Singing in the rain

Ah… what a gloomy day it is in Sydney today. The weather’s been funny – one day it will be hot as hell, then the next cold and wet. It’s almost like we’ve turned into Melbourne!

It’s been a while since I last wrote about music lyrics (here and here) so today I’d like to write about one particular lyric from a song called ‘A little fall of rain’ from the musical ‘Les Misérables’.

Éponine:
Don’t you fret, M’sieur Marius
I don’t feel any pain
A little fall of rain
Can hardly hurt me now
You’re here, that’s all I need to know
And you will keep me safe
And you will keep me close
And rain will make the flowers grow.

Long story short: Éponine loves Marius, Marius loves Cossette, Éponine dies to save Marius – your typical love triangle slash unrequited love scenario.

The beauty here is in the lyric ‘A little fall of rain / Can hardly hurt me now’. On the surface, one could take it to mean that because she’s dying, Éponine is simply saying that Marius’s efforts to keep the rain off her is unnecessary, because all that matters is that he’s holding her. But I like to think that ‘rain’ is Éponine’s metaphor for his tears – in that moment, she comes to the bittersweet realisation that he’s not crying for her because he loves her, and because she’s dying, it no longer ‘hurts’ her to know it. She’s comforted by the knowledge that because of what she did for him, she will forever have a special place in his heart.