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Main » Articles » ISSUE #8 » Love stories

“The Hunchback of Notre-Dame” by Victor Hugo
The book is written by Victor Hugo. He is one of the most famous French writers who created in Romantic style of literature. "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame” is his best known book.

In many books, the main theme is love. In this book love is multi-faceted. Each character of the book and the author have their own manifestation of this feeling. But first of all it is about love to the city (Paris) and to the Cathedral of Notre Dame. And the second thing is that the novel tells the story about different people. Some of them are kind, but most of them are bad. They are all real, and this story seems like true story and the readers understand it. Every reader wants to know how novel will end.

The story takes place in medieval Paris. What was Paris in that epoch? The book as the guide tells us about the life of a big city in the 15th century. It was dark, dangerous and lonely world.

The background for the main action of the book is the Cathedral of Notre Dame. The cathedral is the symbol of a spiritual life of French people. It gives asylum to the heroes and their faith is connected very closely with cathedral. But the Cathedral is also the symbol of people’s oppression, the symbol of superstition and prejudice.

Immutable and eternal, it plays an important part in lives of three main characters in the book. Once it was a sanctuary for Father Claude Frollo, a native and safe house for Quasimodo, an asylum for Esmeralda and at the same time, a prison for everyone. Claude Frollo is a grim and tragic figure. He mixed up his feelings and desires. The image of Quasimodo is the symbol of oppressed people. But he hides his spiritual beauty behind an ugly appearance. Esmeralda symbolizes the moral beauty of the people.

Book describes accurately a lot of nuances of the human soul and passion, the depth of suffering and experience, terrible craving for Esmeralda. It's not Shakespeare's love. Victor Hugo sometimes describes love even darker and more unpleasant, it was medieval life.

After reading the novel I’m impressed a lot. What surprised me is unexpected ending of the novel. The plot is so gloomy that you expect the positive end of the story. But probably, it couldn’t be the other end of the story because that happened in the medieval age. So many directors and scriptwriters changed the end of the story. I like the movie which was created by Disney company.

The story is beautifully written. I’ve liked this book since I was a teenager. My first impression was so strong that I drew several colourful illustrations for the novel. At that age, I understood only the theme of love. But now the book opened with the other side for me. While reading I analyzed the actions of the heroes, their thoughts and feelings.

I want to recommend the book because I think this story is very necessary in our time. The good and the evil, love and hatred, life and death – those are eternal truths.
Category: Love stories | Added by: Chuda (03-Mar-2013) | Author: Marina Kalnikova
Views: 3173 | Tags: Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame | Rating: 0.0/0
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