"One day more! Another day, another destiny. This never-ending road to Calvary; these men who seem to know my crime will surely come a second time. One day more!" ~les mis (kretzmer, boublil, & natel)

I'm crazy about Les Mis. I read the novel in eighth grade (not exactly typical eighth grade reading material) and fell in love with it. I think the musical is absolutely lovely; I love the score, I love the story, I love everything about it. I can't wait for Christmas Day largely because that's when the new movie version of the musical opens. Anne Hathaway plays Fantine, and her opening monologue of SNL last night was awesome. Check it out.


I also have a Les Mis rant to share with you, because my blog seems as good a place as any to let it out. I'm a literature dork and a theater dork and I care about stuff like this. You get it, right? If not, feel free to stop reading. It's a rant about Eponine, whom I think is misinterpreted way too often. So here goes.

Many people see Eponine as a heroine and feel sorry her because of the whole unrequited love thing, which they think is the most important thing about her. This bothers me. So here are some of my thoughts on the character.
1. To really understand Eponine (and I'm not sure that I do, or that anyone but Mr. Hugo does), you need to read Victor Hugo's novel. The musical version cuts out most of the details about Eponine because it's just too hard to fit them all in. She's a complicated character, and her most defining characteristics are not easy to portray or to reconcile with each other. For example, she's incredibly bitter and filled with anger (and this isn't sufficiently shown in the musical), but deep down, she's also very vulnerable.
2. Eponine is not beautiful. She is a "pale, puny, meagre creature," with a hoarse voice like "a drunken galley slave’s "due to it being "roughened by brandy and by liquors." She is missing teeth. She's dirty. Seriously, she's not supposed to be attractive.
3. Eponine is not a saint. She torments her adopted sister, Cosette, until Cosette is rescued by Valjean. Eponine is part of her father's street gang, which robs people and also plots murder against Valjean. She's not exactly a nice person.
4. It would have been completely unrealistic if Marius had ended up with Eponine. He fell in love with Cosette before he met her, and he shows absolutely no sign that he has feelings for Eponine. No sign whatsoever.
5. Eponine is a complex character, moreso than most of the other females in Hugo's novel. She is a product of her environment, immersed in poverty, squalor, immorality, violence, and corruption. Yet she struggles to rise above these circumstances. I think that's why she worships Marius; he represents a way out of that corrupted life. It's her struggle that makes her interesting, because it would be so easy for her to simply give in to her circumstances. She doesn't necessarily go about it the right way because she doesn't know how to escape the life into which she was born, but she fights. She tries. She's drowning, but she doesn't just let herself sink, even though she doesn't know which direction is up.
6. It may not seem like she's successful in her struggles, but Eponine achieves redemption in her death. She sacrifices herself for Marius, and in doing so she finally rises above the degradation and immorality of her life.

 I love the character, and I think she deserves to be viewed as the complex girl that she is rather than simply a poor victim of unrequited love (which is how a lot of people seem to view her).
/End rant.

One more thing to leave you with. Anne Hathaway was also part of a Homeland sketch on SNL. If you don't watch Homeland it'll probably go over your head (and if you don't watch Homeland you need to start watching), but if you do, this is awesome, mostly because of Bill Hader as Saul (Mandy Patinkin holla).