6 ms·

When I read the book in my youth, I remember being surprised not only by the lack of muskets, but also that it was more about D'Artagnan than about the titular

• exasperaited 10mo ago
  The whole point of The Three Musketeers is that they are men out of their time, in an end-of-epoch story, surely. Nobody drinks and carouses like they do, nobody has their sense of chivalry, artistry and old-fashioned justice. The world has lost its colour, its joy and its sense of fairness, and they are loyal to an institution which is itself corrupted and whose time is clearly ending. And so they are lost: they have no cause and they are slowly destroying themselves. This is why they are portrayed as musketeers who think muskets (representing callous modernity) are clumsy and uncouth. It underscores that the three don't even feel they really fit with the rest of the musketeers. They know muskets have their place. It's just not with them. So there's no reason to explain them away logically. It's a literary device. The second point is that D'Artagnan is there to remind them of who they were and could be again. D'Artagnan is the hero of the story because he has not been corrupted by life experience. The third layer is he's also a proxy for the reader who wishes they were there. He is there to get life lessons on the reader's behalf: that stories don't tell the whole truth, that people begin to confuse themselves with their own personal mythologies, that fame isn't reality, that there are risks in meeting your heroes, that adults will let you down, that no institution is better than its people, etc. This trope has been parodied in various ways since, not least I think in the form of "person who confuses actors for the people they play and convinces them they know as much about the job as the characters they play". Which has itself been parodied in Three Amigos! and also in Galaxy Quest. And the trope of guns being impersonal compared to swords and knives turns up everywhere.
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  • gethly 10mo ago
    You made me want to buy the books now, despite seeing all the movies many times before :)
    • exasperaited 10mo ago
      Some of my recollection is reinforced by the movies, I must confess, because I remember them more than the book, which I think I read a bit too young. I should read it again now I am an old bloke. The films make more of the musketeers' slow ruin, I think, than the book does. But Porthos is vain and a bit dim, Athos drinks like a fish, etc. If I remember the book right, the films also tend to make a bit less of D'Artagnan's naïvete and tidy up his personal morality, and Athos is usually a loud, drunken, loyal powerhouse in the films rather than an alcoholic. The fundamentals of the films are usually right: the musketeers are aimless and in need of direction, aware they serve a pretty weak monarch, mostly powerless to deal with the corruption around him. Everyone has their own motivations. Weirdly, the delightful eighties Dogtanian and The Three Muskehounds series is pretty close to the book — it's toned down rather than bowdlerised. D'Artagnan really is a feisty puppy, basically. And now I have that song stuck in my head. I think what I should actually do is read the book again while rewatching Dogtanian, because that sounds fun and I read the book largely because of it!
    • WillAdams 10mo ago
      No need to buy, though arguably, the better translations are still in copyright, see Goodreads and Steven Brust's recommendation of a translation.
      • panzagl 10mo ago
        Lawrence Ellsworth's translations are good (he's a sword and sorcery writer), but good luck trying to disambiguate them on Amazon. Look for red cursive titles.
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• Tuna-Fish 10mo ago
  The original novel is set in 1625-1628. At that point, firearms are well and truly established, having proven themselves to be the war-winning weapon in the Italian Wars more than a century ago. They are not new and unproven technology; they are the weapon that the great grandparents of the main characters fought and won with. But they are a symbol of the wrong social class. A musket is something that a peasant or a burgher can use to kill a noble. All the main characters in the three musketeers are nobility, and their social class has suffered greatly from the "democratization" of war. They, like almost everyone like them historically, much prefer the old ways from when they were more pre-eminent, and look down their noses at firearms. They spend very little time at war, and a lot more time duelling and participating in schemes. The high-tech of the early 17th century wasn't even matchlocks anymore, it was flintlocks. Those took another ~50 or so years to become general issue, but at the time of the novels upper class people who can afford modern weapons wouldn't have been fumbling with matches anymore.
  • carschno 10mo ago
    I suppose you are right about the history of firearms. However, the novel was written in 1844, more than 200 years after the time in which it is set. Which makes me wonder if the author (Alexandre Dumas) knew and cared about the historic facts.
    • Tuna-Fish 10mo ago
      Dumas was meticulously accurate, not to the world as it historically existed, but to how the French upper classes felt and wrote about. He was extremely well read in people's memoirs and diaries, and wrote his stories set in the world as the French aristocracy imagined it existed. I believe he got this detail right in both ways; in that firearms were the most important weapons, and also the main characters would have done their very best to ignore that fact.
      • WillAdams 10mo ago
        For more on this, see the (sadly, hastily researched to some degree) biography of his father, _The Black Count_: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13330922-the-black-count https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13330922-the-black-count which arguably served as a template for a famous novel which also features a count in the title.
• wduquette 10mo ago
  No; muskets were a battlefield weapon, and little of the book takes place on the battlefield. You wouldn’t carry them around Paris.
  • rob74 10mo ago
    Yeah, I guess that's what I meant with "impractical". Sure, if you had your enemy on the other side of a battlefield, or outside the walls of your castle, muskets were great. If you met them on the streets of Paris, not so much...
    • bluGill 10mo ago
      If you planned the meeting with the enemy in Paris you might bring a musket, but you wouldn't carry one normally. I know lots of gun advocates and none of them carry a long gun with them except when they are planning on using it - they carry a small pistol for emergencies, but not the long gun. (they might keep the long gun in the truck, but not on their person). If I was planning on shooting someone in Paris I'd want the more accurate long gun (assuming I could get it to where I need it), but I'm not going to carry it when I'm "our for coffee" and happen to see my enemy. The novel is more about politics. There are very few scenes where I'd expect a modern solider of any nation to have their gun with them either. (though a few scenes where I would expect one they often don't seem to have them)
• n4r9 10mo ago
  > muskets were a new and unproven technology The sword is not as clumsy or random as a musket; an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.
  • IAmBroom 10mo ago
    Why, I used this very one to maim your father and leave him for dead in a volcano, once.
    • n4r9 10mo ago
      I think that Obi actually actually gave Vader's saber to Luke. Obi collected it after maiming Vader in Mustafar.