Remember the what?

I first fell in love with the musical Les Miserables when I was in fifth grade. My aunt would play her tape in the car while we were driving to play practice (she was the director, I had the role of Helena...and I hated all the kids who told me I only got a good role because my aunt was the director. I can act, okay?) and tell me everything she could remember about the musical.

Soon after, I tackled the 1,463 page book. I don't remember exactly when, but I remember that people were impressed.

I found the entire thing wonderfully romantic: Eponine's unrequited love leading to her death, Marius and Cosette in love at first sight, the life and death of little Gavroche, being imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread, and all those students dying at the barricades during the Student Uprisings of 1832. Everyone was poor and suffering in garrets. Sigh.

I was a little too young to have all the points really hit home.

For instance, I loved the final scene with Grantaire and Enjorlas at the barricade. Grantaire finally redeems himself for his horrible drunkeness and asks Enjorlas if he can be executed beside him.

"Turning to Enjorlas gently, [Grantaire] said to him, 'Will you permit it?'
Enjorlas shook his hand with a smile.
The smile was not finished before the report was heard.
Enjorlas, 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."

That's page 1252 in the Signet Classic edition for those of you reading along at home.

All of those handsome (so I imagined) young students willing to lay down their lives on the barricades! Willing to die for their beliefs! Sigh and double sigh.

And then I got older and realized Hugo's point: but they didn't accomplish anything.

They were faced with insurmountable odds. They knew they were going to be killed. And they said, "Woohoo! Let's stay here and die!" (except in a much more eloquent and romantic fashion).

Yesterday morning I found myself at the scene of a similar occurrence that happend only four years later in Texas. It was the 170th anniversary of the fall of the Alamo.

The stories are very similar: the wait for volunteers who never come, the decision to die to send a message, the slaughter of every man who fought.

And I was walking around the beautiful gardens of the Alamo and thinking, "How utterly stupid. How stupid to just die for what you believe in."

I can understand impetuous sacrifice that has immediate consequence. Leaping in front of an oncoming bullet, for instance (though wouldn't it be smarter to dive and roll, taking the person down with you?). Undergoing a dangerous operation so a loved one can live. Understandable.

But thinking to yourself (in romantic and eloquent language), "Hey. A bigger stronger army is on it's way to kill us all. There is no doubt they will succeed. Let's stay and die." Where does that line of thinking come from? And where does it get you?

Well, dead.

RUNAWAY!

I intended to write this blog merely to ridicule the Alamo and ridicule the Texans who are so in love with it. But here's the thing: I still find the whole idea STUPID as anything. It would be much better to stay alive and fight then die en masse as a symbol of resistance. But reading over Les Miserables to find that quote, I realized: I still find the whole idea wonderfully romantic.

What's wrong with me?