Review of Thousand Oaks Hunchback of Notre Dame
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Published in 1831 in French under the title Notre-Dame de Paris, this book has been made into an opera, a ballet, several stage plays, 2 musicals, and at least 15 films, including Television and animated versions. One conclusion I could draw from this is that it's a very popular tale, and so at that place is a good chance that you already take some thought of what it's near. Some other conclusion that I came to while listening to David Instance's expert audiobook narration, is that it was written in a style that lends itself to dramatic interpretation. Information technology'southward non hard to see why then many theater and film producers have found information technology hard to resist the urge to adapt this book to their medium. It comes prepare-made with dramatic ready pieces, entertaining dialogue, moving soliloquies, skillfully blocked stage business organisation, characters making dramatic entrances and exits, vividly described scenery, and impressive spectacles that leave one thinking, "I wonder how this could exist engineered for the stage." Sometimes its melodrama is downright operatic: "With a few cuts," 1 thinks, "this could hands be made into a libretto." As the villain struggles to hang on while dangling 200 anxiety to a higher place certain death, one thinks, "I know only how I would edit this scene, intercut with shots of the gargoyles and sculptures on the church'southward facade." You run into where the idea comes from.
Perhaps, now that this has been done so many times, the time has come for film and theater people to requite it a rest. Information technology's not only that they've already outdone each other every which manner (though they have never outdone the novel). It's that they take, some way or other, changed the story out of all semblance to its original shape and purpose. Try this experiment: Read this book yourself, so bank check whether its ending resembles that of any of the competing motion picture versions, all of which differ from each other. Who lives? Who dies? Is information technology happy or tragic? Which characters are left in, or combined with other characters to simplify the plot? What is it really about?
The first thing that may surprise yous is that it isn't narrowly focused on the hunchback, Quasimodo, who rings the bells at the church of Notre-Dame in Paris in the year of our Lord 1482. He is merely ane of several characters who treads the phase in this drama; though, considering his detail tragedy is the chief-stroke that powers the volume to its terrible determination, he deserves to be the character singled out in the title of the English language translation. Not all adaptations of this book single out Quasimodo, though; some of the films, for example, are named afterwards (La) Esmeralda, the gypsy girl whose fate is intertwined with his. It is worth remembering, though, that Hugo'south original title suggests that the church of Notre-Dame and the city of Paris are really the principal characters in this novel. I requite fair warning to those who come to this volume in search of cheap thrills and like shooting fish in a barrel gratification: the story takes a while to selection up speed. In the meantime, Hugo spends several early chapters developing a high-resolution motion picture of what he believed Paris to be like in 1482: a place whose architectural marvels had all simply disappeared, or been disfigured by later stylings, by the time of his writing; a identify that tin hardly be seen at all at present, except in the images his words paint on the listen'due south canvas.
Though information technology takes them virtually the whole length of the book to figure it out—and I don't think they ever work out all the details—Quasimodo and La Esmeralda were swapped in their infancy. The pretty daughter was taken from her unmarried mother, a floozy whose career was fading with her looks when she poured all of her love into the child. The mother all but lost her mind when her dear baby Agnes was stolen by gypsies and replaced with a plain-featured child of their own. She rejected the petty monster, and so he was brought up as a foundling by a priest at Notre-Dame: a grim, scholarly boyfriend named Claude Frollo. Claude has a tender side towards non but the hunchback merely too a much younger brother of his ain, who grows upwardly to exist a wastrel named Jehan. Simply it is, alas for both of them, non Jehan but Quasimodo who responds to the priest's kindness with respect and devotion.
All this is prologue to the events of the story, in which a motherless gypsy girl named La Esmeralda is loved past 3 men but, tragically, she only loves a fourth who does not love her. Claude Frollo's obsession with La Esmeralda is a psycho-written report in diseased sexuality, religious torment, extortion, abuse of power, and life-destroying evil that in today'southward world would spell "rapist." Pierre Gringoire, who technically happens to be La Esmeralda'south husband (though she has never allow him touch her), finds her attractive plenty, simply really thinks more of his own interests and of the trained goat that follows the girl effectually. Phoebus, the Captain of the King'south Archers whom La Esmeralda loves with single-minded devotion, has no involvement in her except as a casual dalliance, while he remains betrothed to some other young lady. Finally, information technology is Quasimodo, whose ugliness repels and frightens La Esmeralda, who loves her with a purity and tenderness that is never reciprocated. Become the thought out of your head that this is going to end happily. As calorie-free and flippant equally Hugo'south writerly tone may exist, THIS IS A TRAGEDY.
Only a few other pieces demand to be put in identify. One is a hermit woman whose cell overlooks the gibbet where Esmeralda is sentenced to hang. The hermit is the mother of poor baby Agnes, who has spent the by 15 years mourning the child she believes to have been eaten by gypsies. She jeers with bitter glee at the news that the pretty dancing gypsy girl, about the same age equally Agnes (for reasons I'thou sure you can estimate) volition be led to the gallows. Just before Esmeralda gets there, the hunchback snatches her from the hands of her captors and claims refuge for her in the church of Notre-Dame. Why, you ask, has Esmeralda been condemned to decease? Partly for witchcraft—because superstitious folk are alarmed past the tricks she has trained her pet goat to perform, and because a male child stole a coin from a silly woman and left a leafage in its place, which was put down to witchcraft—and partly for murdering Phoebus, although in the first place information technology was Frollo who stabs him, and in the second place, Phoebus survives the attack. Wait to experience torn by helplessness and pity as the girl'south doom draws nearer, indifferent to the fact that her supposed victim is not merely live, but actually taking function in the chase for her.
Though information technology is painfully obvious that Phoebus does not love her, La Esmeralda'due south misplaced love for him finally seals her doom. Well—that and the spiteful malice of Claude Frollo, who hates and loves her with equal intensity. Between a hell-raising mob attempting to rescue her from the Rex's justice, and a devoted hunchback (who, unfortunately, is as deaf as he is plain-featured) mistaking them for a disorderly mob trying to lynch her, the square in forepart of the cathedral becomes a bloodbath of gruesome violence and expiry—and this hastens, rather than prevents, the girl'due south death. And while almost of the principal characters die in the climactic pages of the book, or presently thereafter, the few who survive exit a biting flavor in the reader's oral cavity. Only the concluding twist, in the chapter titled "The Hunchback's Spousal relationship," shades the aftertaste of sadness back towards the sweet end of bittersweetness. But in case I haven't emphasized it enough, let me remind you once more than that THIS IS A TRAGEDY. Accept no Disney substitutes, which leave room for a cheerful song-and-dance number and a directly-to-video sequel. If you lot haven't felt yourself sighing at the retentiveness of this story and its ending, even days subsequently finishing it, you lot haven't actually experienced The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Read the book; or, if that'south to slow for you, listen to the sound-volume.
Notre-Dame de Paris was the quaternary of Victor Hugo's eight novels. The merely other ane that is at present widely read in the English language-speaking world was his next novel, Les Misérables (1862), written over thirty years later. Though his criticism of royalty and corrupt leadership is indeed much milder in this earlier novel, that is another chemical element you tin await in this book, which (too a wicked priest) as well features a merciless king, a deaf judge, a torture-happy inquisitor, and a doctor who extorts coin out of his patients. Hugo's social conscience volition hardly exist a surprise to anyone familiar with his other great novel. Hugo (1802-85) is also admired for his poetry, for plays such as Ruy Blas, and for several novels inspired past his off-and-on exile to the Isle of Guernsey. Now that I have tasted the pleasures of Hugo's storytelling style, I promise and expect to report more of my discoveries among his works.
Source: https://blog.mugglenet.com/2014/03/book-review-the-hunchback-of-notre-dame-by-victor-hugo/
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