sidelines and wanted to help her escape from jail in order to have an affair with her. That would not be a plot structure (and three quarters of the book’s drama would be lost).
In the novel, the hoboes of Paris attempt to rescue the girl from the cathedral of Notre-Dame, which they besiege. One of their leaders is the priest’s young brother, a dissolute, useless playboy, representing the complete opposite of the priest’s ideals, but his only human value on earth besides the girl. In a horrible scene, Quasimodo, the priest’s protégé, seizes this boy by the legs and cracks his skull against the façade of the cathedral.
If there had been no younger brother, the priest’s conflict of values, and his tragedy, would have been lesser. And while the siege of the cathedral would still have had a certain plot value—the suspense of: “Will the heroine escape or not?”—that incident becomes much more dramatic when it involves a dramatic loss to the priest.
Every incident of Notre-Dame de Paris is ruled by the same principle: make it as hard as possible for the characters, and tie the lesser characters’ tragedies to the main line of events. The best example is the story of the girl’s mother, an old recluse whose only desire is to find her daughter, who was stolen by the Gypsies years ago. The woman hates all Gypsies, the heroine in particular. At the end, in the climax, by seizing the girl’s arm, she delays her long enough so that the soldiers pursuing her are able to find her—and in that moment she discovers that the girl is her daughter. Why is it dramatic? Hugo selects the worst conflict possible for both the old woman and the girl: in that moment, nothing worse could have happened to them than to discover each other in such a manner.
This subplot is not involved in or essential to the plot-theme; but Hugo quite properly introduced it, in developing the story, since he could integrate it to the main line of events. By contrast, if the old mother had not served a plot purpose in the climax, she would have been irrelevant to and improper in the story.
At the end, the priest and Quasimodo watch the girl’s execution from the tower of the cathedral. If the priest had leaned forward too far and fallen off the tower, that would have been a disastrous anticlimax; it would have been completely purposeless, and therefore meaningless. But what did Hugo, the dramatist, do? Quasimodo, the devoted protégé, sees the priest gloating over the execution and pushes him over the side of the tower. That is a resolution in action of their conflict of values.
The scene that follows, in which the priest is caught on a water-spout and hangs over the pavement, is magnificently dramatic. It is a physical illustration of the novel’s central conflict, and of its resolution : the girl is being executed on the square below; Quasimodo is standing above, crying; the priest hangs between life and death in sheer horror, and finally crashes to punishment.
This is one of the most satisfying resolutions in literature (speaking only in terms of dramatic values, which one judges by the nature of the conflict the author has set up). Hugo’s skill is such that he does not let the priest die immediately, without knowing the nature of his punishment. The priest lives long enough to know—his soul (and thus the reader’s soul) realizes consciously for a few minutes the spiritual meaning of the whole central conflict.
If you understand the mechanics of what makes this good, you understand the essence of plot construction.
In reading Notre-Dame de Paris, one feels interest, tension, horror. Watch for the means by which these ends are achieved, and, underlying the writing style, you will see the skeleton of the plot structure, which in turn is determined by the plot-theme. Those scenes at the end of the novel hold your attention because they are the logical resolution of the central conflict, the same conflict by which the author has held you up to this point. If the final scenes had come out of nowhere, they would not have held you.
Of course, the author has to be a good stylist to write the scenes properly; but style is a secondary issue. The best style in the world will not save a plotless story. You might say of it: “That’s a lovely way of using words”—but nothing more. The power of the climax of Notre-Dame de