The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831)

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I'm not sure I'll be able to write a traditional book review for this one, and in fact I'm not even sure where to begin. The single strongest recurring thought while reading this book was, "Why/how on earth would this have been made into a children's film?" I haven't seen the 1996 Disney production myself, but it seems pretty safe to say that it must be so heavily adapted as to be virtually unrecognizable.

The overall plot could be summarized as, "There are a handful of Parisian men who lust after a Romani ("gypsy" in the book) girl, whose life begins and ends in tragedy." Claude Frollo, Archdeacon of Notre Dame, twenty years ago took in a deformed foundling. The foundling, Quasimodo, who has grown up in the cathedral and is now the bell-ringer, is coerced by Frollo to undertake a kidnapping. Sixteen-year-old Esmeralda and her beautiful goat Djali are rescued from said attempt by Captain Phoebus, and she instantly but unwisely falls in love with him. Pierre Gringoire, a struggling playwright, becomes entangled with a street gang and is nearly hanged, but Esmeralda secures his freedom by agreeing to marry him for a period of four years. And then there is Paquette, whose infant daughter was stolen from her bed years ago, and who now lives as an anchorite, walled up in a cell along a street in Paris and raving daily about the gypsies who took her daughter.

I was a good 40% through the book before anything interesting began to happen, thus at more than 450 pages it was a bit of a slog. All told, I'm not entirely disappointed to have read it, if only to have added some new knowledge to my brain with respect to literary history. Would not recommend to a friend. ( )

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (Modern Library Classics) by Victor Hugo (2002)

I read this years ago, and I'm still in love with it. This is quite possibly one of the saddest and most romantic books I've ever read. ( )

When the time came for Victor Hugo to be born (1802), most of Europe's cathedrals were falling into grave disrepair. Unlike man, cathedrals do not have a voice of their own, and no one was speaking for the aging gothic buildings. By the early 1800s, many cathedrals fell out of favor, were forgotten, and were letting the ivy in where mankind used to enter. By 1830, Paris' Notre Dame Cathedral became so neglected and disused that it became dangerous to even enter for fear of falling pieces. By all appearances, the gothic age seemed to have finally closed, and many ancient buildings, including the Notre Dame Cathedral, were slotted for demolition

The first few years of young Victor Hugo's life were spent following the army with his father, who was a general under Napoleon's brother Joseph. Young Hugo was taught to hero-worship Napoleon, and in consequence, idealism and politics were to occupy his mind for the duration of his life. By 1812, he was living in Paris with his staunchly Royalist mother, which must have made a confusing impression on Victor Hugo's mind. I believe the two extremes, Napoleon-worship, and loyalty to the monarchy, gave Victor Hugo the complex foundation that he needed in order to write with the breadth that he did. He understood both worlds fully, which meant that he was one of the few to fully understand France given the time that he was living in.

He grew up in a Paris that was Post-Revolution. He didn't experience any of the Revolution himself, but the adults around him did. During Hugo's time, the gibbet still stood on the hills on the outskirts of town to hang criminals as warmings. Hugo was living in the new Paris, the people's Paris, the Paris inherited by the legacy of Napoleon's code. It was to be an Enlightened era, but it was Victor Hugo who helped make it a Romantic era as well.

"The Hunchback of Notre Dame" was Victor Hugo's rallying cry to save the large crumbling gothic building that stood in the center of Paris. To read it is to understand what it means to revere the people of the past and admire their incredible achievements. ( )