The Noli and Notre Dame’s Setting and Point of View: A Comparative Analysis

A significant element of fiction is the setting where the characters live and move. The setting essentially tells the time and the place of the story. It may be physical or non-physical, that which exists only in the mind. The physical setting of Hugo’s Notre Dame Cathedral, and Rizal’s church of San Diego are physical settings of which the fateful beginnings and endings of most characters are set upon. Both represent a place of refuge and at the same time a place of torment.

In the Notre Dame Cathedral, different types of worlds are created by each character: Fray Frollo’s quest for knowledge which eventually becomes also his escape from the pain of the real world, creates a secret place for himself; Quasimodo’s physical deformity finds refuge under the same roof, creates a circle of friends with the bells; Esmeralda’s beauty also finds both refuge and torment in the place, creates a world of denial caused by her blinding love for Phoebus.

The same is true in the church of San Diego. Fray Salvi’s hidden desire for Maria Clara results in his ploys to win her somehow; Basilio and Crispin’s financial release by serving as sacristans, create themselves their wish for a good life while tolling the bell; Maria Clara’s suicidal nature, creates her own asylum in the same church.

In Book II of the Notre Dame de Paris, Hugo symbolically uses the tarot in narrating what happened to Gringoire in the sections The Inconveniences of Following a Pretty Girl in the Streets at Night until the last page of Book II A Wedding Night . Gringoire in this Book follows the mystical beauty Esmeralda.

Along this spying and charmed pheromonal walk, Hugo utilized tarot symbols of the pentacles, wands, cups and swords both as a foreshadowing technique and as intensifying effect on the setting which is true to how a gypsy would read a tarot card. So that in this section, which focuses on Gringoire’s stalking on the gypsy Esmeralda, Hugo placed his reader as a gypsy reading the tarot and Gringoire is the Significator, the one who is searching for an answer. For example Gringoire saw Esmeralda doing her stunts:

she picked up from the ground two swords, the points of which she balanced on her forehead [Hugo:63]

Esmeralda’s balancing of the two swords on her forehead is a foreshadow that she will have to make a decision, one that may sometimes be in the wrong direction, just like in the inverted two of swords in the tarot deck. Another would be the changing tide of fate:

Gringoire, lost in these thousand windings which always kept coming back to their beginnings [73]

and,

a dream since this morning, and that this was by a continuation. In fact, the turn of events, though gratifying, was an extreme one.[95]

Both examples contain the image of the tarot’s Key 10, the Wheel of Fortune, which tells of the ups and downs of fate. Similarly, the novel Noli’s Chapter XXIV In the Wood contains the exact image in the game they called the Wheel of Fortune:

Some took the chessmen, others the cards, while the girls, curious about the future, chose to put questions to a Wheel of Fortune. [Rizal:182]

Ibarra later in the chapter took a shot at the wheel of fortune asking if he will succeed in his plans which Sinang commented as an “ugly question”. The reading said “Dreams are dreams”[184] which became a foreshadow that Ibarra’s plan will not succeed.

Therefore, Hugo’s Book II and Rizal’s Chapter XXIV are similar in that in the Notre Dame de Paris, the reader participates as a ‘tarot reader’ giving an experiential seeing of forthcoming events in the novel in the same manner as the Noli Me Tangere situates the reader as a participant in the game the Wheel of Fortune. Both novels made use of similar symbols utilized as foreshadowing techniques and also as an experiential point of view.

Furthermore, the Noli’s Chapters VIII and X, Recollections and The Town are similar to Book III, Notre Dame and A Bird’s-Eye View of Paris. The latter, introduces the cathedral, the before and now story behind it to the readers, and later shows an aerial view of Paris from the cathedral:

…the view of Paris as it then appeared from the top of its towers…that breathtaking picture opened before you on every side—a spectacle sui generis.[Hugo:114]

Similarly, the Noli’s Chapter VIII takes the reader to the before and now story of Manila and then mentions in Chapter X how everything in San Diego can be seen on an aerial view if one goes up to its church:

When on a clear day the boys ascend to the upper part of the church tower, which is beautified by moss and creeping plants, they break out into joyful exclamations at the beauty of the scene spread out before them. In the midst of the clustering roofs of nipa, tiles, corrugated iron, and palm leaves, separated by groves and gardens, each one is able to discover his own home, his little nest…[Rizal:72-73]

The point of view utilized by both Hugo and Rizal in the aforementioned book and chapters also create a similarity. In Rizal’s Recollections he revealed the use of a narrator who became a tourist guide concluding the chapter with the following lines:

Let us leave the youth dreaming or dozing, since neither the sad nor the animated poetry of the open country held his attention…let us return to Manila.[Rizal:65]

In the same manner, Hugo wrote in the same type of point of view:

We have just attempted to reconstruct for the reader this admirable church of Notre-Dame in Paris…[Hugo:114]

Although it can be more similarly read in at least once from Book V’s This Will Kill That :

Our reader must excuse us if we stop a moment to investigate the enigmatic words of the archdeacon.[174,par3]

These similarities on the use of setting and point of view established a solid ground for the two novels’ convergence.

About the author: Kathleen B. Solon-Villaneza is currently a University administrator, English language and literature professor, and researcher.