Two Songs That Should Be Cut From 'Les Mis' : A Response
Casey H. Nabors
If you regularly follow the content from the Onstage Blog creators, then there’s a chance you’ve seen the article “Two Songs That Should Be Cut From ‘Les Mis’” (and if you haven’t, click here to read it before diving into this article!)
Read it yet? Good. Let’s get into it.
This article sparked quite an interesting discussion about whether it really was worth it to cut Javert’s “Stars” or Éponine’s “On My Own” from the three-hour show. Naturally, many fans who have always loved Les Mis were quick to defend these beloved songs, and I’m here to do the same. Because of the dynamic nature of both Javert’s and Éponine’s characters, I firmly believe that their respective solos have their rightful place in Les Misérables.
Since the first article started with Javert, we’ll start with him as well. It’s easy to write Javert off as a static character; after all, he does spend the entire show intensely chasing down the same man. But let’s look at him a little closer - he absolutely struggles with this and goes through a religious crisis over it. His song “Stars” is a pivotal part of that journey. While he is static in his actions, he is dynamic in the way that he is portrayed, and “Stars” is a crucial part of that shift.
If their individual actions didn’t make it obvious already, Valjean and Javert are simply two sides of the same coin. They are both deeply religious men, assumedly of the same Catholic faith, yet have completely different ways of living that out. While Valjean opts to be charitable and merciful, Javert holds on to the virtue of justice so tightly and dearly that there’s no room for charity or mercy. His God is a just, authoritative one who demands obedience and perfection, and Javert will stop at nothing to serve that vision. We can clearly see his religious struggle in Javert’s soliloquy - it’s what causes him to commit suicide. But “Stars” offers us a glimpse into that before it happens.
Throughout most of the first act, we see Javert as a man who is, by all accounts, evil and unwilling to change his ways as he believes his ways are the only correct ones, yet we don’t really see why. So he’s a little too into the law. But there’s not much that gives us the reason for that and he appears cold for almost no reason. That is until we hear “Stars.” “Stars” is much more than Javert simply finding more strength to chase a specific criminal. In “Stars,” Javert praises the world of order and structure that God has created, affirms his duty to follow God, and in this affirmation of faith vows to defeat Valjean. As the audience, of course, we’re made to see Javert as the villain (and to be clear, he really is; any man who claims to be a Christian but has no mercy in his heart can hardly be considered a Christian in good faith, I said what I said).
And “Stars” doesn’t turn him into a hero by any stretch, but it does show us a side of Javert that we did not previously see. We see that he is not, in fact, a robot in a uniform: he is a man who has been shaped to be a man of structure, obedience, and authority; and he genuinely, with all of his heart, believes that he is doing the right thing by continuing to chase down Valjean. “Stars” is the perfect transition song that shows the shift in Javert from unfeeling robo-cop to somewhat-feeling, devout follower of God who takes the “justice” virtue a little (a lot) too far. Without this transition, his toil with God and consequential suicide in his soliloquy at the end just doesn’t make a lot of sense. Sure, it would be shocking, but just because it would be shocking does not mean it wouldn’t be effective.
So we’ve established that “Stars” is absolutely necessary- now to Éponine’s “On My Own.” I can definitely understand the frustration behind the girl in the friend zone getting her own solo when adult Cosette never gets one. I agree that Cosette absolutely needs a solo, but at this rate, the show is three hours long. We can squeeze in an extra three minutes for Cosette to let her pretty little soprano shine without cutting what is arguably the most famous song in the entire show.
Éponine is a dynamic character. She’s really only in the second act, so her development is rather quick, but it’s still there and it’s still incredibly important. It is very easy to write her off as a girl in love with a boy who could never love her back, but how quickly we forget: adult Éponine came into the musical as a bad person. She willingly went along with her parent’s plans to con anyone who was willing to give them the time of day. Sure, we could argue that she did so because she had to and she didn’t know anything else, but there was nothing about her character that showed any remorse for her actions whatsoever. Despite all that time spent around Marius, there didn’t seem to be any questioning. It was the norm for her and to the best of our knowledge, she had no tangible issues with it.
Just like “Stars,” “On My Own” is an important transition piece in the development of Éponine’s character. Shortly after stealing the letter, Cosette left for Marius, we get her completely unfiltered thoughts and feelings about Marius, and it’s obvious she’s absolutely miserable. She’s not crying over a random boy; she’s admitting that the life she’s living is not a good one, and not only has she lost someone she loved, but she also lost the person who could take her out of that life and give her something better. She lost her hope for a better future the moment she knew she lost Marius. It’s true that there’s no way that book Éponine could have explicitly said all of these things but does giving her a little bit of a way with words for three minutes really make her less authentic of a character?
In regards to her personality, let’s also not forget the part where her father comes prowling around in an attempt to turn in Cosette and Valjean, and Éponine lies to him in an attempt to protect them when she could have easily solved her problems by getting Cosette taken away from Marius. She did the right thing, with absolutely no benefit to her, considering it led to her basically getting disowned. She has known nothing but greed all her life, and she did the exact opposite. So, her “On My Own”, in a way, wasn’t only a reference to her being romantically single, but an affirmation that she was completely alone in the world without love, hope, or family. Letting us see this and be uncomfortable with that reality for her is not only necessary for her character growth but for us as an audience to understand the emotions behind her evolution, which we all know ends in redemption with the ultimate sacrifice of her own life in order to save Marius.
“Stars” and “On My Own” are two phenomenal songs in Les Mis. They each have their respective functions in the show, and they fulfill those functions beautifully. These songs add depth to characters that we would otherwise cast aside as one-dimensional at best and dull or unbelievable at worst.