Gavroche

Gavroche
Les Misérables character
Illustration of Gavroche by Émile Bayard (1837-1891)
Created by	Victor Hugo
Information
Full name	Gavroche Thénardier (Not official)
Gender	Male
Occupation	Street child Revolutionary
Affiliation	Les Amis de l'ABC (Friends of the ABC)
Family	Monsieur Thénardier (father) Madame Thénardier (mother) Éponine Thénardier (sister) Azelma Thénardier (sister) Two unnamed younger brothers
Religion	Unknown
Nationality	French
Born	1820
Death	1832

Street child

Monsieur Thénardier (father)

Madame Thénardier (mother)

Éponine Thénardier (sister)

Azelma Thénardier (sister)

Gavroche (French pronunciation: ​[ɡavʁɔʃ]) is a fictional character in the 1862 novel Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. He is a boy who lives on the streets of Paris. His name has become a synonym for an urchin or street child. Gavroche plays a short yet significant role in the many musical adaptions of Les Misérables, sharing the populist ideology of the Friends of the ABC and joining the revolutionaries in the June 1832 rebellion.

Gavroche is the eldest son of M. and Mme Thénardier. He has two sisters, Éponine and Azelma, and two unnamed younger brothers. Hugo never provides his given name but says Gavroche has chosen his own name. His parents show him no affection and send him to live in the street, where he is better off than at home.

The Thénardiers sell (or lend) their two youngest sons to a woman named Magnon.

Due to a freak accident, the two boys are separated from Magnon without identification, and encounter Gavroche purely by chance. They are unaware of their identities, but Gavroche invites them to live with him and takes care of them. They reside in the hollow cavity of a giant elephant statue, the Elephant of the Bastille conceived by Napoleon as a fountain, but abandoned unfinished. This was no imaginary construction; located at the Place de la Bastille, it had been designed by Jean-Antoine Alavoine. The two boys soon leave him the next morning. They are last seen at the Luxembourg Garden retrieving and eating discarded bread from a fountain. It is unknown what has happened to the two after that.