No story, just analyses on my favorite fictional characters (plus the occasional real person). Will also feature song lyrics I think fit them because music is my life and there's a song for everything. Multi fandom (duh) Will feature all manner of m...
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(YEET PHILLIP QUAST IS AWESOME)
I wish this dumb site would let me crop this picture
Okay so a quick note. So if you guys haven't noticed, I have a rule that I write my essays boy/girl/boy/girl, and my last essay was a boy. But I feel like I have to write this one while I'm still in Les Mis, especially since the girls I was considering writing about next (Sydney from Alias or Rachel from Friends) are both from shows I haven't finished. Now for the actual essay.
It took me a long time to realize it (around three years in which Eponine, Gavroche and Marius took turns being my favorite), but...Javert is my favorite Les Mis character. He's also my favorite musical theatre antagonist of all time. His songs are absolutely brilliant, and he's overall just a really fun and complex character to analyze and play. Now, I say antagonist because...in my mind, Javert is not really a villain.
What I love about Javert is that, while he is technically Valjean's antagonist, he isn't really a bad person. It's hard to define what makes a bad person, but you can't deny that for all his faults, Javert really does care about doing the right thing, unlike the Thenardiers, who are completely amoral. In fact, he's so steadfastly dedicated to doing the right thing that he spends a good portion of his life desperately trying to track down one prisoner who the other officers probably forgot a long time ago. Flawed he certainly is, but the man is ridiculously loyal and hardworking: two qualities that make me believe Javert is almost certainly a Hufflepuff gone wrong.
But where does Javert go wrong? That, of course, lies in his failing to understand mercy and forgiveness, a flaw which will end up being his undoing. While he certainly does care about being a good person, his view of what makes a good person is completely black and white: If you have committed a crime, you are a bad person, and that is all. In Javert's mind, there is the law, and there is everything else. In the words of the musical, "There is either Valjean, or Javert."
One thing I love about Javert is that behind all of that commanding stoicism, he is a deeply vulnerable and fragile man. His "heart is stone, and still it trembles." His whose entire worldview is shattered by a simple act of kindness from a man he believed could only do wrong. Javert cannot accept the fact that Jean Valjean chose to save his life, instead of killing him like he expected him to. For the first time in his life, he cannot decide whether a person is good or evil, "from heaven or from hell." Javert's entire way of life was based on the fact that he thought he knew the difference between right and wrong. He no longer does. Therefore, his entire life has been a lie.
Javert (at least in the musical, I won't even get into that) believes deeply in God. He represents the strict, Old Testament belief in God, while Valjean represents the loving, New Testament belief in God. Javert's faith in the law/God is represented by the stars. "You are the sentinels, silent and sure, keeping watch in the night. You know your place in the sky, you hold your course and your aim. And each in your season returns and returns, and is always the same." The "stars" we're something Javert could always count on. After Valjean shows him kindness, he looks once again to the stars. But, in the words of the musical, they are "black and cold." SYMBOLISM GOALS)
Much earlier in the musical, Jean Valjean sings a song with the same melody as Javert's Soliloquy, appropriately titled "Valjean's Soliloquy." Both men are at a turning point in their lives caused by someone showing kindness to them when they did not believe they deserved it. In Valjean's case, it was the Bishop giving him the silver candlesticks after he attempted to steal them.
The parallels between these two songs are fascinating, none more so than how they each end. The second to last line of both is "I'll escape now from that world, from the world of Jean Valjean." It means different things for both of them. Valjean chooses to take the love he has been shown and use it to better himself, so his last words of the song are "Jean Valjean is nothing now, another story must begin." Javert, once again, fails to understand the concept of forgiveness and mercy. And as a result, believing "There is no way to go on", he jumps off a bridge into the Seine and kills himself.
With all that said, the question you may be wondering is, who is my favorite Javert? It's so cliche, but I'd have to say Phillip Quast. He just nails every aspect of Javert's character. He's brilliant at being both intimidating and vulnerable, and I love the sharp, menacing edge he gives him (who could forget his iconic, snarling delivery of "And I'm JAVERT!") And I always hear his uniquely gorgeous, powerful and perfectly enunciated voice when I think of this role.
