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cartoonmicah 's review for:
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
by Victor Hugo
Never ever read a tragedy without knowing from the outset that this is what you’re getting yourself into.
Notre Dame De Paris is a better name for this novel than the common one, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame. Even so, a better name would have been The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly. Strangely enough, I’m not certain that the Ugly in that title would be the hunchback, though he is continually described by the author and the populace of Paris as a demonic blight on the eyes that would sour the milk at a look and cause miscarriage or birth defects just by proximity.
The Good - Esmeralda, a girl of such exaltant beauty that everyone immediately thinks she is an angel or a demon in female form. She is pure in heart and body but romantically blighted to the point of idiocy. Hard to root for.
The Bad - Archdeacon Frolo starts out helping orphans and gets so caught up in alchemy and the study of magic that he is already half gone when he sees Esmeralda and goes mad with lust. After he corners her and threatens her life if she won’t belong to him a half a dozen times in this novel, one begins to think the shame is on the other characters rather than him for allowing this to go on so many times over.
The Ugly - Maybe the hunchback, who is deaf and prone to good intentions and bad luck could fall in this category. He keeps accidentally killing people who are trying to help his cause and helping the people who he should know are evil. His mind is lucid, though his motives are waffling and shallowly expressed. Better put in this category is Captain Phoebus, the handsome naive who chases every pretty woman until it becomes inconvenient. (Spoiler) After trying to take Esmeralda to bed and finding she only wants to get married, he’s done with her and finds his way back to his actual fiancee, never to acknowledge her in public again.
In Les Mis, Hugo spends half of this book talking about the history of Napoleonic battles and the need to update the sewer systems of Paris. In The Hunchback, he spends his literary energy on the history of the economic growth of Paris and lamenting the architectural changes that have supplanted the once beautiful buildings which are no longer existant. When one starts the book, these feel like distractions. Get back to the story, the reader decries. When the story comes to a conclusion, the reader is left feeling that the architectural history was the best bit of the whole experience.
Notre Dame De Paris is a better name for this novel than the common one, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame. Even so, a better name would have been The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly. Strangely enough, I’m not certain that the Ugly in that title would be the hunchback, though he is continually described by the author and the populace of Paris as a demonic blight on the eyes that would sour the milk at a look and cause miscarriage or birth defects just by proximity.
The Good - Esmeralda, a girl of such exaltant beauty that everyone immediately thinks she is an angel or a demon in female form. She is pure in heart and body but romantically blighted to the point of idiocy. Hard to root for.
The Bad - Archdeacon Frolo starts out helping orphans and gets so caught up in alchemy and the study of magic that he is already half gone when he sees Esmeralda and goes mad with lust. After he corners her and threatens her life if she won’t belong to him a half a dozen times in this novel, one begins to think the shame is on the other characters rather than him for allowing this to go on so many times over.
The Ugly - Maybe the hunchback, who is deaf and prone to good intentions and bad luck could fall in this category. He keeps accidentally killing people who are trying to help his cause and helping the people who he should know are evil. His mind is lucid, though his motives are waffling and shallowly expressed. Better put in this category is Captain Phoebus, the handsome naive who chases every pretty woman until it becomes inconvenient. (Spoiler) After trying to take Esmeralda to bed and finding she only wants to get married, he’s done with her and finds his way back to his actual fiancee, never to acknowledge her in public again.
In Les Mis, Hugo spends half of this book talking about the history of Napoleonic battles and the need to update the sewer systems of Paris. In The Hunchback, he spends his literary energy on the history of the economic growth of Paris and lamenting the architectural changes that have supplanted the once beautiful buildings which are no longer existant. When one starts the book, these feel like distractions. Get back to the story, the reader decries. When the story comes to a conclusion, the reader is left feeling that the architectural history was the best bit of the whole experience.