The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
written by Victor Hugo
published 16 March 1831
a project by Luke Koenigsknecht
from The Hunchback of Notre-Dame:
So Quasimodo was the ringer of the chimes of Notre-Dame.
In the course of time there had been formed a certain peculiarly intimate bond which united the ringer to the church. Separated forever from the world, by the double fatality of his unknown birth and his natural deformity, imprisoned from his infancy in that impassable double circle, the poor wretch had grown used to seeing nothing in this world beyond the religious walls which had received him under their shadow. Notre-Dame had been to him successively, as he grew up and developed, the egg, the nest, the house, the country, the universe. |
My Testimony
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is, hands-down, one of the most polarizing books for me I have ever read. Having seen the popular Disney animated film before, I thought it would be worth it to read the source material as well. Having read Victor Hugo's other famous work, Les Misérables, I expected a long, meandering novel that reveals a lot of content not revealed in the more popular adaptation. And to some extent, this happened. While the novel itself is not too long, a prospective reader must understand that the original title of the novel in French was Notre-Dame de Paris; indeed, a good amount of the novel is devoted to discussing the Notre-Dame Cathedral and the city around it, particularly its architecture. Especially towards the beginning, the author, Hugo, may be describing a crucial element of the plot when it will seem that he will get distracted and then devote five pages to describing the history of a certain column in a certain building as well as who paid for it, who built it, and for what reasons it was erected. I was originally struggling to even get through the book at all, but I had resolved to finish this story, no matter what. So, I endeavored to complete it.
Despite all this, the novel is fantastic. While fans of the Disney movie may be disappointed in that the major characters that are more well known (Quasimodo, Claude Frollo, Esmeralda, and Captain Phoebus) are not the main focus of the story until later on. However, the references Hugo makes through his architectural review and historical study tell their own story in a way, which deepens the novel into a true epic. And later on, the characters we all know and love come into full focus. Combined topics of religion, philosophy, literature, and science come together through these character relationships to build one of the greatest tragedies ever told, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
Despite all this, the novel is fantastic. While fans of the Disney movie may be disappointed in that the major characters that are more well known (Quasimodo, Claude Frollo, Esmeralda, and Captain Phoebus) are not the main focus of the story until later on. However, the references Hugo makes through his architectural review and historical study tell their own story in a way, which deepens the novel into a true epic. And later on, the characters we all know and love come into full focus. Combined topics of religion, philosophy, literature, and science come together through these character relationships to build one of the greatest tragedies ever told, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
Music and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
In order to discuss themes from the novel and how they were adapted in the 1996 Disney animated film, I will be taking two songs from the movie: the first is the theme from the opening act, The Bells of Notre-Dame, and second, Hellfire, Claude Frollo's famous villainous soliloquy.
An Exploration of Theme: The Bells of Notre-Dame and Musical Motifs
The entire movie uses an broad selection of chants from the Catholic musical tradition, some of which will be discussed in these sections. Even though Frollo is a judge in the movie and not an archdeacon as he is in the novel, it is clear that the creators intended for that ancient music to be used in such a way as to connect the two together.
An interesting musical motif presented during this sequence is the ubiquitous Dies Irae chant. This ancient hymn, whose Latin title is translated as "Day of Wrath", brings an air of grandeur to an extremely impactful scene. Another motif used is the Kyrie eleison, an element of the Catholic liturgy which means "Lord, have mercy" in Greek. Perhaps it is used to humanize Frollo's character by portraying moral conflict within him. |
The Bells of Notre-Dame presents a dramatized version of the novel's events, specifically with Quasimodo's origin story.
In the the beginning of the song, the narrator describes "the big bells as loud as the thunder" to the "little bells soft as a psalm" when speaking of the bells of the church. Since Quasimodo's occupation is the bellringer, it makes sense that such a relationship with the different sizes of bells exists in the novel as well: "It is true that their voice was the only one which he could still hear. On this score, the big bell was his beloved. It was she whom he preferred out of all that family of noisy girls which bustled above him, on festival days. This bell was named Marie. She was alone in the southern tower, with her sister Jacqueline, a bell of lesser size, shut up in a smaller cage beside hers...In the second tower there were six other bells, and, finally, six smaller ones inhabited the belfry over the crossing, with the wooden bell, which rang only between after dinner on Good Friday and the morning of the day before Easter. So Quasimodo had fifteen bells in his seraglio; but big Marie was his favorite." |
An Exploration of Theme: Hellfire and Archdeacon Claude Frollo
More musical motifs are found within Hellfire.
The song begins with the other priests in Notre-Dame chanting the Confiteor, a prayer in which a sinner pleads for intercession to God for forgiveness to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the holy Angels, and all the Saints. Elements from are continued throughout the song, until it reaches its height during the climax, in which Frollo has a vision of sinister red-cloaked figures responding to his denial of guilt with "mea culpa" - "my fault" in Latin. It is repeated three times, as in the Confiteor proper: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa or, in English: Through my fault, Through my fault, Through my most grievous fault This scene presents a powerful insight into Claude Frollo's moral conflict between his lustful desires and his duty to maintain his morality as a priest. This is the sort of characterization that makes the novel so thought-provoking, and it is commendable that Disney was able to add a conflict of this weight into a children's movie. |
This song is where Claude Frollo's character differences between the film and the novel can be discussed most fully.
In the movie, Frollo is shown as completely obsessed (in a lustful way) with the gypsy girl, Esmeralda. This makes him the film's primary antagonist as he will do anything to gain her affection. However, in the novel, Frollo's character is much more nuanced. The reader learns that the local populace suspects he is an evil sorcerer due to his experiments with alchemy and thus hates him; Claude's younger brother Jehan is a drunkard who the elder Frollo supports out of love. Claude's love for Quasimodo is shown to be genuine as well, and mutual, despite the latter's deafness. Indeed, it is possible that Hugo intended the reader to view Frollo as somewhat of an antihero, as the author was a devoted anti-clerical who probably thought that the restrictions of priestly chastity and poverty were out-of-touch and useless, and so wrote Frollo as a sympathetic figure trapped within a stifling belief system. Indeed, Claude Frollo's slow descent into madness (as he is driven mad by his desire for Esmeralda but also his moral qualms about such behaviors that are in conflict with the Church) is portrayed most effectively in "Delirium", the first chapter of the Ninth Book in The Hunchback of Notre-Dame: "Then frightful ideas thronged his mind. Once more he could see clearly into his soul, and he shuddered. He thought of that unhappy girl who had destroyed him, and whom he had destroyed. He cast a haggard eye over the double, tortuous way which fate had caused their two destinies to pursue up to their point of intersection, where it had dashed them against each other without mercy. He meditated on the folly of eternal vows, on the vanity of chastity, of science, of religion, of virtue, on the uselessness of God. He plunged to his heart’s content in evil thoughts, and in proportion as he sank deeper, he felt a Satanic laugh burst forth within him." |