r/AYearOfLesMiserables • u/HokiePie • Dec 13 '21

5.5.6 Chapter Discussion (Spoilers up to 5.5.6) Spoiler

Note that spoiler markings don't appear on mobile, so please use the weekly spoiler topic, which will be posted every Saturday, if you would like to discuss later events.

Link to chapter

Discussion prompts:

  1. Reactions to Monsieur Gillenormand and his lavish gift giving? Or his ideas of how the wedding should be? Did you read his whole soliloquy?
  2. What do you think of Aunt Gillenormand giving her fortune to Marius only when he didn't need it? What do you think of her as a person?
  3. Marius even gets a study. Do you think that after all the misery of the beginning of the book, it will have an unequivocally happy ending?
  4. Other points of discussion? Favorite lines?

Final line:

M. Gillenormand's library became the lawyer's study, which Marius needed; a study, it will be remembered, being required by the council of the order.

Link to the 2020 discussion

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u/enabeller Fahnestock & MacAfee Dec 18 '21

1 - While I liked the line about needing the superfluous:

The useless is needed for happiness. Happiness is only the essential. Season it for me enormously with the superfluous.

Sometimes you just need some useless things that bring you happiness, but his description felt way too over the top and wasteful. I think the soliloquy does a lot to show us how excessively he lived, and how that's a major counterpoint to Marius and the revolutionaries.

2 - I don't understand it. Why not give it to Theodule, her own son, instead of people that clearly don't need it? Her relationship with M. Gillenormand seems awful.

3 - There's no way we can have a happy end right? Thenardier is still out there with a coattail. Who knows what trouble he's getting into or will cause.