Reading Response 1

      While reading the first quarter of The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo, I noticed the setting was emphasized the most. Hugo wanted to set the stage for the rest of the novel right from the start. The novel has many sub-settings such as the Palace of Justice where the book opens, and the Cour des Miracles where one of our main characters Peter Gringoire, gets trapped, but both of those settings are not nearly as emphasized as the Notre Dame.
     Hugo devotes a whole chapter to describing this church. Hugo reveals to the reader his love of the Notre Dame during this chapter by referring to it as, "The church of Notre-Dame at Paris is doubtless a sublime and majestic edifice" (Hugo 90). The main character Quasimodo, lives in Notre Dame. I think Hugo chooses to put Quasimodo in the Notre Dame because he secretly wishes that he could be totally immersed in the church just like Quasimodo is. He also describes the Notre Dame as, "Notre-Dame, however, is not what may be called a complete building, nor does it belong to any definite class." (Hugo 93) The author feels that Notre Dame is in a class of its own and that nothing can measure up to it. This again proves to the reader how much Hugo really loves this church. Considering that the title of this book is The Hunchback of Notre Dame, I wasn't that surprised to discover that it is described in such rich detail, but I was surprised to discover how much Hugo actually likes Notre Dame.

     Hugo again devotes a whole chapter to the view from the top of the Notre Dame. He goes into detail each section of Paris and gives the reader a great insight into the Paris of the late 1800's. This is just a brief overview of what Paris would have looked like, "...we will compress our description into a few words. In the centre, the island of the Cité resembling in figure an enormous tortoise; its bridges scaly with slates protruding like feet from beneath trapezium of the Université; on the right the vast semicircle of the Ville, in which gardens and buildings were much more intermingled" (Hugo 113). This chapter proves to the reader Hugo's love of Paris. This author has really immersed himself in Paris and everything in it which I find really inspiring. In order for a person to go into so much detail about one place, they must have to analyse everything about that place and take a really deep dip into what a city looks like.
     The final page of his description of the view has an analogy that compares the buildings to works of music. "Lend your ear then to this tutti of steeples; diffuse over the whole the buzz of half a million of human beings, the eternal murmur of the river, the infinite piping of the wind, the grave and distant quartette of the four forests placed like immense organs on the four hills of the horizon; soften down, as with a demi-tint, all that is too shrill and too harsh in the central mass of sound- and say if you know anything in the world more rich, more gladdening, more dazzling, than that tumult of bells; than that furnace of music; than those ten thousand brazen tones breathed all at once from flutes of stone three hundred feet high; that that city which is but one orchestra; than that symphony rushing and roaring like a tempest" (Hugo 118). This section shows the reader that Hugo can make detailed connections and prove to the reader his understanding of Paris and the Notre Dame.
     In my opinion, the characters weren't really developed in this section. It was more about setting the scene for the reader and allowing them to have a clear view of what the city actually looked like. This section also gave me an insight into Hugo's opinions on Paris and the Notre Dame. If Hugo develops the characters in the next section as richly as he developed the setting then I think this will turn out to be an awesome read.