Reading Response # 2

Response #2
Tone
La Esmeralda first shows her empathy for others and genuine morality when she takes Pierre Gringoire for her "husband" for four years not because she wants to do so, but only because she wishes to save him. Style is demonstrated here by the literary depiction in the passage,
"Its inmates of both sexes respectfully drew back for her to pass, and at the sight of their brutal faces drew a softer expression. With light step she approached the suffer. Her pretty Djali followed at her heels. Gringoire was more dead than alive. She eyed him for a moment in silence. 'Are you going to hang this man?' said she, gravely, to Clopin." (pg. 80)
It establishes the tone of the humanity despite judgement from so many others. This, though, is not the most crucial point in which this tone is demonstrated. When Quasimodo is set to hang at the gallows, and he begs for water from all the onlookers, all they see is a deformed hunchback who is deserving of death. They see this because he is not like them physically, and so consequently the theory is established that if something isn't just as you are, then it is clearly not worthy of living the life that it has so graciously been granted. Though, La Esmeralda appears before him an gives him a sip of water. This is a pivotal moment in the book because it depicts the tone of tragedy; of two outcasts finding one another in a world thus forth filled with chaos and hate and destruction. This can be seen in the passage,
"Then from that eye, hitherto so dry and burning, was seen to roll a big tear, which fell slowly down that deformed visage so long contracted by despair. Perhaps it was the first that the unfortunate creature had ever shed" (pg. 322).
Though, it also establishes the knowledge that even if the two do have each other, nothing will be all right, ever. Even as this happens, Dom Claude Frollo is severely conflicted because he himself has found a love for La Esmeralda that not even he himself is able to control, though is blinded by his prejudice of gypsies. Absurdly enough, whilst Esmeralda and Quasimodo are each persecuted the most within the novel, they appear to be very moral, and have the most sympathy for others, even for those who have hurt them. Hugo establishes his tragic tone in this way by juxtaposing the dissimilar; the cruelty of those seemingly "normal" citizens, to the kindness of those tortured for no unsuperficial reason, alluding to the fact that there will at some point be a climactic clash between the two opposing forces.