Notre Dame Rebirth

Every human is a product of their mother and father’s cells coming together to form a single entity that then matures and, after nine months, is born. A new person with thoughts and feelings is created. But what if this is only the first birth? What if man can experience multiple “births” throughout his lifetime, becoming a new being with different thoughts and emotions? Gabriel Garcia Marquez offer this quotes from Love in the Time of Cholera; “He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.” Humans, throughout the course of their lives are pushed off of their destined path
onto into a life that the populace maintains that they ought to lead.
But when the weight of expectation becomes too much, the call to break free becomes obvious. This rebirth, much like a caterpillar emerging from it’s chrysalis to reveal a beautiful butterfly, occurs when mans sheds the false pretenses he lives under and wipes away the self-fulfilling prophecies to determine who he really is. In the novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo, many characters experience a rebirth in their life due to the fact that the general Parisian population of the 1400’s have many prejudices embedded into their
culture, mainly, their disdain for the gypsies. Esmeralda, though one of the purest characters in the novel, has her potential stifled by the oppressive weight of the anti-gypsy zeitgeist and is subject to personal ridicule and abuse by the “sack woman”, sister Gudule, causing the innocent gypsy girl to become more distrusting of other and become a much more introverted soul. Though this horrid woman is the point of the spear of aggressive nationalism, sister Gudule is also at the chopping block of the criticism and pity of the townspeople. “At the moment when she looked in, a profound pity was depicted on all her features, and her frank, gay visage altered its expression and color as abruptly as though it had passed from a ray of sunlight to a ray of moonlight; her eye became humid; her mouth contracted, like that of a person on the point of weeping.” (Hugo Chapter 3). Though this woman was the cause of her and Esmeralda’s “othering”, she was also the catalyst of the rebirth of both herself and Esmeralda. In the final act of the novel, Esmeralda is revealed to be sister Gudule’s long lost child and in this moment both characters are reborn. Esmeralda, revealed to now no longer be an orphan or a gypsy, is now finally able to put her trust into someone and sister Gudule, who has been paralyzed with grief with the loss of her child, is now rejuvenated and ready to serve as mother to her newly found Agnes. Quicker than a flash of lightning, the recluse had laid the two shoes together, had read the parchment and had put close to the bars of the window her face beaming with celestial joy as she cried,-- “‘My daughter! my daughter!’ ‘My mother!’ said the gypsy. Here we are unequal to the task of depicting the scene.” (Hugo Chapter 11) In the short story Parker’s Back by Flannery O’Connor, the character O.E.
Parker goes through a similar metamorphosis. O.E. is a crass, pleasure seeking, ex-military man who never thought that he would tied down to a single woman, especially not a woman like Sarah. With Sarah, he is constantly told that he leads a sinful life and that and despised his tattoos. “Sarah Ruth who, if she had had better sense, could have enjoyed a tattoo on his back, would not even look at the ones he had elsewhere. When he attempted to point out especial details of them, she would shut her eyes tight and turn her back as well. Except in total darkness, she preferred Parker dressed and with his sleeves rolled down.” (O’Connor 2). Parker lived up to the expectation that Sarah was setting for him. He was a still a rude, atheist, pleasure-seeking jerk. This was until Parker, tired of being pushed away from being pushed away by Sarah, decided to use his main mean of expression that was once called idolatry to express his love of for her. Parker goes through a rebirth in this moment as he sheds the prejudices he was under in order to reveal his true self as Sarah’s loving husband. “Parker did not allow himself to think on the way to the city. He only knew that there had been a great change in his life, a leap forward into a worse unknown, and that there was nothing he could do about it. It was for all intents accomplished.... The thought of her brought him slowly to his feet. She would know what he
had to do. She would clear up the rest of it, and she would at least be pleased. It seemed to him that, all along, that was what he wanted, to please her.” (O’Connor) Man is does not always heed the call of change. Sometimes the expectations of society are too strong to break free from. An example of this can be found in The Night Nurse by Joyce Carol Oates. In this story, Grace Burkhardt is confronted by a girl that she bullied in college and she is forced to make the choice of whether to sincerely apologize for her wrongdoings or to maintain that she is an upstanding member of society. She is so entranced by societal expectations that she does not allow herself to cry out in pain when an artery burst in her leg. “And in the speeding ambulance delirious with pain and mounting terror, an incandescent bulb of pain in her left leg just below the knee but still she did not scream biting her lips to keep from screaming and thinking even at this time I am behaving well, look how calm and civilized,” (Oates). Grace cannot escape the high expectations that she has placed on herself to change into her unaffected self. Grace begins and ends the story as the exact same, fake person. She refuses the call for rebirth in exchange for the prophecy she feels as if she has to fulfill and, in essence, becomes a static character within her own life. When dealt a self-fulfilling prophesy, man can do one of two things; he can live up to them and become what others claim that he is bound to be or he can break free and put himself in his own mold to shape himself as he chooses. Though one may say that when life assigns man roles in the great play of the existence one must play the part to perfection, others may argue that truest performances occur when actors go off script. Whether or not this is for the better or worse, the man is reborn as a new, truer self and is unequivocally changed forever.