Discussion 01 - The Role of Fate

[bleed_peroxide]

Can I just say how much wicked_seraph and I love you all? Seriously, thank you for keeping the community active and alive! ♥ I think jackks is on to something - I don't think I've ever seen such an active community for Notre Dame de Paris. Again, you guys totally take all the credit for that.

heartillys messaged me a few weeks ago with a great suggestion to make the comm

Comments

[ex_heartill]

While it would be cool to say that the whole book is driven because of fate, it all really boils down to various people making some really bad choices. We make choices everyday, whether they be good or bad, selfish or not selfish. Pushing the blame on Esmeralda, a young innocent naive girl that really just needed a good smack, isn't right.

First off Frollo, he's lived his whole life as this Priest, right? Yet it only takes one look of a young girl dancing to set his heart aflame. He made the choice to forgo his beliefs, and his God for some girl. Phoebus too for that matter, made the choice to abandon Fluer. Esmeralda makes the choice to give up virtually everything for the aforementioned Captain. You could shift the blame to any one of these characters. Their choices set in motion this spiral of death and destruction that no one could escape from. Except Gringoire and his goat.

I really think Hugo was giving us all a warning: be careful of the choices you make. While the consequences may not seem clear, they will always be some whether they be good or bad. No one in this story ever stopped to think if what they were doing was wrong, and ultimately everyone got what they deserved based on their actions. Phoebus had to deal with the consequence of marriage, Jehan, Frollo and Esmeralda dealt with the consequence of death, and Gringoire dealt with the consequence of being a sexually confused idiot that can't write to save his life.

I can't wait for the next discussion! You have a great taste in music, BTW. BoA is amazing.

[bleed_peroxide]

Pushing the blame on Esmeralda, a young innocent naive girl that really just needed a good smack, isn't right.

Exactly. I mean, I don't deny that she had a huge role in the way things go because almost all the mens' choices had to do with her. But it's like blaming some poor pedestrian crossing the road for a huge car wreck just because they were there at the wrong time and place. I mean, you could stretch to say that it's their fault since they were texting and walking across the street, but the car driver could have also seen them beforehand, known the potential for a wreck, and avoided it as best they could. It's a stretch as far as analogies go, sure, but I see the events in Notre Dame as being one huuuuuge car wreck.

I really think Hugo was giving us all a warning: be careful of the choices you make. While the consequences may not seem clear, they will always be some whether they be good or bad.

Absolutely agreed. They all made the choice - the only person really forced to do anything was probably Quasimodo, which was to kidnap Esméralda. I think that while the consequences might have been a bit worse than they deserved in some cases (such as dying because of falling in love for the first time, and acting in the foolishness that can come as a result), they nevertheless had to pay for what they did. In fear of sounding like a total Fullmetal dork, it's totally equivalent exchange.

I'm so glad a bunch of you guys chipped in. ♥ I'm surprised that everyone's on the same page - I thought for sure that everyone would pick "fate". Everyone has some great ideas. Seriously, I love me some BoA. I'm actually listening to her right now after a marathon of Combichrist last night. ♥

[silverwhistle]

I mean, I don't deny that she had a huge role in the way things go because almost all the men's choices had to do with her. But it's like blaming some poor pedestrian crossing the road for a huge car wreck just because they were there at the wrong time and place.

No.
Because she isn't a passive victim. She actively makes bad choices herself.
With her background, she trusts a guy whose idea of a first date is a sleazy knocking-shop run by a woman who is obviously a bawd? She has opportunities to get out of bad situations, which she could use, if she had the wit to manipulate Claude's infatuation. And ultimately, she lands her mother and herself in trouble because she can't keep her mouth shut.

I don't suffer fools in real life or fiction, and she really is irredeemably stupid.

[ex_heartill]

She really is irredeemably stupid.

If you think about it, everyone is stupid in their own way in the novel. Esmeralda is stupid for her actions regarding Phoebus, Phoebus is stupid for leaving his fiance just to be with a young beautiful gypsy, Frollo is stupid for falling for a gypsy, forsaking his beliefs, and nearly taking advantage of her, Quasimodo is stupid for following the orders of Frollo. Pushing the blame onto Esmeralda for everything isn't correct.

[silverwhistle]

But sadly, there's not much more to her than that. Most of the others have more to them, which is why you care more about them. She's an airhead - casually kind, casually cruel, and no matter what horrors befall her, too superficial for them to affect her very deeply. (Actually, that's why people like her tend to come through bad experiences relatively undamaged psychologically - because they live in the shallows.) She and Phœbus are well matched.

[bleed_peroxide]

I don't deny that she made some seriously foolish decisions, because trust me, she definitely doesn't win the award for "smartest character in literary history". Quite the opposite. But I think that while her own choices definitely had an impact on the others in the novel, they also made choices that landed their asses in the frying pan, so to speak. She was irrevocably involved in everyone's decisions, but I personally don't have the heart to pin every bad thing that happens solely on her. Others made horrible decisions as well, such as Phoebus leaving his fiancé to chase after a gypsy.

[ex_heartill]

People need someone to blame, so Esmeralda is the obvious choice. No one is to blame in the book; they are all victims of their choices and actions which are often done blindly because of powerful emotions. Esmeralda was simply a girl in love, and you know how some girls can act when they're like that. Some of her actions are understandable really.

In fear of sounding like a total Fullmetal dork, it's totally equivalent exchange.

EPIC WORDING.

[bleed_peroxide]

I agree - I mean, she obviously made some foolish decisions and had blinders on as far as Phoebus was concerned, but I do think that others' choices can't be entirely blamed on her, even if they involved the girl in some way. I mean, can one blame Esméralda because Phoebus chose to leave his fiancé for her? It involves her, but she didn't tell him what to do. She's stupid, yes, but she's also young. It'd be different if she'd been middle-aged and supposed to have more sensibility, but she's only a teenager in love. She can't be expected to act completely rational in the face of that.

Glad you approved >:3

[silverwhistle]

I wasn't that thick as a teenager, and I despised the girls who were: they tended to end up pregnant as soon as they left school (if not before).

Neither she nor Phœbus are characters I can imagine being able to have a conversation with. As far as I'm concerned, they deserve each other: c'est a mau rat mau chat, to quote Villon.

[bleed_peroxide]

Oh no, I'm not saying all girls are like that. Unfortunately, many girls that are teenagers don't act too different than Esméralda. I didn't act that foolishly when I was in high school, but a lot of 'em did. I was tempted to make 'em all read the novel so they could see themselves in her, and maybe get the hint that HEY, HEY, THIS ISN'T REALLY SMART.

Both seem to lack in the conversation department, lol. I gotta ask: does that mean "I'm a lecher, she's a lecher to match"?

[silverwhistle]

does that mean "I'm a lecher, she's a lecher to match"?

"A bad cat for a bad rat" = "we're two of a kind".

[bleed_peroxide]

Ahhh, gotcha. I Googled the phrase with "English translation" and the one with "lecher" is what I got as a result. O_O

[silverwhistle]

That's more of a translation of another line in the same stanza: Ie suis paillart, la paillarde me suit. It's from the Ballade de la Grosse Margot in Le Grand Testament, wherein Villon talks explicitly about his dealings with an overweight madam called Fat Margot. C'est a mau rat mau chat is his deliberate inversion of the adage a bon chat, bon rat.

I got into NDdP because of a teenaged interest in Villon.

[silverwhistle]

Claude breaks my heart because one knows he's worth so much more. If he was to wreck his life and career over a woman, why couldn't it have been one more worthy of him? - A Hypatia or an Heloïse, not some bimbo airhead who squeaks that he's "old and ugly" and wouldn't appreciate his philosophy books even if one fell on her (which, sadly, it doesn't). But sadly, intelligent men (or women) who are out of touch with their emotions can get swept off their feet by physically desirable morons and self-destruct.

Pierre's a sweetie, the sanest person in the book: I was glad he and the goat made it out alive (and together).

[silverwhistle]

First off Frollo, he's lived his whole life as this Priest, right? Yet it only takes one look of a young girl dancing to set his heart aflame. He made the choice to forgo his beliefs, and his God for some girl.

Because he's cracking up.
Because when he was too young to understand what he was being committed to, his parents put him into a career in an institution which makes cruel and unnatural demands upon its staff.
His tragedy is that he is a normal young man trapped in a monstrous organisation, and is destroyed because it has warped his entirely natural urges.

[twolionss]

His tragedy is that he is too decent for his own good. And of course, the fact that he misunderstood himself when decided to become a priest (for the sake of that brat Jehan...)