# LES MIZ: Did Enjolras and his crew deserve what they got? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 9, 2013, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/les-miz-did-enjolras-and-his-crew-deserve-what-they-got/668442 "2013-09-09T21:33:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/les-miz-did-enjolras-and-his-crew-deserve-what-they-got/668442/21 "2013-09-10T11:27:36Z")
> [@BrotherCadfael](#): > > Also, was the society truly just a few wealthy aristocrats and an army of starving street rats? […] While the poor were definitely present, the society was not on the verge of collapse. There was time to wait a few years until a real solution could be achieved, instead of engaging in a dramatic but completely ineffective action that only fed Enjolas’ monstrous ego. That would take very long few years to achieve some form of social justice like the end of 2 yo bees working 35 h/day and paid two crumbs of bread. Dansons la Carmagnole, Vive le son, vive le son, Dansons la Carmagnole, Vive le son du canon! A bas les aristos!!! ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/les-miz-did-enjolras-and-his-crew-deserve-what-they-got/668442/22 "2013-09-10T11:34:23Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > For some reason, standing on barricades in Paris often yields positive results > > […] > > They weren’t stupid at all - they knew very well how the game was played. They happened to strike out this time, but it could easily have gone the other way. > . Fuck yeah!!! Ah, ça ira, ça ira, ça ira, Les aristocrates à la lanterne, Ah, ça ira, ça ira, ça ira, Les aristocrates on les pendra! Tous aux barricades!! ---
**Author:** ![si\_blakely](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@si\_blakely](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/si_blakely)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/les-miz-did-enjolras-and-his-crew-deserve-what-they-got/668442/23 "2013-09-10T11:37:36Z")
> [@Sparky\_the\_Wonder\_Spirit](#): > > In the book, Eponine tricked Marius into going to the barricades because she wanted them to be together in glorious death. She is not a sad figure of unrequited romance. She is creepy and crazy. > [@Recusant](#): > > She’s creepy and crazy, yes, but if you don’t think she’s a tragic figure, you need to reread the book. Yeah, she straddles the line between creepy/obsessed and tragic. To be fair, her upbringing was mostly to blame for that. > [@MovieMogul](#): > > But if played by Samantha Barks? Still hot, and a no-brainer over Cosette. Oh yes - she just had to appear on screen and I welled up. To be fair, though, she was a professional Eponine and by far the most accomplished musical performer in the film. > [@clairobscur](#): > > You partially redeemed yourself by proclaiming your love for Eponine but immediatly wasted any good will by not even mentioning Gavroche, the main protagonist of “Les Misérables”. I like Gavroche, who (in spite of his parents) has a good heart. He lightens the story, but is as tragic as the rest. > [@BrotherCadfael](#): > > I have long felt that Enjolas, not Javer, was the real villain of the story. Javer, for all his faults, was just doing his job. Javert might be an antagonist but he isn’t a villain. He is doing his job the only way he knows how, and cannot understand that there might be another way, and he kills himself rather than change his viewpoint. And I found that incredibly tragic. The only unredeemed character in the book is Thénardier, the least-touched is Cossette (due to the sacrifice of Valjean). All the rest are _Les Misérables_ - The Miserable Ones, if you like. They are all destroyed by their circumstances, even Enjolas, who is blinded by his idealism but deeply moved by the life of the poor. And he dies because of the apathy of those that he would save - the people did not rise. He didn’t deserve to die (to answer the OP) but none of the lives detailed in _Les Misérables_ deserved what they got. ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/les-miz-did-enjolras-and-his-crew-deserve-what-they-got/668442/24 "2013-09-10T11:39:38Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > It worked two years before, in [1830](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1830_revolution), and it would work again 16 years later in [1848](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1848_Revolutions_in_France). For some reason, standing on barricades in Paris often yields positive results > > They weren’t stupid at all - they knew very well how the game was played. They happened to strike out this time, but it could easily have gone the other way. The “some reason” is that central Paris is (was more so, back then) a maze of little, twisty streets. A few barricades thrown up in a few key locations can block traffic and commerce – and, in those days, communication. And I can’t vote in the poll, because the novel was based on the historical reality, so their revolution was doomed. Readers of the book knew that, of course, so there’s a tragic pre-destined atmosphere. The reader _knows_ that Marius should stay away from 'em. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/les-miz-did-enjolras-and-his-crew-deserve-what-they-got/668442/25 "2013-09-10T15:14:12Z")
> [@Sparky\_the\_Wonder\_Spirit](#): > > In the book, Eponine tricked Marius into going to the barricades because she wanted them to be together in glorious death. She is not a sad figure of unrequited romance. She is creepy and crazy. > [@MovieMogul](#): > > But if played by Samantha Barks? Still hot, and a no-brainer over Cosette. Which is why I hate Marius. Blind idiot. Cosette was a tragic figure as a little girl as all, but the grown up version could only have been more bland if she had been made entirely of oatmeal. > [@BrotherCadfael](#): > > I have long felt that Enjolas, not Javer, was the real villain of the story. Javer, for all his faults, was just doing his job. > \ > There was time to wait a few years until a real solution could be achieved, instead of engaging in a dramatic but completely ineffective action that only fed Enjolas’ monstrous ego. It’s _Javert_, dammit. You’re right about Enjolras’s massive ego, though. > [@Sparky\_the\_Wonder\_Spirit](#): > > In the book, Eponine tricked Marius into going to the barricades because she wanted them to be together in glorious death. She is not a sad figure of unrequited romance. She is creepy and crazy. :: works action on shotgun :: I’m gonna need you to take that back. > [@Sparky\_the\_Wonder\_Spirit](#): > > You partially redeemed yourself by proclaiming your love for Eponine but immediatly wasted any good will by not even mentioning Gavroche, the main protagonist of “Les Misérables”. You don’t know me well if you think I can think of Gavroche without wanting to weep genuine tears. “Little people know when little people fight … we may look easy pickings but we’ve got some bite … so never kick a dog because he’s just a pup–fight!–We’ll fight like twenty armies and we won’t give up … so you better run for cover when the pup grows up!” Poor kid. Deserved much better. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/les-miz-did-enjolras-and-his-crew-deserve-what-they-got/668442/26 "2013-09-10T16:20:36Z")
Did the rebels DESERVE to die in the moral sense? Of course not. But was their failure and doom extremely predictable? Of course. They were a tiny band of well meaning amateurs, not real soldiers. Like many young idealists, they had very little common sense, and imagined that The People would rise up in support of them. It didn’t happen, as any older, wiser person could have told them, and they were sure to be killed as soon as the Army got tired of waiting them out. ---
**Author:** ![Hermione](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/cdc98d/32.png) [@Hermione](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hermione)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/les-miz-did-enjolras-and-his-crew-deserve-what-they-got/668442/27 "2013-09-10T16:24:29Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > You don’t know me well if you think I can think of Gavroche without wanting to weep genuine tears. > > “Little people know when little people fight … we may look easy pickings but we’ve got some bite … so never kick a dog because he’s just a pup–fight!–We’ll fight like twenty armies and we won’t give up … so you better run for cover when the pup grows up!” > > Poor kid. Deserved much better. I actually wish they’d restored “Ten Little Bullets” to the movie instead, as they did to the stage show for a while. It’s sung to the verse segment of “Look Down”: _Ten little bullets in my hand/Ten little snipers neat and clean/One for the king of this great land/Two for the aristocracy…/Now’s your chance/I’ll say when/Trust Gavroche/Count to… **(BANG!!!)**_ There’s a point the Nostalgia Critic and his cohorts made in [their review of the movie musical.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5tgq2_GyGY) (It’s longer than the usual review.) They point out that Cosette is the symbol of both the stage show and the movie musical (with that logo based on Emile Bayard’s famous illustration). But, they say, Cosette (though a pretty likable character) doesn’t DO all that much. As a kid, she looks scared, as an adult, she gets married. Why not have GAVROCHE as the symbol of the show? He’s always active, he’s always on the move, he practically embodies the spirit of Paris. (Or, I myself might add…how about actually using Valjean to represent the show? You know…the guy the show’s actually about?) ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/les-miz-did-enjolras-and-his-crew-deserve-what-they-got/668442/28 "2013-09-10T17:23:02Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > “Little people know when little people fight … we may look easy pickings but we’ve got some bite … so never kick a dog because he’s just a pup–fight!–We’ll fight like twenty armies and we won’t give up … so you better run for cover when the pup grows up!” > > Poor kid. Deserved much better. In the earliest runs, the song was much longer, David/Goliath and a “flea can bite the bottom of the Pope at Rome.” We have it on our earliest UK CD, I was disappointed that it was shortened. ---
**Author:** ![Hermione](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/cdc98d/32.png) [@Hermione](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hermione)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/les-miz-did-enjolras-and-his-crew-deserve-what-they-got/668442/29 "2013-09-10T18:07:10Z")
> [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](#): > > In the earliest runs, the song was much longer, David/Goliath and a “flea can bite the bottom of the Pope at Rome.” We have it on our earliest UK CD, I was disappointed that it was shortened. Mmm…I kind of liked the longer version myself, but the creators always had a little problem with it. In the London version first staged at the Barbican, this version came as the barricade boys settled down for the night (just before “Drink With Me”), after Grantaire laughingly urged the little boy to go to sleep. The creators eventually decided it was just too cutesy and Artful Dodger-ish; they thought that on the eve of an insurrection where a good chunk of the cast (including Gavroche) was going to die, it seemed out of place to have a song “about how great it is to be short.” It worked better in the original French version that can be heard on the concept album (song [here,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE6Ct4WBRow) lyrics and English translation [here](http://www.placedauphine.net/translations/ofc21.html)). The chorus of the song is taken word-for-word from a song Gavroche sings in the novel, as the soldiers shoot at him. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/les-miz-did-enjolras-and-his-crew-deserve-what-they-got/668442/30 "2013-09-10T19:04:04Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > Since half the Bohemians were dying of AIDS, they’d be easier pushovers. And now I have the "[Everyone has AIDS! AIDS! AIDS!"](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_CHMx9UWTI)song running thru _my_ head, so thanks a lot. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/les-miz-did-enjolras-and-his-crew-deserve-what-they-got/668442/31 "2013-09-12T04:43:30Z")
> [@si\_blakely](#): > > Javert might be an antagonist but he isn’t a villain. He is doing his job the only way he knows how, and cannot understand that there might be another way, and he kills himself rather than change his viewpoint. And I found that incredibly tragic. Javert may be tragic, but he’s also a villain. One of the big themes of the story is the difference between law and justice. The French state is evil, in the book, because it uses the law to pervert justice. It’s alien to the true, divine, universal law, which is justice and mercy. Javert is the human manifestation of the French state. He’s evil because he thinks it’s right and good to persecute a man for life because he steals bread to feed his family. He thinks it’s good that the masses live in poverty. He has no concept of mercy or justice, and that makes him evil; because he does evil and calls it good. ---
**Author:** ![Bob\_Blaylock](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_blaylock/32/3235_2.png) [@Bob\_Blaylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bob_Blaylock)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/les-miz-did-enjolras-and-his-crew-deserve-what-they-got/668442/32 "2013-09-12T07:17:33Z")
> [@BrotherCadfael](#): > > I have long felt that Enjolas, not Javer, was the real villain of the story. Javer, for all his faults, was just doing his job. To put it that way makes me think of the Nuremberg Defense. _“I was just following orders.”_ But that aside, I agree, that Javert, though the main antagonist, isn’t really a villain. He’s a good and honorable man, with an unwavering devotion to law and order. This devotion blinds him to the nature of his nemesis, Valjean, such that he cannot see Valjean as anything but a criminal who has mocked the law, and who must be brought to justice. Forced to see Valjean for what he truly is, Javert cannot reconcile the contradiction between the fugitive that he has pursued all these years, and the man who has done nothing but good in all that same time; leading Javert to end his own life rather than live with the contradiction that he cannot face. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/les-miz-did-enjolras-and-his-crew-deserve-what-they-got/668442/33 "2013-09-12T14:17:45Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > He’s evil because he thinks it’s right and good to persecute a man for life because he steals bread to feed his family. Well, that and the repeated escape attempts, parole violations, etc. Valjean wasn’t being pursed for just “stealing bread” any more than I’d be sent to jail for “just a missing brake light” after leading the police on a three state high speed chase rather than pulling over. ---
**Author:** ![si\_blakely](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@si\_blakely](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/si_blakely)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/les-miz-did-enjolras-and-his-crew-deserve-what-they-got/668442/34 "2013-09-12T14:52:50Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > Well, that and the repeated escape attempts, parole violations, etc. Valjean wasn’t being pursed for just “stealing bread” any more than I’d be sent to jail for “just a missing brake light” after leading the police on a three state high speed chase rather than pulling over. _Five years for what you did, the rest because you tried to run, yes 24601 …_ ---
**Author:** ![Hermione](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/cdc98d/32.png) [@Hermione](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hermione)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/les-miz-did-enjolras-and-his-crew-deserve-what-they-got/668442/35 "2013-09-12T15:22:29Z")
Hugo himself said that the principles by which Javert lived his life were good in themselves, but his exaggeration of them made them almost evil. Which neatly sums up any kind of fanatic. I myself never considered Javert a villain–not in the sense that he was actively out to hurt others. Take the part where he brushes off Fantine’s pleas for mercy. It may seem callous on first blush, but there’s no reason to doubt his line in the musical, “I have heard such protestations every day for twenty years.” How was HE to know that he was arresting the one prostitute who wasn’t feeding him a line? That’s where I thought some movie versions (especially the 1998 one) missed the mark–they gave Javert an actively nasty, sadistic streak. Hugo said something along the lines of “Many lawmen have the kind of face that combines authority with meanness. Javert had that, without the meanness.” What I do believe is that he was meant to reflect the flaws of French society of that time. For example, look at his spying on the barricade boys. It’s easy for us to say, “How could he be working against such idealistic young men who only wanted to help society?” But Javert worked for the government, he saw things as the government did, and in the eyes of the government, these were dangerous rebels. And questioning the viewpoint of the law was the last thing Javert would ever do. (Come to think of it, it IS the last thing he ever did. :D) ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/les-miz-did-enjolras-and-his-crew-deserve-what-they-got/668442/36 "2013-09-12T15:26:36Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > Well, that and the repeated escape attempts, parole violations, etc. Valjean wasn’t being pursed for just “stealing bread” any more than I’d be sent to jail for “just a missing brake light” after leading the police on a three state high speed chase rather than pulling over. The thing is, the punishment meted out to Valjean was disproportionate to his crime–so much so, I’d say, that the State and its agent Valjean lost any moral authority to mete out punishment. Five years for stealing a loaf of bread is hugely out of scale, as was nearly quadrupling his sentence for an escape attempt, and the terms of his parole were such that he would never be able to support himself as a free man, and so would inevitably be returned to a life of slavery. Valjean was entirely justified in saying “Fuck this shit.” ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/les-miz-did-enjolras-and-his-crew-deserve-what-they-got/668442/37 "2013-09-12T15:40:36Z")
As I recall from the book, Valjean had multiple escape attempts (and succeeded once before going to Paris) plus the obvious parole violation, resisting arrest and assaulting officers – Javert as well in the musical, I don’t recall if they came to blows in the novel. His theft of the bread wasn’t merely “stealing bread” but breaking and entry. From the novel (via Project Gutenberg): > [@](#): > > One Sunday evening, Maubert Isabeau, the baker on the Church Square at Faverolles, was preparing to go to bed, when he heard a violent blow on the grated front of his shop. He arrived in time to see an arm passed through a hole made by a blow from a fist, through the grating and the glass. The arm seized a loaf of bread and carried it off. Isabeau ran out in haste; the robber fled at the full speed of his legs. Isabeau ran after him and stopped him. The thief had flung away the loaf, but his arm was still bleeding. It was Jean Valjean. > > This took place in 1795. Jean Valjean was taken before the tribunals of the time for theft and breaking and entering an inhabited house at night. He had a gun which he used better than any one else in the world, he was a bit of a poacher, and this injured his case. > […] > Towards the end of this fourth year Jean Valjean’s turn to escape arrived. His comrades assisted him, as is the custom in that sad place. He escaped. […] The maritime tribunal condemned him, for this crime, to a prolongation of his term for three years, which made eight years. In the sixth year his turn to escape occurred again; he availed himself of it, but could not accomplish his flight fully. […] he resisted the galley guards who seized him. Escape and rebellion. This case, provided for by a special code, was punished by an addition of five years, two of them in the double chain. Thirteen years. In the tenth year his turn came round again; he again profited by it; he succeeded no better. Three years for this fresh attempt. Sixteen years. Finally, I think it was during his thirteenth year, he made a last attempt, and only succeeded in getting retaken at the end of four hours of absence. Three years for those four hours. Nineteen years. In October, 1815, he was released; he had entered there in 1796, for having broken a pane of glass and taken a loaf of bread. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/les-miz-did-enjolras-and-his-crew-deserve-what-they-got/668442/38 "2013-09-12T15:45:07Z")
Worth mentioning as well that, although he goes on to question the conditions of a world where people are reduced to such hunger, he was in the wrong for his crime and did not even attempt to ask for the bread out of charity or to trade work for it before resorting to theft: > [@](#): > > He recognized the fact that he was not an innocent man unjustly punished. He admitted that he had committed an extreme and blameworthy act; that that loaf of bread would probably not have been refused to him had he asked for it; that, in any case, it would have been better to wait until he could get it through compassion or through work; that it is not an unanswerable argument to say, “Can one wait when one is hungry?” That, in the first place, it is very rare for any one to die of hunger, literally; and next, that, fortunately or unfortunately, man is so constituted that he can suffer long and much, both morally and physically, without dying; that it is therefore necessary to have patience; that that would even have been better for those poor little children; that it had been an act of madness for him, a miserable, unfortunate wretch, to take society at large violently by the collar, and to imagine that one can escape from misery through theft; that that is in any case a poor door through which to escape from misery through which infamy enters; in short, that he was in the wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/les-miz-did-enjolras-and-his-crew-deserve-what-they-got/668442/39 "2013-09-12T15:45:24Z")
By the way, in the scene at the beginning of the movie when Javert told Valjean to retrieve the flag, was Javert just expecting him to detach the flag from the mast and just bring it back or did he expect him to try to move the whole thing? (And also, I’ve never seen the stage musical, so when I saw the film, I recognized the Master of the House song, as I seem to remember George Costanza singing it on a Seinfeld episode.) ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/les-miz-did-enjolras-and-his-crew-deserve-what-they-got/668442/40 "2013-09-12T15:51:06Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > By the way, in the scene at the beginning of the movie when Javert told Valjean to retrieve the flag, was Javert just expecting him to detach the flag from the mast and just bring it back or did he expect him to try to move the whole thing? To move the whole thing. The point of it was to establish that Valjean was ridiculously strong, and that Javert knew it. That movie, by the way, is so incredibly bad that it’s knocked Star Trek: 90210 and Lord of the Rings: The One with the Scrubbing Ghost Army from the top of my worst-ever list. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/les-miz-did-enjolras-and-his-crew-deserve-what-they-got/668442.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/les-miz-did-enjolras-and-his-crew-deserve-what-they-got/668442.md?page=3)