Quasimodo

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For the 20th century Italian poet awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1959, see Salvatore Quasimodo.

Quasimodo as depicted in the original Novel by Victor Hugo

Quasimodo is a main character from the 1831 novel, Notre Dame of Paris, by French author Victor Hugo. Many English translations have changed the title to The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

[edit] Character

Born with extreme physical deformities, including his infamous hump, Quasimodo is found abandoned on the doorsteps of Notre Dame on a Quasimodo Sunday, the first Sunday after Easter, by the archdeacon Claude Frollo, who adopts the baby and brings him up to be the bell-ringer of the cathedral. Due to the loud ringing of the bells, Quasimodo also becomes deaf.

Looked upon by the general populace of Paris as a monster, Quasimodo later falls in love with the beautiful gypsy girl Esmeralda and rescues her when she is entangled in a murder. His heroic and selfless act against the many dark plots behind Esmeralda's fate - especially perpetuated by Frollo, whose passion for Esmeralda comes close to madness - created one of Hugo's most acclaimed masterpieces.

Quasimodo's name is a pun. Frollo finds him on the cathedral's doorsteps on Quasimodo Sunday, and names him after the holiday, inadvertently calling him "half-formed."

In the novel, Quasimodo is an outcast, yet at the same time he also symbolizes true, selfless love under a monstrous exterior. In one scene of the novel, he symbolically shows Esmeralda the difference between himself and the handsome, yet superficial Captain Pheobus with whom the girl is infatuated. He places two vases in her room: one is a beautiful crystal vase, yet filled with dry, withered flowers; the other a humble pot, yet filled with beautiful, odorous flowers. Esmeralda takes the withered flowers from the crystal vase and presses them passionately on her heart.[1]

[edit] Adaptations

Many film adaptations of The Hunchback of Notre Dame have been made, which take various degrees of liberty with the novel. In the 1996 Disney animation, for example, Quasimodo is neither one-eyed nor deaf, and is capable of fluent speech. Among the actors who have played him over the years are: