Quasimodo

Quasimodo is a fictional character in the novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831) by Victor Hugo. Quasimodo was born with a hunchback and feared by the townspeople as a sort of monster but he finds sanctuary in an unlikely love that is fulfilled only in death. The role of Quasimodo has been played by many actors in film and stage adaptations, including Lon Chaney, Sr. (1923) and Charles Laughton (1939), as well as the 1996 Disney animated adaptation. In 2010, a British researcher found evidence suggesting there was a real-life hunchbacked stone carver who worked at Notre Dame during the same period Victor Hugo was writing the novel and they may have even known one another.^[1]

In the novel

Quasimodo was born with physical deformities, which Hugo describes as a huge wart that covers his right eye and a severely hunched back. He is found abandoned in Notre Dame (on the foundlings' bed, where orphans and unwanted children are left to public charity) on Quasimodo Sunday, the first Sunday after Easter, by Claude Frollo, the Archdeacon of Notre Dame, who adopts the baby, names him after the day the baby was found, and brings him up to be the bell-ringer of the Cathedral. Due to the loud ringing of the bells, Quasimodo also becomes deaf. Although he is hated for his deformity, it is revealed that he is fairly kind at heart.

Quasimodo is feared and hated by the townspeople. Looked upon by the general populace of Paris as a monster, he relies on his master Claude Frollo and frequently accompanies him when the Archdeacon walks out. He first encounters the beautiful Gypsy girl Esmeralda when he and Frollo attempt to kidnap her one night. Captain Phoebus de Chateaupers arrives to stop the kidnapping and captures Quasimodo. He later falls in love when she gives him water as he is being punished at the pillory.

Esmeralda is later entangled in an attempted murder and sentenced to hang for both the attempted murder and witchcraft. As she is being forced to pray at the steps of Notre Dame just before being marched off to the gallows, Quasimodo slides down with a rope, and rescues her by taking her up to the top of the cathedral, where he poignantly shouts "Sanctuary!" to the onlookers below.

However, Quasimodo is never loved by Esmeralda (the main theme of the book being the cruelty of social injustice); although she recognizes his kindness toward her, she is nonetheless repulsed by his ugliness and terrified of him, however unfairly. (In the 1982 television film The Hunchback of Notre Dame, she kisses him goodbye at the end; something that does not occur in either the book, nor any other film version of the novel.) He continues to watch over her and protect her regardless, and one point saves her from Frollo (and stops short of killing him) when the mad priest assaults her in her room.

After an uneasy respite, a mob storms Notre Dame, and although Quasimodo tries to fend them off the mob continues attacking until Phoebus and his soldiers arrive to fight and drive off the assailants. Unbeknownst to Quasimodo, Esmeralda is lured outside by Frollo and subsequently seized and hanged. In despair, Quasimodo murders his former benefactor, Frollo, when he realizes that he has sealed Esmeralda's doom in hopes of quelling his lust for her. He leaves Notre Dame, never to return, and later goes to Mountfaucon (a huge graveyard in Paris where all hanged bodies are thrown) where the bodies of the condemned are dumped and dies clutching Esmeralda's body. Years later, an excavation group finds both their skeletons intertwined. When they try to separate them, Quasimodo's bones crumble into dust.

Quasimodo's name can be considered a pun. Frollo finds him on the cathedral's doorsteps on Quasimodo Sunday and names him after the holiday. However, the Latin words "quasi" and "modo" also mean "almost" and "the standard measure" respectively. As such, Quasimodo is "almost the standard measure" of a human person.

In the novel, he symbolically shows Esmeralda the difference between himself and the shallow, superficial, self-centered, yet handsome Captain Phoebus with whom the girl is infatuated. He places two vases in her room: one is a beautiful crystal vase, yet broken and filled with dry, withered flowers; the other a humble pot, yet filled with beautiful, fragrant flowers. Esmeralda takes the withered flowers from the crystal vase and presses them passionately on her heart.^[2]

A small sculpture of Quasimodo can be found on Notre Dame, on the exterior of the north transept along the Rue du Cloître-Notre-Dame.

In the Disney film

Quasimodo is the main protagonist of Disney's 1996 animated version of the story, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, where he is a very different character than in the novel. He is not one-eyed although a large lump over one eye may hinder his vision. Also, he is not deaf either, he is capable of fluent speech, and longs to live in the world outside the belltower. He has three gargoyle friends named Victor, Hugo, and Laverne. He comes from a family of gypsies, like in the novel, but in a dramatic change, his mother does not abandon him, but she is rather killed by Judge Claude Frollo, who leaves Quasimodo alive in the belltower when the Archdeacon of Notre Dame condemns him for chasing Quasimodo's mother to her death on the steps of Notre Dame, warning of the consequences if he kills the infant under the "eyes of Notre Dame". Quasimodo in this version is kind-hearted, not frightening, and is, at first, loyal to his so-called "master", Frollo, but becomes rebellious after the encouragement from the gargoyles. Soon, he discovers from Esmeralda that the world is not as dark and cruel a place as Frollo makes it out to be. Quasimodo soon realizes that Frollo is evil, and ceases to consider him a fatherly figure, like in the novel. In a corresponding change, when Frollo falls to his doom at the film's climax, Quasimodo does not show any sorrow, having previously almost killed him personally. In a drastically different ending, Quasimodo remains alive at the end of the film, as he falls off of Notre Dame, Phoebus catches him and pulls him to safety. He is finally accepted into society. Quasimodo was voiced by Tom Hulce and animated by James Baxter.

He reappears in Disney's sequel film The Hunchback of Notre Dame II (2002) once again as the main protagonist, where he is described as independent and finds a love interest, a circus girl named Madellaine. He also made some occasional appearances on the Disney Channel series, House of Mouse. At one point, Jiminy Cricket, when giving advice to the guests, consoled him by saying that some people find someone special and some people do not, poking fun at the fact that Quasimodo and Esmeralda did not fall in love at the end of the original film. Quasimodo is also a very rare meetable character at Walt Disney World Resort.

In the Disney version, Quasimodo displays an immense amount of physical strength (most likely due to twenty years of pulling the ropes on heavy bells at an almost constant rate), being able to easily lift a full grown man with one hand, throw a stone with enough weight to destroy a chariot of metal, and break free of heavy chains with extreme effort.

A German musical stage show, "Der Glöckner von Notre Dame" (1999) derived from the Disney movie, restores some of the many of the darker elements of the story lost in the film; Esmeralda dies at the end, Frollo is revealed to have once been a priest in his past (akin to the novel, where he was an archdeacon) and Frollo dies because Quasimodo throws him from the roof, rather than falling by accident.

Quasimodo and his gargoyle friends (Hugo, Victor and Laverne) are confirmed to appear in the Kingdom Hearts series in the upcoming Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance in a world based on the movie, called Le Cite des Cloche. He was first seen in the game's trailer interacting with Riku. Due to Tom Hulce's retirement from acting, it is currently unknown if he will reprise the role.

Real-life Quasimodo

In August 2010 Adrian Glew, a Tate archivist, announced evidence for a real-life Quasimodo, a "humpbacked [stone] carver" who worked at Notre Dame during the 1820s.^[1] The evidence is contained in the memoirs of Henry Sibson, a 19th-century British sculptor who worked at Notre Dame at around the same time Hugo wrote the novel.^[1] Sibson describes a humpbacked stonemason working there, "he was the carver under the Government sculptor whose name I forget as I had no intercourse with him, all that I know is that he was humpbacked and he did not like to mix with carvers."^[1] Because Victor Hugo had close links with the restoration of the cathedral it is likely he was aware of the unnamed "humpbacked carver" nicknamed "Le Bossu", who oversaw "Monsieur Trajin".^[1] Adrian Glew also uncovered that both the hunchback and Hugo were living in the same town of Saint Germain-des-Pres in 1833, and in early drafts of Les Misérables, Hugo named the main character "Jean Trajin" (the same name as the unnamed hunchback carver's employee), but later changed it to "Jean Valjean".^[1]

Adaptations

Many film adaptations of The Hunchback of Notre Dame have been made, which take various degrees of liberty with the novel. Among the actors who have played him over the years are:

References and notes