A Matter of Love and Death

Melodic threads are meant to be followed, and Les Miserables weaves them together skillfully. If I were in college, I would listen to all of the available soundtracks repeatedly until I could tease out every thread and write a longer paper about them. As it is, I am no longer in college, and am still new to this musical, so I will just follow one and write a quasi-academic blog post on it.

The melody that reaches its apex in “On My Own,” Eponine’s ballad of unrequited love, is the same melody used in two major death scenes: Fantine’s (“Come to Me”) and Valjean’s (“Epilogue”). What does unrequited love have to do with death?

(First of all, I hope you can all acknowledge that that is a great essay question. To all of my theatre professor friends—you’re welcome. Secondly, I really miss essay questions, so let me jump right in.)

At the start of “Come to Me,” Fantine is a woman who has lost nearly everything and is at the point of losing the last thing remaining to her besides life itself: her hope of seeing her daughter again. When Valjean enters the room, he brings a different melody, but swiftly matches her mood, swearing to her that he will care for Cosette. Comforted, Fantine asks him to tell Cosette she loves her and will see her when she wakes—with the strong implication that she does realize she is dying, but that she does not believe that death is to be the end of her.

It is easy to see the parallel to “Epilogue,” the death scene of Cosette’s other parent. When Cosette appears in his room, Valjean slips into the melody Fantine used when speaking to her daughter in her final delirium, and Cosette replies in the melody Valjean first used in speaking to Fantine. He soon moves into not just a parallel melody, but a parallel lyric—whereas Fantine sang “Take my child, I give her to your keeping” and “For God's sake, please stay till I am sleeping,” Valjean sings:

On this page, I write my last confession

Read it well, when I at last am sleeping

It's a story of those who always loved you

Your mother gave her life for you

Then gave you to my keeping

In the movie, the scene continues with Fantine welcoming Valjean to follow her to heaven (“take my hand, I’ll lead you to salvation”), but the Broadway version has Fantine joined by Eponine, and then by Valjean himself, in a request that seems aimed higher than the dying man:

Take my hand, and lead me to salvation [emphasis mine]

Take my love, for love is everlasting

And remember the truth that once was spoken

To love another person is to see the face of God!

Considering that the same melody was used in parallel death scenes pointing to a life beyond suffering, one might expect that it would serve the same purpose for Eponine, who after all does have a death scene of her own. But while she has a death song with a similarly positive underlying theme (“rain will make the flowers grow”), it is not the same musical theme. Instead, the musical theme used in the scenes previously discussed reaches its apex in “On My Own,” Eponine’s ballad of unrequited love.

The song is prefaced by an acknowledgment that Eponine is living in her own head when she thinks of Marius caring for her as she cares for him. Then the theme we recognize from Fantine and Valjean’s songs begins. It is, in fact, most closely associated with Eponine, despite not being first sung by her. She sings of talking to herself, of being alone, of pretending. Pretending, in fact, is twice mentioned, and it is here that the themes of all three songs come together lyrically, because in acknowledging the pretense she is dying to a dream.

In a way, “On My Own” is Eponine’s death scene. In it, she consciously dies to the dream of Marius and her “forever and forever,” yet chooses not to turn away from him. She loves him only on her own, but she holds that love as precious in its own way. It is not her dream vision of love, but it is a real love, a love that will bring her to the barricades in an attempt to save Marius’ life by giving him a reason to continue. (Because she must know that while she is the type to sing “Without him / The world around me changes / The trees are bare and everywhere / The streets are full of strangers,” Marius is the type to sing “Black! the color of despair!” Which is taking it up a notch.)

The epilogue to the Broadway version of the musical has the advantage over the movie because Eponine and Fantine stand together. They are two women who each loved someone they could not be with in this life, but who attest that unlike this life, love is everlasting. Valjean joins in the assertion that “to love another person is to see the face of God.” Together, the three point to a purpose greater than mere survival, and to a love that is both behind and beyond any love this world has to offer.