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Quasimodo is a young man with a hunchback who lives inside Notre Dame and works as the cathedral’s bell-ringer. Quasimodo is abandoned by his parents as a baby and swapped for the beautiful infant Esmeralda when Esmeralda’s mother leaves her unsupervised. Quasimodo is then put up for adoption in Paris and taken in by Claude Frollo, a young priest who later becomes the Archdeacon of Notre Dame. Quasimodo is severely physically deformed and goes deaf because of the noise of the cathedral bells. He cannot talk easily and struggles to communicate with anyone other than Frollo, who teaches him a language of signs. Quasimodo is widely feared and hated in Paris—he is an object of ridicule and a victim of malicious gossip—and he comes to hate the outside world because he feels that people hate him. He is at home in Notre Dame and feels intimately connected with the cathedral. Quasimodo often behaves violently towards people when he is out in public because he has come to expect brutal treatment from them. At one point in the novel, he undergoes a public beating after Frollo orders him to try and kidnap Esmeralda. Despite his vicious exterior, Quasimodo is extremely loyal to Frollo and views him as his master and adoptive father. Although Quasimodo will do anything for Frollo, their relationship comes under strain when Quasimodo falls in love with Esmeralda, whom Frollo is sexually obsessed with. Frollo becomes jealous of Quasimodo and Quasimodo finds himself torn between the two individuals he loves most—Frollo and Esmeralda. Quasimodo’s essentially gentle nature is further demonstrated when he rescues Esmeralda from execution (she is accused of being a witch) and cares for her while she is under his protection in Notre Dame. Quasimodo is self-aware and kind, and he astutely observes that society is often fooled by beautiful appearances, while it rejects those who appear ugly but are kind underneath. He is associated with Gothic architecture throughout the novel, and his death at the novel’s end symbolizes a decline in interest in architecture with the end of the medieval period.
Quasimodo Quotes in The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The The Hunchback of Notre Dame quotes below are all either spoken by Quasimodo or refer to Quasimodo. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Book 2, Chapter 3
Quotes
This was the first taste he had ever had of the delights of vanity. Hitherto, he had known only humiliation, contempt for his condition and disgust for his person. And so, stone deaf though he was, he relished the acclamation of the crowd like a real pope, that crowd which he had detested because he felt it detested him. What did it matter that his people was a pack of fools, cripples, thieves and beggars, it was still a people and he its sovereign. And he took all the ironic applause and mock respect seriously, although it should be said that mixed in with it, among the crowd, went an element of very real fear.
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Book 4, Chapter 3
Quotes
So it was that, little by little, developing always in harmony with the cathedral, living in it, sleeping in it, hardly ever leaving it, subject day in and day out to its mysterious pressure, he came to resemble it, to be incrusted on it, as it were, to form an integral part of it. […] One might almost say that he had taken on its shape, just as the snail takes on the shape of its shell. It was his abode, his hole, his envelope. So deep was the instinctive sympathy between the old church and himself, so numerous the magnetic and material affinities, that he somehow adhered to it like the tortoise to its shell. The gnarled cathedral was his carapace.
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Quasimodo Quotes in The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The The Hunchback of Notre Dame quotes below are all either spoken by Quasimodo or refer to Quasimodo. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Book 2, Chapter 3
Quotes
This was the first taste he had ever had of the delights of vanity. Hitherto, he had known only humiliation, contempt for his condition and disgust for his person. And so, stone deaf though he was, he relished the acclamation of the crowd like a real pope, that crowd which he had detested because he felt it detested him. What did it matter that his people was a pack of fools, cripples, thieves and beggars, it was still a people and he its sovereign. And he took all the ironic applause and mock respect seriously, although it should be said that mixed in with it, among the crowd, went an element of very real fear.
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Book 4, Chapter 3
Quotes
So it was that, little by little, developing always in harmony with the cathedral, living in it, sleeping in it, hardly ever leaving it, subject day in and day out to its mysterious pressure, he came to resemble it, to be incrusted on it, as it were, to form an integral part of it. […] One might almost say that he had taken on its shape, just as the snail takes on the shape of its shell. It was his abode, his hole, his envelope. So deep was the instinctive sympathy between the old church and himself, so numerous the magnetic and material affinities, that he somehow adhered to it like the tortoise to its shell. The gnarled cathedral was his carapace.
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