Gavroche is a fictional character in the 1862 novel Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.
15 Facts About Gavroche
2.
Gavroche is a boy who lives on the streets of Paris.
3.
Gavroche's name has become a synonym for an urchin or street child.
4.
Gavroche plays a short yet significant role in the many adaptations of Les Miserables, sharing the populist ideology of the Friends of the ABC and joining the revolutionaries in the June 1832 rebellion.
5.
Gavroche is the eldest son of Monsieur and Madame Thenardier.
6.
Gavroche has two older sisters, Eponine and Azelma, and two unnamed younger brothers.
7.
Hugo never provides his given name but says Gavroche has chosen his own name.
8.
Gavroche's parents show him no affection and send him to live in the street, where he is better off than at home.
9.
At dawn, Gavroche helps his father, Patron-Minette and Brujon escape from prison due to the request of Montparnasse.
10.
Gavroche goes through an opening in the barricade and collects the cartridges from the dead bodies of the National Guard.
11.
The character of Gavroche may have been inspired by a figure in Eugene Delacroix's painting Liberty Leading the People, which depicts the successful 1830 July Revolution, two years before the events described in the novel.
12.
John Frey says that Gavroche possesses "a Gallic spirit, unknown to the more serious child outcasts found in the novels of Charles Dickens, little Joe, for example, in Bleak House".
13.
In other words, Gavroche is cheerful and resourceful rather than a victim.
14.
Gavroche uses the character of Gavroche to introduce the concept of argot to the reader.
15.
Since the original publication of Les Miserables in 1862, the character of Gavroche has been in a large number of adaptations in numerous types of media based on the novel, including books, films, musicals, plays, and games.