2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25
Claude Frollo is one of the central characters in Victor Hugo's famous novel Notre Dame Cathedral. In the image of a priest who is not able to fight temptation, but follows it, breaking the fates and lives of those around him, the author's condemnation is embodied. He confronts the main character of the novel Esmeralda and contrasts with his pupil - the unfortunate hunchback Quasimodo, who is capable of true love, unlike his teacher.
About the novel "Notre Dame Cathedral"
The novel "Notre Dame Cathedral" by Victor Hugo is known all over the world. First published in 1831 and has since been recognized as one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century. The novel belongs to the genre of historical drama. Historical events here serve as a backdrop for reflecting the dramatic fate of the main characters.
In the novel, Hugo raises many topic althen, and today problems: opposition of law and duty, social inequality, honor and conscience, love and hatred, beauty external and internal, spiritual.
But one of the main themes of the work is still the theme of the cathedral. At the time when the ideas of the novel first appeared, the authorities planned to either demolish or modernize this cathedral. Outraged by such an attitude towards the historical and spiritual shrine, the great classic writes a novel that will become the first French historical novel.
Images of the novel
Claude Frollo, to whom our article is devoted, is one of the central images of the novel. Other images are no less interesting:
- Esmeralda is the main character of the work. Very beautiful and kind, sincere girl. Once she was stolen by gypsies, and now she is dancing in the central square of the city with her goat. The events of the novel are concentrated around this heroine.
- Quasimodo. The deaf hunchback, the bell-ringer of the cathedral. Once on the square, Esmeralda took pity on him, gave him water, the only one of hundreds of mocking Parisians. He fell in love with the girl to the depths of his soul, and his whole life is dedicated to her.
- Phoebus de Chateauper. Captain of the Royal Rifles. Handsome and young, Esmeralda will love him.
- Claude Frollo - rector of the cathedral, priest. We will not dwell on his image here, as we will devote several sections of the article to him later.
- Pierre Gringoire is a free poet, named husband of Esmeralda.
There is also a historical character in the novel - Louis XI.
Image of Claude Frollo
This priest is Esmeralda's sinister stalker. He, like Quasimodo, follows the girl everywhere. But the hunchback does it with the best of intentions, and Frollo is blinded by a passion that drives him crazy.
Let's start with the appearance of this character. The first thing that catches the eye is his "severe, closed, gloomy face." When he first sees the girl and her dance, he is overcome by mixed feelings, passion and delight are replaced by anger and hatred. Claude's appearance is not attractive, but it does not cause negativity either. He is a tall, stately man of about thirty-six. Despite his youth, he is already gray and bald. From his youth, he has been devoted to science and knows that the fate of a clergyman awaits him.
Claude Frollo, whose characteristics are ambiguous, has been fighting with himself all his adult life. But apparently, his spirit is not strong enough. And he falls into temptation, which he cannot resist. Instead of repenting of his weakness, the priest falls into anger, and the darkness now swallows him whole. He is cruel and will stop at nothing to achieve his goal.
Esmeralda and Frollo
Claude Frollo and Esmeralda act as antagonists. Esmeralda is bright and clean, despite the fact that she is a street dancer. Uneducated and raised by gypsies and vagabonds. At the same time, she is open, all her feelings are visible, maybe that's why they are so sincere and crystal. Esmeralda does not hide what she feels. Selfless love for the handsome Phoebus, sympathy for Quasimodo and burning disgust and fear of the abbot - all thislies on the surface and is visible to the naked eye.
Claude Frollo is forced to hide his essence from an early age. The role of a diligent student and an ascetic crumbles in the face of burning, all-consuming passion. This is not love (like Quasimodo, who loves a young gypsy with all his open wounded heart), this is a blinding passion, a desire to possess a girl like a precious thing, to subjugate her to himself. He is not capable of self-sacrifice, rather, he will sacrifice the lives of others for the sake of his interests and needs. Love cannot find a place in his frozen heart, it only burns his body and mind with fire.
Character traits
Perhaps it's not even about the passion for Esmeralda herself, but still about Frollo's character traits. As we learn from the pages of the novel, the clergyman was absorbed in science until he exhausted all possible options for knowledge. Further, he was fascinated by alchemy as a closed science, accessible only to the elite. Maybe it would have been the same with his painful, pathological love, knowing which Frollo would have got rid of his sizzling addiction. But fate did not allow him to comprehend real feelings. When Esmeralda is executed, whose death he himself is guilty of, Quasimodo throws him off the wall of the cathedral, and the priest is crushed to death. Killed by his pupil, the abbot pays for his life full of malice and search. After all, even Quasimodo was brought up by him not out of pity for the child, but out of purely his own motives.
Claude Frollo at the movies
Due to its popularity and action, the novel was not ignored by any playwrights,nor filmmakers. Many films have been made and many theatrical dramas have been staged.
In modern cinema, the role of the priest was played by W alter Hempden, Richard Harris, A. Marakulin and many other movie stars.
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