Quasimodo

Quasimodo (from Quasimodo Sunday) is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831) by Victor Hugo. Quasimodo was born with a hunchback and feared by the townspeople as a sort of monster, but he finds sanctuary in an unlikely love that is fulfilled only in death. The role of Quasimodo has been played by many actors in film and stage adaptations, including Lon Chaney (1923), Charles Laughton (1939), Anthony Quinn (1956), and Anthony Hopkins (1982) as well as Tom Hulce in the 1996 Disney animated adaptation, Steve Lemme in the 2023 comedy Quasi, and most recently Angelo Del Vecchio in the Notre Dame de Paris revival. In 2010, a British researcher found evidence suggesting there was a real-life hunchbacked stone carver who worked at Notre Dame during the same period Victor Hugo was writing the novel and they may have even known each other. In the novel The deformed Quasimodo is described as "hideous" and a "creation of the devil". He was born with a severe hunchback, a bushy eyebrow covering his left eye while the right eye "disappeared entirely" behind a giant wart. He was born to a tribe of Romani people (in the novel called égyptienne or 'gypsies'), but due to his monstrous appearance he was switched during infancy with an able-bodied baby girl, Agnes. One character in the novel refers to him as animalistic and un-Christian, suggesting he may be the "offspring of a Jew and a sow", and thus deserving of death. After being discovered, Quasimodo is exorcised by Agnes's mother (who believed that the Romani people ate her child) and taken to Paris. He is found abandoned in Notre Dame (on the foundlings' bed, where orphans and unwanted children are left to public charity) on Quasimodo Sunday, the First Sunday after Easter, by Claude Frollo, the Archdeacon of Notre Dame, who adopts the baby, names him after the day the baby was found, and brings him up to be the bell-ringer of the cathedral. Due to the loud ringing of the bells, Quasimodo also becomes deaf causing Frollo to teach him sign language. Although he is hated for his deformity, it is revealed that he is kind at heart. Though Quasimodo commits acts of violence in the novel, these are only undertaken when he is instructed by others. Looked upon by the general populace of Paris as a monster, he believes that Frollo is the only one who cares for him, and frequently accompanies him when the Archdeacon walks out of Notre Dame.