because i, too, am shaped like a croissant
Almost halfway through The Hunchback of Notre Dame, not because I'm a superfast reader, but because I shamelessly skipped pages 101-126, aka "Victor Hugo's Super-Intense Rant on Architecture, Part One." I did try to read chapter 14 (pg. 90-101), though God knows I didn't absorb any of it. (A brief summary: "NOTRE DAME IS UGLY NOW AND IT'S ALL! YOUR! FAULT!")
The decision to skip came at the start of chapter 15, where my text reads:
The preceding chapter attempts to portray the venerable Cathedral of Notre Dame. The reader has learned of the remarkable beauty the building possessed during the fifteenth century, and that some of the beauty no longer remains.
I know that it's just a stylistic difference of the times, but that's a paragraph you put in a note to your editor, not in the narrative. Still, Victor Hugo's dead'n'famous, and I'm not, so his opinion probably outweighs my own. Onward with story!
While Hugo's descriptions of architecture bore me to tears, I have to say I really enjoy his descriptions of people.
Chapter 16 opens with toddler!Quasi being left in the foundling box at Notre Dame. Everybody there is like, "Damn, that is one ugly bebe," until Frollo comes along and is like, "An orphan just like my baby brother. I MUST NURTURE IT."
Book!Frollo and Disney!Frollo are two very different creatures. I was dimly aware of this thanks to TVTropes and the Hunchback of Notre Dame artbook, but the novel makes a very convincing argument that Frollo is, if not a good person, then at least someone with a decent 50/50 split between good and evil. (He is, after all, still a huge racist.)
Unlike Disney!Frollo, book!Frollo genuinely cares for Quasimodo's well-being, teaching him how to read and write, going so far as to create and communicate in a sign language when Quasi goes deaf. Their relationship is even more like father/son than the movie. Frollo isn't just telling Quasi that he's the only person in the world Quasi can depend on, he actually is the only person in the world that Quasi can depend on.
On a related note, I like book!Quasi's "fuck humanity" attitude. Again, it's the polar opposite of Disney!Quasi, but it's a philosophy that's very easy for me to understand. Humanity thinks you're a hideous monster? Why bother to grovel for their approval when you can have a perfectly decent existence up in a belltower with food, shelter, employment, and the best view Paris has to offer? Fuck humanity!
Maybe it's because I'm an art kid (and therefore really, REALLY bad with the maths), but the timeline in this section gave me a bit of trouble. So Quasi is 4 years old when Frollo adopts him, and 16 years later, Quasi is 20 years old, and Frollo is 36 years old. 36 minus 16 is 20, so Frollo was 20 years old when he adopted Quasi.
Okay, writing it out like that, it doesn't seem quite so confusing. I think it might be because the movie timeline is so deeply ingrained into my brain. (Quasi is "adopted" as an infant, 20 years later he's 20 or 21, and Frollo is inexplicably in his 60 for the entire time.)
Yeah, 36-year-old Frollo is way nicer than 60-year-old Frollo. Does Disney just hate the elderly or something?
My long-winded and extremely ill-organized point is that I kind of wish Disney could have given us conflicted, anti-hero protagonist Frollo (with the alchemy and the people-hating and the actually being nice to Quasi), but I know that would have robbed us of abusive, sinister, best-villain-ever-created Frollo.
Also, modern-day book!Quasi would have totally shopped at Hot Topic to express his hatred of "the mundanes."
As a reward for reading this far, I give you a PRETTY PRETTY PICTURE that I drew. Huzzah!
-
Other adventures in Hunchback of Notre Dame reading include:
Part 1
Part 2 (You Are Here)
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Part 12
The decision to skip came at the start of chapter 15, where my text reads:
The preceding chapter attempts to portray the venerable Cathedral of Notre Dame. The reader has learned of the remarkable beauty the building possessed during the fifteenth century, and that some of the beauty no longer remains.
I know that it's just a stylistic difference of the times, but that's a paragraph you put in a note to your editor, not in the narrative. Still, Victor Hugo's dead'n'famous, and I'm not, so his opinion probably outweighs my own. Onward with story!
While Hugo's descriptions of architecture bore me to tears, I have to say I really enjoy his descriptions of people.
Chapter 16 opens with toddler!Quasi being left in the foundling box at Notre Dame. Everybody there is like, "Damn, that is one ugly bebe," until Frollo comes along and is like, "An orphan just like my baby brother. I MUST NURTURE IT."
Book!Frollo and Disney!Frollo are two very different creatures. I was dimly aware of this thanks to TVTropes and the Hunchback of Notre Dame artbook, but the novel makes a very convincing argument that Frollo is, if not a good person, then at least someone with a decent 50/50 split between good and evil. (He is, after all, still a huge racist.)
Unlike Disney!Frollo, book!Frollo genuinely cares for Quasimodo's well-being, teaching him how to read and write, going so far as to create and communicate in a sign language when Quasi goes deaf. Their relationship is even more like father/son than the movie. Frollo isn't just telling Quasi that he's the only person in the world Quasi can depend on, he actually is the only person in the world that Quasi can depend on.
On a related note, I like book!Quasi's "fuck humanity" attitude. Again, it's the polar opposite of Disney!Quasi, but it's a philosophy that's very easy for me to understand. Humanity thinks you're a hideous monster? Why bother to grovel for their approval when you can have a perfectly decent existence up in a belltower with food, shelter, employment, and the best view Paris has to offer? Fuck humanity!
Maybe it's because I'm an art kid (and therefore really, REALLY bad with the maths), but the timeline in this section gave me a bit of trouble. So Quasi is 4 years old when Frollo adopts him, and 16 years later, Quasi is 20 years old, and Frollo is 36 years old. 36 minus 16 is 20, so Frollo was 20 years old when he adopted Quasi.
Okay, writing it out like that, it doesn't seem quite so confusing. I think it might be because the movie timeline is so deeply ingrained into my brain. (Quasi is "adopted" as an infant, 20 years later he's 20 or 21, and Frollo is inexplicably in his 60 for the entire time.)
Yeah, 36-year-old Frollo is way nicer than 60-year-old Frollo. Does Disney just hate the elderly or something?
My long-winded and extremely ill-organized point is that I kind of wish Disney could have given us conflicted, anti-hero protagonist Frollo (with the alchemy and the people-hating and the actually being nice to Quasi), but I know that would have robbed us of abusive, sinister, best-villain-ever-created Frollo.
Also, modern-day book!Quasi would have totally shopped at Hot Topic to express his hatred of "the mundanes."
As a reward for reading this far, I give you a PRETTY PRETTY PICTURE that I drew. Huzzah!
-
Other adventures in Hunchback of Notre Dame reading include:
Part 1
Part 2 (You Are Here)
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Part 12