Quasimodo, also known as Quasimodo and Gazimodo, is a typical representative of the poor people in the society at that time.
Quasimodo was abandoned by his parents in front of Notre Dame de Paris when he was a child. He was a deformed child with a "geometrical face, a tetrahedral nose, a horseshoe-shaped mouth, uneven teeth, one eye, deafness, a hunchback, and an unpleasant and loyal voice", and the author emphasized his character through exaggerated appearance shaping.
Casimodo's characterization has an obvious change:
In the first stage, he is adopted by Claude and is responsible for ringing the bell every day, and in return for his kindness, he does everything Claude says, including going to kidnap Esmeralda;
In the second stage, after encountering Esmeralda, his sincere goodness and faithfulness and courageous nature is resurrected, and he rises up to save Esmeralda from the danger. Esmeralda in danger, and without expecting anything in return, contrasting sharply with the characterizations of Claude and Phoebus.
Expanded:
"Notre Dame de Paris" is a tragedy in which good innocents are destroyed and persecuted under a dictatorship. The heroine, Esmeralda, is a kind and innocent young girl who is compassionate and dares to sacrifice herself to save others.
When the poet Grangual, who sells literature for a living, is killed in a Parisian gathering of vagabonds and beggars in the middle of the night, she stands up to him, offering to marry him, and puts the poet under her protection, even though she does not love him.
When Quasimodo was scourged in a sun-baked square and cried out in agony from thirst, she alone expressed sympathy for the bell-ringer, who was so ugly and strange and who had abducted her late at night.
She was passionately naive, thinking the world as pure as she was, and remained passionately in love with the heartless Phoebus to the end of her life; and she was so steadfast that she would rather die than give in to Claude's tyranny. She is the favorite of Parisian vagabonds and beggars, but self-reliant and innocent.
Hugo puts such a bright image on the gloomy and dark background of the Middle Ages, depicting how that society, ruled by absolutism and extremely rampant church power, coerced her and persecuted her like a huge net, and put her to death by horrifying means.
The religious fanaticism of the Bohemian maiden as the object of persecution, the diabolical intrigues of the ecclesiastical characters for the satisfaction of their vile animal desires, the savagery and brutality of the despotic state machinery, all these are depicted by Hugo in a romantic style as horrible as a nightmare. Through such a description, the author shows the darkness of the feudal absolutist society and highlights the anti-feudal theme of the work.