| Sonja's HoND Memoir At the end of November 1996, my daddy was watching a TV program about upcoming films. Suddenly, I heard the commentator talk about HOND: "...The main character is the hump-backed Quasimodo whose mother is killed by the wicked Frollo at the beginning. By the order of the Archdeacon, he spares the deformed child and locks him away in the cathedral of Notre Dame, out of people's sight forever." (...) Those words - "out of people's sight forever" filled my mind with great and deep compassion, and ever since that moment, I've loved Disney's Quasimodo even more than the Hugo character. Namely, in the very evening, I started to read the book, and although Quasimodo was appealing in it as well, it was almost impossible for me to accept the fact that Frollo had raised him as an act of charity and he lived in isolation on his own accord rather than "locked away from the world". I read the book for 2 weeks before I saw the film for the first time. Later, I noticed that the novel was so complicated many parts of it couldn't even be compared with the Disney film, and of course, it was the �riginal that finally made the greatest influence on me. Still, even nowadays, whenever I read how Dom Claude had raised Quasimodo, taught him to speak, to read, to write and made him a bellringer, I can't help thinking about the "teachings" Quasi is bound to repeat in the film. Back to Birthday Memoirs Back to Index |