who killed the sergeant of artillery?"

"Yes."

A few seconds earlier Grantaire had woken up.

Grantaire, it will be remembered, had been asleep since the previous day in the upper room of the bistro, sitting in a chair, slouched forward on a table.

He embodied, in all its force, the old metaphor "dead drunk." The hideous potion, absinthe-stout-alcohol, had thrown him into a lethargy. His table was small and of no use in the barricade, so they had left it to him. He was still in the same posture, his breast doubled over the table, his head lying flat on his arms, surrounded by glasses, jugs, and bottles. He slept with that crushing sleep of a torpid bear and the overfed leech. Nothing had affected him, neither the musket fire, nor the cannonballs, nor the grapeshot, which penetrated through the casement into the room where he was. Nor the prodigious uproar of the assault. Except that he responded sometimes to the cannon with a snore. He seemed waiting there for a cannonball to come and save him the trouble of awaking. Several corpses lay around him; and, at the first glance, nothing distinguished him from those deep sleepers of death.

Noise does not waken a drunkard; silence wakens him. This peculiarity has been observed more than once. The collapse of everything around him augmented Grantaire's oblivion; destruction was a lullaby to him. The sort of halt in the tumult surrounding Enjolras was a shock to his heavy slumber. As if from the sudden halt of a galloping coach, the sleeper awoke. Grantaire stood up with a start, stretched his arms, rubbed his eyes, looked, yawned, and understood.

Drunkenness ending is like a curtain torn away. We see altogether, and at a single glance, all that had been concealed. Everything is suddenly presented to the memory; and the drunkard who knows nothing of what had taken place for twenty-four hours has no sooner opened his eyes than he is aware of all that has happened. His ideas come back to him with an abrupt lucidity; the haze of drunkenness, a sort of vapor that blinds the brain, dissipates, and gives way to clear and precise impressions of the reality.

Relegated as he was to a corner and as though sheltered behind the billiard table, the solciers, their eyes fixed upon Enjolras, had not even noticed Grantaire, and the sergeant was preparing the repeat the order: "Take aim!" when suddenly they heard a powerful voice cry out beside them, "Vive la République! Count me in."

Grantaire was on his feet.
The immense glare of the whole combat he had missed and in which he had not been, appeared in the flashing eye of the transfigured drunkard.

He repeated, "Vive la République!" crossed the room firmly, and took his place in front of the muskets beside Enjolras.

"Two at one shot," he said.

And, turning toward Enjolras gently, he said to him, "Will you permit it?"

Enjolras shook his hand with a smile.

The smile was not finished before the report was heard.

Enjolras, pierced by eight bullets, remained backed up against the wall as if the bullets had nailed him there. Except that his head was tilted.

Grantaire, struck down, collapsed at his feet.

A few moments later, the soldiers dislodged the last insurgents who had taken refuge in the top floors. They fired through a wooden lattice into the garret. They fought in the attic. They hurled the bodies out the windows, some still living. Two voltigeurs, who were trying to raise the shattered omnibus, were killed by two shots from a carbine fired from the dormer windows. A man in a workman's shirt was pitched out headlong, with a bayonet wound in his stomach, and his death throes ended on the ground. A soldier and insurgent slipped together on the slope of the tiled roof and would not let go of each other, and fell, clasped in a while embrace. Similar struggle in the cellar. Cries, shots, savage stamping. Then silence. The barricade was taken.

This incident here -- their deaths -- is the summary of why I'm not fond of Enjolras/Grantaire as a pairing. Literally: the moment that the two of them reconcile, their story ends. It's rather meta, I know, and that bit itself is not based in character, but I feel that it ties into their characters. What defines them through so much of the story is their inability to connect with each other, even though there are indicators that they want to do so. That's what makes their reconciliation so powerful for me -- the fact that they just could not do it until then.

Of course, that and being in a relationship are not mutually exclusive of each other. Except that Enjolras is... Enjolras. I just can't picture Enjolras dealing with the Drama.

Grantaire is something that Enjolras can't rid himself of. They're too polarized for Grantaire to be able to sway him like Combeferre -- not that Grantaire has anything he's trying to convince anyone of (actively, at least). (He makes me think of a quote from Angels in America, when Belize is bitching out Louis and tells him that it's no fun arguing with him because it's like throwing darts at jello.) Grantaire's very existence is an argument, one could say, perhaps. And it's one that Enjolras labels as invalid and does his best to ignore. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away, though. It also doesn't erase the fact that Grantaire is actually, you know, a human being whom Enjolras is rejecting so harshly.

As far as CFUD goes, Grantaire would be a challenge if you didn't share his same knowledge-base. (The most Hugo-esque, IC Grantaire I have ever known was written by a person who happens to be a classics expert. Yeah. While the allusions, etc. aren't everything... well, I don't think that it's a coincidence.) But a little knowledge (and a handy reference for double-checking) goes a long way. He's just... such a wonderfully charming and infuriating character. And he let's you go on such amazing flights of language.

...of course, he might die of alcohol withdrawal. But, I mean, Camp is probably like one long absinthe dream, anyways, so the psychological aspect would be taken care of, at least.


Being Gay is One Thing... But a Country?

Yeah, yeah, Francosexual, you've heard me say it before blah blah blah.

Coming into CFUD, I didn't want to play Enjolras as asexual. As a matter of fact, in the back of my mind, he was actually straight when I first started playing.

...I found that playing him as heterosexual was very difficult, so I just stopped trying to force it.

I'm no expert on early ninetenth century Western European society, but I think I can safely say that it's more overtly gendered than the worlds from which a lot of the CFUD characters come. Even largely excluding what most of the world in which Enjolras lives is like, the realm that he specifically occupies is incredibly male.

No woman was admitted to this back room, except Louison, the café dishwasher, who passed through it from time to time to go from the washroom to the 'laboratory."

Presumably, Enjolras spends most of his time either in that backroom, at University or trying to recruit others (workers, other students, etc.) to the cause. All of these populations are exclusively male. Even the workers, as what these students need are fighters and, hypothetically in the future, politicians -- both male roles.

Enjolras is an intelligent young man. If he were not so intelligent, I would have some lingering doubts regarding whether or not he even knew what women were. Literally.

Of course, these doesn't mean that he wouldn't be attracted to women. Except that Hugo says that he scorns women. Which sort of puts an end to that. Regardless. Even if he were physically attracted to women, it remains that he has no close relationships with them in his canon. Except for filling a few feminine roles (Louison cleaning up the dirty dishes, the women making lint and bandages -- and in that case, only until the battle intensified), women are just completely irrelevant to his life. Even his family -- he gives the Republic the title of his mother. (Not to mention that he doesn't strike me as much of a family guy! You know, with his whole "well, yeah, Rousseau abandoned his kids, but AT LEAST HE DIDN'T ABANDON FRANCE get your priorities straight jeez" bit.) The Republic is his mother, his homeland is his mistress -- the feminine is not a real, solid thing to him.

In my playing of him, he's accustomed (to say the least) to all of his relationships of any note (of which there don't seem to be many to begin with) being with men. He's used to working with them, interacting with them. It's just... how his world works.

And the relationships that he does have are probably pretty much all mediated through their shared cause -- it's through and because of that work that it is potentially personal. It's what means the most to him, what's most intimate to him. So what might be for someone else just a really close working relationship is probably the most intimate emotional relationship that Enjolras could have with a person, both in relative and absolute terms.

So if we adjust relationships to Enjolras's world? Y-yeah, we're pretty gay here. Plus, Enjolras's character is given a very classical feel (to me, at least), and we all know how frickin' homoerotic the classics can get. But again, we are using Our World terminology to describe things in Enjolras World. It's a very imperfect match.

As far as seeing traditional romantic relationships, because such relationships in the world that he knows are between a male and female element, he's probably still more likely to see anything approaching romance in a metaphorical/symbolic manner regarding himself. So, yeah. France still tops. And Halloween made clear to me a previously unnoticed -- and yet so obvious! -- Camp OTP.

You just wish that your love was as pure as Enjolras/Hospital.


You People: An Experiment in Human Relations

Enjolras is a very different person in camp than he is in canon. He connects to people in canon primarily through France, and there isn't the possibility of that in camp. As far as camp goes, escape is all but impossible and people aren't about to start an armed uprising against ths Director. He isn't a stupid guy, and despite all of my joking, he isn't suicidal. Plus, there's the play issue that Inui-mun contemplated at one point: talking about the barrier all the time just gets boring after a while.

As a result, he's really been forced to relate to people in a different way here.

So, the following is not a comprehensive relationship list -- it's a bit of a rundown of Enjolras's relating to people in camp, divided into helpful sections, organized by the people who define best his camp relationships.

Shinji

Yes, I know. Shinji's gone. He still needs to be talked about, I think, especially given that Shinji left camp on 21 September 2006 and I didn't feel as though Enjolras was beginning to get back on track until the Anti-Emo leaf pile on 20 October 2006. A month later. And I didn't really feel like I was totally in the clear until the beginning of November. Granted, there were a number of factors to this. Though Enjolras wasn't as close to Inui as he was/is to others, he did consider Inui to be a valued acquaintance, respected him and thought of him as reliable -- and Inui's departure was very close to Shinji's. Add into this the fact that I was busy at the time and wasn't able to deal with any of this in-game, so it just festered -- and this all happens on top of Enjolras's constant state of WANTING TO GO HOME and him not being able to do anything about it. It just was a really bad combo hit.

So Enjolras was inexplicably fond of the kid, and he enjoyed talking with him and spending time with him. I don't think he realized how much he really did care for Shinji, though, until he left -- mainly because I had no idea.

In the end... what was he? A not-brother? A not-boyfriend? Perhaps, god help us, a friend? Again, we have the terminology problem. But Shinji was someone with whom Enjolras shared a relationship that was strong, personal (i.e. I see you as a human, more than a soldier for the cause, although I really like those, too) and direct (i.e. not really bolstered by the existance of a shared acquaintance).

...actually, I really like the personal/impersonal, strong/solid/weak and direct/indirect descriptors. I think I'll keep them.


Umeda

So for a while, I was really puzzled by why Enjolras didn't hate Umeda. Umeda can be so many things that Enjolras seems to dislike: cynical, lazy, self-indulgent, purposeless, petty, etc.. So I examined it a little more closely, and was struck upside the head with the giant "duh": Umeda is one possible outcome I can see resulting from mixing together Combeferre and Grantaire's personalities, which gives us this combination of the person whom Enjolras trusts most and the person who... engages him most, for lack of a better verb. And this is on top of Umeda's l33t listenin' skillz and being a good doctor and all. I don't think that Enjolras consciously thinks of Umeda as being similar to Combeferre and Grantaire, but I do think that he's definitely attracted to those characteristics (in what very well might be the least sexual manner of "attracted" possible, mind you), even the ones that annoy the shit out of him.

This all adds up to Umeda currently being the person whom Enjolras trusts most in camp. And as long as Umeda is around, Enjolras isn't going to be seeking out any other possible people whom he can hold in confidence, because not only does he not need a large group of close acquaintances, quite frankly, he doesn't seem capable of

Additionally, I'd intially played Enjolras as being biased against counselors, what with their being the representative authority figures of the oppressive institution that is camp. Obviously, this no longer really applies.

And seeing as I spent so much time talking about Grantaire, might as well mention here that Umeda was also the one to open Enjolras's eyes to the fact that Grantaire was possibly a little gay for him. That, along with all of the other relationships that Enjolras has seen in Camp, has opened his eyes some, but on a whole, it hasn't changed Enjolras's views regarding himself and relationships. He was outside of the norm at home, things didn't really apply to him. No reason to consider things here as having to apply to him, either.


Marius, Megan, Ken and Omi

Marius, Megan, Ken and Omi are the occupants of a strange category of people that didn't really exist for Enjolras back home: people with whom he has friendly relations based on circumstance rather than common interest. In other words, the difference between how I'm friends with my roommate because we had to live together in a room the size of a shoebox our freshman year and how I'm friends with the people with whom I do theater. Personal relationships of varying levels of strength and directness.

...yeah, Enjolras doesn't know quite what to do with you people. ♥


Rosalyn, Chloe and Inui

Rosalyn and Chloe are examples of what I'd call impersonal relationships. That doesn't prevent a relationship from being strong or direct. Enjolras and Rosalyn just... bond over Justice. Probably talk over plans of what needs to be done when they go back home. Chloe is obviously level-headed, clever, dedicated and principled, having observed her journalistic habits and gone through the Silent Hill hospital with her.


Simon

DOCTOR PING.

...I mean.

Simon illustrates one of Enjolras's problems with forming relationships with people in camp -- with the lack of the French nationalist common purpose, one of the ways that he relates to a number of people is through a shared inability to relate. This had come up with Inui. To quote Inui-mun, "I'm getting a better idea of why Inui and Enjolras get along but aren't buddy-buddy. They have quite a bit in common with how they operate and view things but that sameness is also a barrier. Or barricade."

So Enjolras actually respects Simon a good deal and has a postive-neutral personal opinion of him.

They just can both sorta be retards.


Heero

Heero gets special mention because Gundam Wing was my first real anime series, pimped to me when I was actually still in the Les Mis fandom. And what caught my eye on the back of the VHS box was the word "revolution." Yes.

Heero hovers somewhere between something-approaching-the-Shinji-category and the Rosalyn/Chloe/Inui category. It's a little fuzzy because Enjolras doesn't actually know what Heero's up to at home. But he does connect to just a shared sense of having a cause that one cares deeply about and desiring to return home to it. And Heero's personality is a type with which Enjolras is comfortable. So, yeah. He likes the kid. And I really need to get Enjolras to stop liking fifteen-year olds like this. Wtf, anime and your crazy junior high-/high school-aged kids.