The Limits of the Inexorable: Ninety-Three, Loose Cannons, and Happy Endings
At the end of Victor Hugo’s final novel, Ninety-Three, two of our three main characters are dead, the revolution has suffered a setback in the Vendée, and tragedy seems everywhere. This lecture interprets the ending as positive in light of an alternate title Hugo considered–Les Inexorables–using the dramatic set-piece of the loose cannon aboard a ship as an interpretive key. With each major character symbolizing a different temporal moment–Lantenac the feudal past, Gauvain the egalitarian future, and Cimourdain the crucial revolutionary moment of 93 itself–we discuss how Gauvain’s actions lead directly to Cimourdain’s self-chosen death, symbolizing both the necessary end of the state of emergency that the Terror and the year 1793 represent, and an avoidance by both characters of the Napoleonic temptation that ended the French Revolution. The loose cannon is brought under control. To modify Robespierre’s comment on Louis XVI: in Hugo’ symbolic universe, 93 must die so that the future can live.
Katherine Nehring, Maya Chhabra
Speakers
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Maya Chhabra
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Katherine Nehring