Flashbacks

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

by Victor Hugo

The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Flashbacks 1 key example

Book 4, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Sixteen Years Prior:

Book 4, Chapter 1’s flashback dials back the clock. Like Quasimodo’s failed attempt to abduct Esmeralda, The Hunchback of Notre Dame takes the reader just as abruptly to the story of his obscure origins:

Sixteen years prior to the events of this story, one fine Quasimodo Sunday morning, a living creature was deposited after mass in the church of Notre-Dame on the wooden bed set into the parvis on the left-hand side, facing the ‘great image’ of St Christopher, at which the carved stone figure of Messire Antoine des Essarts, Knight, had been kneeling staring since 1413, when they took it into their heads to overthrow both saint and worshipper.