One character in the novel refers to him as animalistic and un-Christian, suggesting he may be the 'offspring of a Jew and a sow', and thus deserving of death. He was born to a tribe of Romani people (in the novel called égyptienne or 'gypsies'), but due to his monstrous appearance he was switched during infancy with an able-bodied baby girl, Agnes. He was born with a severe hunchback, a bushy eyebrow covering his left eye while the right eye 'disappeared entirely' behind a giant wart. The deformed Quasimodo is described as 'hideous' and a 'creation of the devil'. In 2010, a British researcher found evidence suggesting there was a real-life hunchbacked stone carver who worked at Notre Dame during the same period Victor Hugo was writing the novel and they may have even known each other. The role of Quasimodo has been played by many actors in film and stage adaptations, including Lon Chaney (1923), Charles Laughton (1939), Anthony Quinn (1956), and Anthony Hopkins (1982) as well as Tom Hulce in the 1996 Disney animated adaptation, Steve Lemme in the 2023 comedy “Quasi”, and most recently Angelo Del Vecchio in the Notre Dame de Paris revival.

Quasimodo was born with a hunchback and feared by the townspeople as a sort of monster, but he finds sanctuary in an unlikely love that is fulfilled only in death. Quasimodo (from Quasimodo Sunday ) is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831) by Victor Hugo. Quasimodo, painting by Antoine Wiertz, 1849

Hugo the hunchback