Les Miserables Theatre / Tropes G to L

This page is for tropes that have appeared in the musical Les Misérables.

For the rest:

• Tropes A to F
• Tropes M to R
• Tropes S to Z

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• Garden of Love: The "A Heart Full of Love" sequence, in which Marius and Cosette romance each other, is set in the garden of her house on Rue Plumet. In the song's second-act reprise, Valjean uses the trope a metaphor as he reflects upon his daughter's blossoming relationship.
  Love is the garden of the young...
• Good Shepherd: The Bishop of Digne.
• Good Is Not Soft: Les Amis's response to Javert being a spy is, depending on the production, knocking him out, tying him up, or both. After Eponine dies, they are even more set against the military (and, presumably, Javert), and when Valjean arrives, they essentially force him to help them fight off the First Attack on pain of death.
• Grief Song: "Turning" and "Empty Chairs At Empty Tables". There's also a brief one after "Little Fall of Rain", where Les Amis vows to not let Eponine die in vain.
• Groin Attack: Some stagings of "Master of the House" have Madame Thénardier do this to her husband at the end.
• Had to Come to Prison to Be a Crook: Less strong than in the book, but Valjean still makes it rather clear that he wasn’t exactly a criminal before being sent to prison.
• Happily Adopted: Cosette.
• Happy Place: Young Cosette's "Castle on a Cloud".
• Harsher in Hindsight: Invoked. "One Day More" is an upbeat, looking-forward type song. Only later do you realize that one more day is all most of them got.
• Hate Sink: The Thénardiers. Javert and the system he serves are the main threat to Valjean, always looming over him and thwarting his attempts at living a productive life. But, the same qualities that make Javert such a formidable threat to Valjean would also make him a threat to malicious criminals, and he applies his rigid standards to himself as well, making him as honest a law enforcer as one could ask for. The Thénardiers are just petty criminals who aren't especially threatening, but they are utterly contemptible with no redeeming qualities at all.
• Heartwarming Orphan: Gavroche may not actually be an orphan, but he still fits.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: Javert's suicide as a result of his cognitive dissonance over Valjean's mercy.
• Heel–Face Turn: Valjean after being pardoned by the bishop. Javert after Valjean refuses to kill him. Marius has one after he learns Valjean saved his life, though he was never as much of a "heel" in this sense as he was in the book.
• Hellhole Prison: Depending on the staging of the production, this goes a bit into Informed Attribute territory. The lyrics even compare the prison to hell, but at least in the “replica” staging, chains and tools were imaginary…
• Hero Antagonist: Inspector Javert is a subtrope of this…
• The Hero Dies: Valjean himself at the end.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Fits Valjean to a T. He may have saved the lives of everyone and their dog, but to those who know his identity, he is still an ex-convict/convict on the run and more often than not treated accordingly.
• Hero vs. Villain Duet: "Confrontation" is sung by Jean Valjean and Javert. Both characters start trying to explain their point of view to each other, but soon they start singing at the same time while fighting.
• Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Played mostly straight with Fantine, who resorts to prostitution as her only available way to provide for herself and her daughter. Throughout, she still retains her love for Cosette.
• Horny Sailors: The number "Lovely Ladies" begins with a bunch of sailors singing about how much they want to have sex. The song in general is about prostitutes who cater to sailors, told from various perspectives.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Played with. At first it seems the Bishop of Digne's Christian kindness was wasted on Valjean as he stole from him. However his faith in the inner goodness of Valjean pays off in the end.
• Hypocritical Singing: In "Master of the House," Monsieur Thernardier sings about what an honest and decent innkeeper he is... all the while constantly cheating and conning everyone in the inn.

• I Am the Noun: "I Am the Law" sung by Javert.
• Iconic Outfit: Valjean's prison outfit, Cosette's black dress, Éponine's trenchcoat and hat, and the "Red Vest Of Doom" that Enjolras wears from the Act 1 finale onwards.
• Icon of Rebellion: The red flag, which was used as a symbol of revolution since 1789.
• Identical Stranger: Champmathieu, who almost takes the rap for Valjean. Depending on staging that ranges from credible to Willing Suspension of Disbelief.
• If I Can't Have You…: At least it seems that way with Éponine in "One Day More." Marius is debating to himself whether to follow Cosette to England or fight with the students. Éponine, standing beside him, practically makes the decision for him by grabbing him by the arm and the two of them running off. A minute later, they are next seen with Enjolras and the other students, and Marius tells Enjolras "My place is here, I fight with you."
• Improbable Infant Survival: Cosette. Also heartbreakingly averted with Gavroche.
• Incredibly Long Note: The last notes of "Who Am I?", "I Dreamed a Dream", "Stars" and "Bring Him Home" as typically performed.
• Incurable Cough of Death: Fantine often coughs in “Lovely Ladies” and/or “Fantine’s Arrest”, though typically nowhere else. The book implies that she's contracted tuberculosis, an often fatal disease then for rich and poor alike, and describes her decaying spirits in depth.
• The Ingenue: Cosette as a grown-up.
• Inspector Javert: The Trope Namer.
• Institutional Apparel: Typically brown-greyish rags. Sometimes Valjean will be shown coming out of prison with a dehumanizing label on his chest listing him merely as 24601.
• Ironic Echo & Soundtrack Dissonance:
  • Deliberately, as many of the songs are re-used throughout the musical for different people, situations and moods. However, these usually bear some relation to each other and their musical association adds an extra layer of meaning. Good examples are "Do You Hear The People Sing?", later re-used for the revolutionaries' chorus in the finale, with altered text. Another example is the prisoners' "Work Song", which is later re-used for the beggars' "Look Down", once again with altered lyrics (however, the situations are so painfully similar that these tropes are perfectly justified).
  • "What Have I Done" and "Javert's Suicide" are also painfully similar, with the same melody, and in some places the same words, but with a different meaning. This seems to be, again, well-justified, as they are both sung at times of great emotional and mental upheaval as a result of another person's mercy. The most significant difference is that the first one ends in redemption, and the second one ends in suicide.
  Valjean: I am reaching, but I fall,
  And the night is closing in,
  As I stare into the Void,
  To the whirlpool of my sin.
  I'll escape now from the world,
  From the world of Jean Valjean.
  JEAN VALJEAN IS NOTHING NOW!
  ANOTHER STORY MUST BEGIN!
  Javert: I am reaching, but I fall,
  And the stars are black and cold,
  As I stare into the Void,
  To a world that cannot hold.
  I'll escape now from the world,
  From the world of Jean Valjean.
  There is nowhere I can turn.
  There is no way to go OOOOOOOOOOON!
  • The same melody is also used by Javert breaking up the scene on the street where Thénardier is accosting Valjean, in a completely different tone - depending on the production, it could be righteous anger or nothing more than just another day on the job.
  • Bits and pieces of the second theme from "I Dreamed a Dream" show up in all sorts of other places - Valjean's line "Now her mother is with God / Fantine's suffering is over" when speaking to the Thénardiers, for example.
  • As a climactic musical number, "One Day More" is cobbled together from pieces of "I Dreamed a Dream," "Master of the House," "Do You Hear the People Sing" (appropriately enough), "On My Own," and others.
  • Purely an Ironic Echo example: Marius warns Eponine, "Get out 'Ponine / you might get shot." And Eponine responds with, "I've got you worried now I have / that shows you like me quite a lot!" Later on, Eponine does get out fine, but is fatally wounded returning from Marius' errand, before the fighting even starts. Marius, appropriately, is much more worried than he originally was, when he realizes she's dying.
  • The Bishop of Digne's melody is later heard again as "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables." The Bishop survived the first French Revolution, but lost almost all of his friends and family. Marius has survived the student rebellions, but at the cost of all of his friends.
  • Javert threw back " You know nothing!" and "Jean Valjean is nothing now!" during "The Confrontation".
  • Valjean and Javert's first meeting.
    Javert: "You will starve again! Unless you learn the meaning of the law."
    Valjean: "I learned the meaning in those 19 years, a slave of the law."
  • "Turning" and "Lovely Ladies" have a similar cynical mood sung by the same women- one about their lives as hookers, one about all the revolutionaries killed at the barricade and how little their deaths will change.
  • Played for laughs in "Red And Black".
• Irony: Of the Situational sort. Fantine is fired from the factory when one of the other workers implies that she sleeps around for extra cash. She does not. Her inability to get any other job leads to her becoming a prostitute.
• It's All My Fault: Valjean has a tendency to accept blame even when his involvement was minor at best.
• It Tastes Like Feet: In "Master of the House", the inn's patrons sing that Thénardier's stew tastes like something he scraped off the street and his wine is like turpentine (even elaborating "must have pressed it with his feet").
• It Was a Gift: Valjean's candlesticks from the Bishop of Digne. He keeps them until the end of his life.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy:
  • Valjean, although he didn’t think that maybe his daughter might be happier with him around
  • Éponine helps Marius to find Cosette, despite the fact that she’s also in love with him.
• Job Song: "Lovely Ladies" is about some prostitutes trying to pick up clients.
• Justified Criminal: When you've got the choice between stealing and starving, few people would hesitate...
• Karma Houdini: The only reprisal Monsieur Thénardier suffers for all his villainy is a punch in the face from Marius, right before "Beggars at the Feast" (and even that is in or out depending on the production). His wife gets off scot-free. The two of them leave the stage gloating over their ill-gotten riches.
  • The woman factory worker who gets Fantine fired by telling lies about her.
• Killed Mid-Sentence:
  • Mid-song, in the case of Gavroche.
  • Éponine also dies mid-song.
  • Depending on the production, Valjean can be implied to die either at Fantine's "Come with me" or at "To love another person is to see the face of God."
• Kill Him Already!: Justified, because much as the rebels would like to kill Javert, they have a reason for holding him prisoner for an extended length of time: they are conserving their powder and bullets, and consider killing him any way other than shooting him to be reprehensible and beneath them.
• Kill Me Now, or Forever Stay Your Hand: Javert to Valjean. Javert does not take it well.
• Knight Templar: Javert.
• La Résistance: Les Amis de l'ABC.
• Last-Name Basis: Justified as this is the 19th century. It gets jarring when the Amis refer to Marius by his given name, but refer to any other of their group by last name only.
• Last Stand: Les Amis at the barricade.
• Laughably Evil: Thénardier and Mme. Thenardier, though both have their moments of genuine menace — Thenardier during "Dog Eat Dog," and Mme. when she's yelling and abusing Cosette.
• Lawful Stupid: Javert is single-mindedly devoted to law and order and sees them as the only legitimate expression of goodness and considers lawbreakers to be evil by default, so much so that he believes that All Crimes Are Equal and ends up killing himself when Valjean, a convict, proves himself to be a virtuous man.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • Valjean gets a moment in the Prologue, where he describes the evening with the bishop. He might be talking to himself, but addresses the audience in most stagings.
  • When Marius walks into the meeting of the Friends of ABC, going on about how starstruck he is after seeing Cosette for the first time, Grantaire responds, among other witty remarks ("We talk of battles to be won/And here he comes like Don Juan!"), that Marius' display is "better than an opera!"
  • Gavroche addresses the audience directly in 'Look Down,' presenting himself as the audience's guide to the slums.
    Gavroche: "How do you do? My name's Gavroche
    These are my people, here's my patch
    Not much to look at, nothing posh
    Nothing that you'd call up to scratch
    This is my school, my high society
    Here in the slums of Saint Michel
    We live on crumbs of humble piety
    Tough on the teeth, but what the hell
    Think you're poor, think you're free
    Follow me, follow me!
  • In some versions, he later does the same at the end of 'Stars' to show he knows everything that Javert is up to, and even throws in some implied Medium Awareness:
    That inspector thinks he's something
    But it's me who runs this town!
    And my theater never closes
    And the curtain's never down
    Trust Gavroche, have no fear
    Don't you worry, auntie dear,
    You can always find me here!
  • The "Waltz of Treachery" has Thenardier remark regarding Cosette, "I let her go for a song!" This is a somewhat archaic but still familiar idiom referring to a small sum of money, but also a playful reference to the story being a musical.
• Light/Darkness Juxtaposition:
  • "Red and Black": As the students debate passion through the "colours of the world", Rebel Leader Enjolras compares red to "a world about to dawn" and black as "the night that ends at last" in succeeding lyrics.
  • "Stars" sees Javert refer to Valjean as a "fugitive in the night" and extol stars as symbols of order and light in the dark night sky.
• Lighter and Softer: Despite being touted as the saddest musical ever, and make no mistake it is sad. Most of the Backstory Horror isn't acknowledged, the Thenardiers become comic relief, Eponine Took a Level in Kindness, and the show ends on a more uplifting note.
• Load-Bearing Hero: Valjean, when he lifts a toppled wagon off its fallen driver. This costs him dearly, for Javert witnesses the rescue and is immediately reminded of a certain muscular fugitive.
• Logic Bomb: Javert's breakdown is sometimes seen as this, but it's played with: Javert expects that Valjean will demand his own freedom as a condition of sparing his life, which would create a conflict of interest in Javert, but would also confirm his image of Valjean as a criminal opportunist (who merely draws the line at murder). Javert wouldn't really struggle with such a dilemma, as he'd choose the law over his own honour every time. When Valjean spares his life without condition, that goes out the window: Javert has only one course of action under the law, and what drives him crazy is realising that for the first time in his life, he doesn't want to obey that law.
• Lonely Rich Kid: Cosette spent a good size of her life alone. The song "In My Life" illustrates that Marius is a wake up call to the fact that there's a whole world outside of her garden.
• Long Hair Is Feminine: Fantine in Act I. Her hair is usually waist or hip-length, worn loose during "I Dreamed a Dream" (even if it was covered up earlier), and in particular it confers on her a dignity that she lacks after her Traumatic Haircut.
• Long Runner: It's been running for 37 years in London and ran for 16 years on Broadway. Had it not closed in 2003, it would be the longest-running show in Broadway history rather than The Phantom of the Opera.
• Longing Look: Marius and Cosette exchange a very significant one.
• Loveable Rogue: This version of the Thénardiers touches on the trope. (Now read the book.) Zigzagged with Monsieur (but only Monsieur) in "Plumet Attack" and "Dog Eats Dog", which are a very creepy contrast with "Master of the House" and its reprise. Monsieur Thénardier's vampiric croon to the harvest moon above him, in which he literally sings that "God is dead", comes across as extremely dark.
• Love at First Sight: Cosette and Marius. Depending on the chemistry of the actors involved, this can range from genuinely sweet and believable to absolutely ridiculous. Michael Ball and Rebecca Caine, of the 1985 original London cast, were notable for their chemistry onstage, but some other productions haven't been so lucky.
• Love Theme: "A Heart Full of Love" is most commonly associated with Marius and Cosette, but isn't a fully fledged love theme since it doesn't accompany all of their romantic moments.
• Love Triangle: Cosette/Marius/Éponine. Éponine has unrequited feelings for Marius, who does care for her as a dear friend, but nothing more. He's in love with Cosette, who reciprocates.
• Loving a Shadow: Éponine's song "On My Own" ends with her having a revelation that she's not really in love with Marius, she's only in love with the idea of Marius, and even after this realization, she still clings to the delusions because it is literally the only thing she has to look forward to.
• Lyrical Dissonance:
  • "Lovely Ladies", an upbeat number about the dehumanizing life of a seaside hooker. That the song occurs in the company of Fantine being accosted by an old crone asking to buy Fantine's hair, a request that she succumbs to while also being disgusted by, just adds to the jarring feelings.
  • "I Dreamed a Dream" has the melody and sound of a romantic ballad you might hear at a wedding. The lyrics describe Fantine's happy past (decidedly in the past) and her misery at her current life.
  • "Stars" - Javert's oath to pursue criminals without mercy is set to a lovely, dreamy tune.
  • Also, "Beggar at the Feast". Sure, the upbeat melody works for the wedding and the characters... then you realize they got here after robbing from the dead, and that their daughter and, it's implied, son (Gavroche), have both died. "Clear away the barricades and we're still there" sounds a lot worse afterwards.
  • "At the End of the Day", an upbeat little song about how the life of the poor just keeps getting worse.

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