I was seven years old when Disney's version of Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame was released in June 1996. I never saw the movie, but I remember promotional materials, I remember the green tunic of the main character, I remember the toys. This was Disney, perhaps the representative figure of capitalism, so there were toys from both gigantic fast food dealers: Burger King and McDonald's. I had some of the Burger King toys. At the time I dug Aladdin (1992) and I loved The Lion King (1994), but I kind of fell off Disney after that. I didn't see any Disney animated release until Tarzan came out in 1999, and to be honest that was probably only because Phil Collins did the music.
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| The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Walt Disney Pictures, Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise, 1996) |
It is through Disney that I learned of the name Victor Hugo. And the promotion for that film, with the omni-present posters for Les Miserables, are my strongest reference point for the French novelist. Having never seen the Disney film, and having never sat through a three-hour musical (that I recall), my knowledge of Hugo is really just a shadow caught in a quick glimpse of a mirror. And then I came to "A Fight With a Cannon."
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| McDonald's toys--items from the movie |
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| Burger King toys--figures and people in the movie |
This is the final story (and the first by a French author) in the first volume of this collection. "A Fight With a Cannon" is what I expected from a collection titled "Adventure." This is a story about a man, a machine and military conduct. The centerpiece is an extended description of a battle between a loose cannon (not figurative), tearing apart a ship and its crew, and the gunner who failed to secure it properly. Staged as a mythical battle, each moment takes on a significance exceeding the struggle. One will survive the other will die. As Hugo writes it is a battle with "the gladiator of flesh attacking the beast of brass"
And that polarity is theme here. What animates this story is the supposed difference between living beings and "what we call inanimate things." The gap between the two is where Hugo presses his finger. He writes: "On one side, brute force; on the other, a human soul. A soul—strange to say, one would have thought the cannon also had a soul." Analogies and metaphors are sprinkled throughout the story. Hugo edges toward a figurative ledge but pulls back too. The cannon is not only like an an animal, for a brief moment, it is one.
The gunner yells at the cannon as though he were a pet, or a broken smartphone or a slow computer (we're not making the same distinctions now that Hugo was.) When the battle concludes the cannon is finally stopped as a "subdued monster." Though "the man had conquered… the cannon might be said to have conquered as well." Hugo's pessimism leaves as much shattered as possible.
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| Victor Hugo |
I can't help but read this story alongside images I recall from the adverts and toys for Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. That is distressing since Hugo travels into the narrative through details. We learn about the mechanics of a ship and its operation; the mechanical intricacies are paired with the purple prose of the spirit in the machine. This is not rhetoric that usually elicits bright cartoon characters.
The broken alignment of such a juxtaposition is all the clearer as the story ends with a little twist—an ending which, even though I've never read any Victor Hugo, sounded like a total Victor Hugo ending. When the ship lands the Count de Boisberthelot praises the gunner for his work. Boisberthelot goes so far as to take a medal from the captain's jacket and give it to the gunner. He saved the ship.
But of course, this is not where we will leave our crew.
Just as quickly as the gunner is praised, it is decreed that he should be shot. Boisberthelot explains that the gunner's ultimate success was only a product of his failure. The gunner put the ship in danger in the first place by not recurring the cannon: "Death is the penalty of any misdemeanor committed in the face of the enemy… Courage should be rewarded, and negligence punished." The gunner was negligent. Thus he is doomed to death. These are the rules of engagement for the French military.
Though excerpted and republished many times "A Fight With a Cannon" was originally part of Hugo's last novel Quatrevingt-treize (trans. Ninety-Three). As a short story, it feels as though there is a broader world in which these characters have more elaborate lives. While the end is narratively conclusive, it also makes clear that the gunner was never really the main character—the focus was on something more abstract. The character is the system of values and hierarchies of meaning that split the mechanical from the human and require certain offenses to be punished by death. Hugo is chasing the structure.
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| First edition of Quatrevint-treize (pub. 1874) |
And with that abstraction the first volume is complete. We've gone through ten tales of adventure. There have been two major strains of continuity. The first: the nexus of authors as journalists and screenwriters/adaptees in cinema. It will be interesting to see, as we read, if the links between film adaptations and short stories collected here will remain as strong.
The second: how the power of the myth of the West stands tall. That myth is deeply linked to capitalism and those small plastic figurines that come in plastic bags that I began with. What would the figurines of Quatrevingt-treize look like? A toy cannon seems too banal now, as though time has worn down the old staples of adventure. Maybe, though, that is a naive view to have. I’ll wait to see the next Disney film that coordinates a waterfall of toys from both Burger King and McDonald’s.
You can read “A Fight With a Cannon,” included in this collection of short stories at the Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10577
You can listen to “A Fight with a Cannon” included in this collection of stories at Librivox: https://librivox.org/short-story-collection-vol-015/
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