Quasimodo - who is this? The love story of the hunchback and Esmeralda

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Quasimodo is a household name and even offensive. But not everyone knows that Quasimodo is the hero of Hugo's novel Notre Dame Cathedral. And finding out the history of this character will be interesting to any person who wants to be an interesting and erudite interlocutor.

Who is Quasimodo?

Quasimodo is a hunchback picked up in infancy by a minister of Notre Dame Cathedral, Claude Frollo. The good deed of the minister was rewarded by the devotion of the child, who remained to live in the cathedral and began to perform the duties of a bell ringer.

But people mocked the ugly man, feared him and even shied away. Even on the photos embodied by the artists, Quasimodo looks frightening. This made Quasimodo a withdrawn, angry and even cruel person. It seemed that he was capable of warm feelings, but at one moment he meets the beautiful gypsy dancer Esmeralda.

The plot of the novel

One evening the dancer Esmeralda is attacked by two strangers. One of them manages to be detained, and it turns out to be the hunchback Quasimodo. As punishment, he is chained to a stake and beaten with a whip. The hunchback asks for a sip of water, butno one responds to the request, the crowd laughs at the ugly ringer, mocks him. And only one person approaches Quasimodo with a glass of water. This person turns out to be the victim herself - Esmeralda. A generous act moves an embittered hunchback to tears.

The second criminal left uncaptured is Frollo, a minister of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. He is attracted to a beautiful gypsy, but she does not reciprocate, because she is in love with the capital de Chateaure. She is about to reveal her feelings to him, but Frollo, who is chasing her, is ahead of her, trying to kill the captain.

Esmeralda is accused of the assassination attempt on de Chateaupeur on the sole ground that she is a gypsy, which means she is a witch. The surviving captain makes no attempt to help Esmeralda, and Frollo comes up with a sinister plan: to come to the prisoner and offer her to become his wife in exchange for freedom. The beautiful dancer categorically refuses the offer, and the clergyman decides that the death pen alty for Esmeralda is the best way to get rid of her own love experiences.

The hunchback and the dancer

Remembering the good deed of the beautiful gypsy, Quasimodo decides to save the girl. He kidnaps her right from the execution and takes her to the cathedral, knowing that no criminal can be arrested inside the building. Quasimodo and Esmeralda live in the cathedral. The hunchback brings her clothes and food, and she, unable to leave the walls of the cathedral, accepts his care.

Frollo persuades people to rescue Esmeralda from the cathedral to complete the execution, butQuasimodo is no longer a callous hunchback, but a man passionately in love. Therefore, he guards the dancer and, noticing a crowd at the foot of the cathedral, fights back. He does not know that the people on whom he drops logs from a height and pours molten lead are not enemies, but the saviors of the girl.

Using the hype, Frollo kidnaps a gypsy and proposes again. Having received another refusal, he rushes to the cell located nearby, where the recluse Gadula, who hates gypsies, lives, and invites the woman to kill the gypsy. But Gadula recognizes a small slipper pendant around the dancer's neck and realizes that it is her own daughter in front of her. But she is no longer able to save her - the officers who arrived kill the girl right on the spot.

Death of Quasimodo

Quasimodo and Frollo are watching Esmeralda's murder from the tower. The latter bursts into sinister laughter, and the distraught hunchback throws the attendant from the tower.

Finding the body of the beautiful Esmeralda in the crypt where the corpses of the executed are dumped, he clasps it in his arms and dies.

Analysis of the novel

Hugo's work, where Quasimodo and Esmeralda are drawn into a strange and complicated relationship, was a great success. The character of each character is complex and contradictory: a gypsy who grew up on the street has a pure and beautiful soul, the priest Frollo is vindictive and embittered, and the hunchback ringer is able to sincerely fall in love.

In the center of the whole novel is not an animated hero, but a building - Notre Dame Cathedral. This is a monumental church with amazing architecture, columns, vaults, bells and chimeras. There is a possibility that Quasimodo- this is one of the chimeras on the building.

The novel is a panoramic look at the life of that era. That is, the reader will learn not only the fate of the beautiful gypsy woman with whom Quasimodo fell in love, but also learn about Louis XI and the Flemish delegation in digressions from the plot.

If the novel had been written a century later, it could well have become a script for a fascinating movie, as Hugo very vividly described the exciting scenes of Frollo's death or the hunchback's defense of the fortress from the gypsies.

Criticism of the novel

The main argument put forward by literary critics is the implausibility of the characters' characters. Quasimodo - who is it? An embittered hunchback or still a pure-hearted person capable of bold deeds for the sake of others? And Esmeralda, who grew up amidst violence, could she have the honor and pride to refuse the offered hand of Frollo, going to her death?

Victor Hugo's biographer, André Maurois, agreed with the critics, but added that, despite the implausibility of the characters in the novel, they managed to stay in the minds and souls of the readers of the novel for many years.

The novel "Notre Dame Cathedral" today is a classic and heritage of French literature of the 19th century. The story of Esmeralda, the priest and the hunchback has been alive for almost 200 years and still remains interesting, intriguing, touching. Movies are made based on the novel, cartoons are created, and we can see photos of Quasimodo according to various artists, guessing what a hunchback could be like if he really existed.deed, not in the pages of a novel.