My Fictional Heroes

Some, maybe most, of my heroes are fictional characters. I want to share this here because I like this place.

Fantine (Les Miserables)- I am amazed and humbled by Fantine’s dedication to her daughter. Her song to Cosette is touching:

Cosette, it’s turned so cold

Cosette, it’s past your bedtime

You’ve played the day away

And soon it will be night.

Come to me, Cosette, the light is fading

Don’t you see the evening star appearing?

Come to me, and rest against my shoulder…

Jean Valjean (Les Miserables)- This great man is in the same scene, promising to care for Cosette:

Valjean: Oh, Fantine, our time is running out. But Fantine, I swear this on my life

Fantine: Look, M’sieur, where all the children play

Valjean: Be at peace, be at peace evermore.

Fantine: My Cosette…

Valjean: Shall live in my protection

Fantine: Take her now

Valjean: Your child will want for nothing

Fantine: Good M’sieur, you come from God in Heaven.

Valjean: And none will ever harm Cosette as long as I am living.

I really can’t describe the beauty of that scene and the music. And we know what Valjean does for Cosette later.

Daniel Peggotty (David Copperfield): I don’t know of any man better than Mr. Peggotty. A simple, ignorant, kind fisherman – the very salt of the earth. He really is too good to be true. He raised his niece Emily as his own daughter and travelled around the world for her. He “thought of everybody’s claims and strivings, but his own.”

Joe Gargery (Great Expectations): Another ignorant, illiterate, wonderful man in a Charles Dickens novel. He makes life tolerable for poor Pip. He sticks up for his horrible wife, who would sometimes go on a rampage, and punches out a man named Orlick for disrespecting her. Minutes later, this occurs:

[Pip] found Joe and Orlick sweeping up, without any other traces of discomposure than a slit in one of Orlick’s nostrils, which was neither expressive nor ornamental. A pot of beer had appeared from the Jolly Bargemen, and they were sharing it by turns in a peaceable manner. The lull had a sedative and philosophical influence on Joe, who followed me out into the road to say, as a parting observation that might do me good, “On the Rampage, Pip, and off the Rampage, Pip:—such is Life!”