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99'Oriental Art and Culture" Scientific-Methodical Journal - (3) III/2020
ISSN 2181-063X
DISTINCTIVE FEATURES OF VICTOR HUGO’ S THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE- DAME (NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS)
Mirzayeva Xumora Maxmud qizi Student of Karshi state university
Abstract: this article analyzes the specific characteristics of the protagonists of Victor Hugo ’ s The Hunchback of Notre- Dame. The peculiarities of the images of Esmeralda and Quasimodo in the work are considered and analyzed from the beginning to the end of the novel. The event at the end of this novel is also of special significance.
Key words: protagonists, peculiarity, hunchback, novel, antagonist, gypsy.
Victor Marie Hugo was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. Hugo is considered to be one of the greatest and best- known French writers. Outside, his most famous works are The Hunchback of Notre- Dame ( French: Notre- Dame de Paris). While Hugonhad derived his early renown from his plays, he gained wider fame in 1831 with his historical novel Notre - Dame de Paris, an evocation of life in medieval Paris during the reign of Louis 11. The novelCondemns a society that in the persons of Frollo the archdeacon and Phoebus the soldier, heaps misery on the hunchback Quasimido and the gypsy girl Esmeralda.
This extraordinary historical novel, set in Medieval Paris under the twin towers of its greatest structure and supreme symbol, the cathedral of Notre- Dame, is the haunting drama of Quasimodo, the hunchback; Esmeralda, the gypsy dancer, and Claude Frollo, the priest tortured by the specter of his own damnation. Shaped by a profound sense of tragic irony, it is a work that gives full play to Victor Hugo’ brilliant, historical imagination and his remarkable powers of description. Notre-Dame de Paris is Victor Hugo’s most famous novel, the variety of interpretations it has received attests to both the artistic, richness and complex ambiguities of the text: the individual characters, imdeed the novel itself, elude precise definition. Hugo develops the idea of the cathedral as a text chapter by chapter. Hugo’ s novel initiates this mutually transformatire relationship in a time and place in which radical change was the order of the day. This novel is a work against ignorce and injustice. “ Ananke”s inscription in the “ Notre- Dame de Paris novel expresses the meanings of distiny, fate. The protagonists, Esmeralda, Jehan Frollo, Quasimodo, etc, plays a central role in the novel, and the work ends with a love tragedy. Victor Hugo The Hunchback of Notre- Dame to save the great cathedral. The autthor believed that it was the duty of the people of his age to preserve structures like, Notre Dame- and so he wrote a 1.000 page novel to convince the to save the cathedral. The novel is about
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how beautiful gypsy Esmeralda makes friends with Quasimodo, the hunchback bell ringer of Notre Dame cathedralin Paris. Shortly thereafter Esmeralda is hanged and Quasimodo, in his grief and despam, pushes Frollo from the cathedral tower.
The novel ends many years later, when two skeletons- that of a woman- are found embracing. Hugo reports that phoebus also came to a tragic end: “ He married”. The descriptive sections of the book are so extended, going far beyond the requirements for the story that his conversation efforts are clear. There exists in this era, for throughts written in stone, a prilege absoloutely comparable to our current freedom of the press. It is the freedom if architecture he wrote in prasie of its construction.
Moreover, Hugo describes the architectural splendours of the cathedral elaborating on the gate, ways, niches, archades, the towers “ harmonious parts of one magnificent whole..., a vast symphony in stone, the colossal work of a man and of a nation, combining unity with complexity”.
Below we analyze the specifics of the protagonists of the novel:
- Esmeralda is a beautiful 16- years- old, gypsy, street dancer who is naturally compassionate, mognificient and very kind Esmeralds is the novel’s pratogonist and the center of the human drama within the story.I think Esmeralds is a symbol of love happiness,kindness in the novel. Through which the peculiaritiles of the image of women in society are revealed. Despite being a gypsy in the Esmeralda, it reflected feminie elegance and chastity. The unique feature of each person in the Notre Dame de Paris novel. A popular focus of the citizens’ attentions, she experiences their changeable attitudes, being first adored as an entertainer, then hated as a witch, before being lauded again by Quasimodo. Esmeralda is loved both Quasimodo and Claude Frollo, but unfortunately she falls hopelessly in love with Captain Phoebus a handsome soldier whom she believes will rightly protect her but who simply wants to seduce her. She is one of the few characters to show Quasimodo a moment of human kindness, as when she guves him water after the hunchback’ s flogging she is eventually revealed to be not gypsy but to have been kidnapped by them and replaced by the devormed Quasimodo.
- In the novel Quasimodo is a deformed 20- year old hunchback, and thebell ringer of Notre Dame. He is half blind and deaf, this because of all the years ringing the bells of the church. Abandoned by his mother as a baby. He rarely ventures outside the Cathedral because the citizens of Paris despise and shun him for his appearance the notable occasions when he does leave include taking part in the Festival of Fools- during which he is elected the pope of Fools due to his perfect hideousness- and his subsequent attempt to kidnap Esmeralda his rescue of Esmeralda from the Cathedral at the end of the novel that the baby Quasimodo was left by the gypsies in place of Esmeralda, whom the abducted.
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'Oriental Art and Culture" Scientific-Methodical Journal - (3) III/2020
ISSN 2181-063X
When Esmeralda is unjustly sentencedto death for the murder of Captain Phoebus the stage is set for one of the most spectacular acts of judicial disobedience in the nineteeth- century novel. Unable to see her beloved die for a crime she did not commit. Quasimodo descends the faccae of the cathedral and saves. Esmeralda from the executioners while calling for sanctuary. The rescue, enacted by Quasimodo “ with the speed of lightening” sends the crowd into an uproar, this is Quasimodo’ s famous heroic moment and the narrator is very careful to describe the hunchback’ s heroism as an act of rebellion.
[Quasimodo] stared down the human justice from which he had snatched its victim those judges, those executioner’ s, all that force of the King’ s, which he the meanist of the mean, had foiled with the force of God!
In this moment of rebbellion against the rule of law and the authority of law and the authority of the monarch the narrator notes “ Quasimodo was really beautiful”.
In the novel Quasimodo challenges corruption, while putting on a spectacularperformance . Despite his hideous visage and bodyhe is beatiful when compared with the heinous justice system and its henchman. However, although Quasimodo’sspectacular feat allows him to be close to Esmeralda for some time, the act is ultimately unsuccesful in the novel. Esmeralda is eventually hanged, and Quasimodo later chooses to join her in her tomb.
In Hugo’ s novel justice cannot be obtained through official channels because the judicial system- with its tries to the church and the monarch- is essentially corrupt and ineffectual. This critique is absent from all of the adaptations beginning with Fitzball’ s 1834 adaptation.
BecauseQuasimodo’ s call for “ Sanctuary!” is the most spectacular moment in the novel, it is no wonder that it has become a staple of the novel’s adaptation history.
Hugo’s La Esmeralda is much more conservative than his Notre- Dame in its religious sentiments as well as in other areas. However, as this scene,shows, the adaptation pened by Hugo retains the author’s critique of capital punishment and soverign power and his celebration of the people, common themes in both his literary and theatrical products. Quasimodo’ s rescue in Hugo’ s dramatization is a much more collective effort. The crowd’s cheers; they resist the executioners and offcers. “ The eternal God” and the people form a “ barrier” to unjustice and abused “ power”.
With the story of Quasimodo, the deformed foundling abandoned at the cathedral, Hugo captured the popular imagination. Quasimodo lived out his days as the bell- ringer of Notre Dame in the 1400s. “ One might almost say that he had assumed its form, “ Hugo wrote of his protagonist, “ as the snail takes on the form of its shell”.
In conclusion,the architecture and history of the middle ages intrude in “ Notre Dame” far beyond what is necessary to give the required color and atmosphere. As a
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'Oriental Art and Culture" Scientific-Methodical Journal - (3) III/2020
ISSN 2181-063X
work of art this novel would only be improved by the omission of the chapters on the topography of Paris and the architecture of the cathedral. Yet it cannot be denied that in “ Notre Dame” he has written a story of tremendous force and enthralling interest. Once started it carries the reader breathlessly on; and it abounds in scens that stamp themselves on the imagination and in figures that haunt the memory.
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