Listen to the Symphony of Stone

By Mojor [高二（8）班 朱俊超] It’s a sad story about a beautiful and kind-hearted goddess callde Esmeralda and a ugly but virtuous bell ringer called Quasimodo. They perform a haunting legend.

The Cathedral of Notre Dame is one of the most famous books written by Hugo.It’s a great novel with powerful thinking and artistic charm, and full of humanitarian and romanticism. A great novel lies not only in its twists plot, but also in the way to make characters and reflect the fact.Then it can make people a great hit. " The Cathedral of Notre Dame " has achieved this point! Its plot is unusual and stress,characters are exaggerated,the kind and the innocent were ruled under autocracy of the medieval feudal, they suffered

persecution without mercy... ... Such a tragedy, is enough to make readers feel angry about the social which is full of feudal things in that time……

Beautiful and kind-hearted goddess

Esmeralda has beautiful appearance, but the point is that she has a kind heart. When she saved the poor poet, sent water and compassion to Quasimodo who had ever hurt herself, I realise she was a real beauty,with a mind without any dirt.She is such a great model! She is deeply imprinted in my heart, let me know the essence of beauty ——the real beauty always form after so many tribulations with courage and brave. This is a rebel! However, such a girl like an angel, was so badly treated and in the end she made sacrifices and left her sweet smile and beautiful dance in the memory of mine……

The call of the wild

Although Quasimodo’s appearance is very ugly, the good mind make him a lovely man. He gradually waked by Esmeralda and gave Esmeralda all his love, To save Esmeralda,he pushed down his adoptive father from the building. At last he died with her in peace. The dark society made the deaf Quasimodo would never stand in front of true happiness. But in my eyes, ugly or not, for such a great man is not important, because his words and deeds, his thinking are enough to build up a tall,beautiful and brilliant image. Although his fate is as miserable as Esmeralda’s,he is still worth being made up a great song!

The profound inspiration

I seem to see the intense struggle of characters indistinctly. There is a sense of shock in my mind. In this novel no one is perfect, everyone has

shortcomings; no one is entirely rational,evryone exists with human’s crazy more or less. This is a contest between justness and evil, between beauty and ugliness, between pure and dirty, is a picture with full-blooded love. The author Hugo descrips most lower level people in old Paris with his great compassion, such as vagrants and beggars.They were in rads, but they were far better than people who are not brave, upright and friendly……

The darkness of the society and humanity, created such a tragedy. Hugo has ever said that The Cathedral of Notre Dame is "the stone of the symphony", and when I listen to it, I heard a song of souls with shock and grief!

 

第二篇：book report on Notre Dame de Paris 巴黎圣母院 英文读后感

READING AND WRITING 2

HARRIS

BOOK REPORT 3

15, MAY. 2013

INSIDE

Just as the author, Victor Hugo, a great writer who underwent almost all the major incidents of nineteen century in France, predicted, Notre Dame de Paris was perfectly knit together by realism and romanticism. And this grand building tolerated all of this, no matter the beauty or the evil, standing by the Seine quietly over the six hundred years, and shared the timeless story with us. Actually the criterion to judging what exactly beauty is and what exactly evil is has already lied in the bottom of readers ?hearts.

The strong contrast between beauty and evil impressed me most in this book. Mr.Hugo almost searched his whole mind for all negative words to describe Quasimodo, a bellman with a geometry of the face, a tetrahedral nose, and jagged teeth, who also broke through himself and finally killed his adoptive father, Floro, by pushing him down from the roof of Notre Dame de Paris. While, Mr.Hugo also gave birth to another totally different character, Floro, as I mentioned above, who was the

representative of religious evil forces and a victim of religious asceticism. He never gave up any chance to meet his requirements, but the asceticism twisted his soul so much that he could not feel any happiness in his entire life. And there was a character we could not miss, Esmeralda, who was a beautiful and kind-hearted gypsy girl, by which the witter expressed his pursuit of true and charges against evil forces of the church. She died in the scaffold with a loud laugh, but also she became an immortal emblem of beauty and kindness, which would never fade out, even after thousands of years. Mr.Hugo was dedicated to portray the whole picture in his mind with this book, but, thanks to him, we still got the great opportunities to review our judgment deeply.

Since the flooding of freedom of thought approached, people living in twenty-first century almost spare every effort to pursuing their ideal beauty, which sometimes drives them to lose their balance of what matters most in essence, the interior or the exterior. As we all know, a Chinese movie actress, L, spent more than one million dollars on her wedding ceremony, while which was exactly Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, once spent on a charity party, aiming to build clinics in the south of Africa to help the natives to live a better life. I am not sure whether she

will be happier if she spend the money in helping the children who may be suffering from Malaria or other epidemics in Africa. But what is worse, it was not just an individual case but a fashion trend of people living in modern society to buy beauty and to cover the darkness in their hearts with it. According to a survey done by China Daily, since the Reform and Open policy was put into practice, people have spent more and more money in purchasing all sorts of commodities expect for books. They care so mush about their appearances, their figures, and the labels on their garment that they have to kill their time and money on their internal which should be spent as mush as, even more than it on external. But unfortunately, the reality is that one can never stay pretty as much as she is twenty years old. No matter how beautiful she is, she has to grow old and lose her flawless skin and black hair. What can exist for her entire life and really matter is a kind and warm heart, which will never fade out and be admired by aftertime.

Mr.Hugo once said, “Life is a flower; love is nectar.” It is not whether the flower is beautiful but whether it can produce nectar that really matters. In much the same way of our life, it is our hearts instead of our appearances that matter. The ability to love, to cherish, and to share is the most important thing that should

be valued in our society. And if we do value these in our daily life, we will be valued. Imagine that we are facing a group of children with some rags on, who are suffering from the cold winter, but still working very hard in a small and dark class room; imagine that some businessmen grow vegetables and trade them for surger to put it into their tea for their guests to make them proud or for a lock to the door to make them feel safe when down. It is hard to believe that we will feel nothing about this. The poor has the same right to pursue happiness because everybody is gave birth to the world with the bless of God. And they work so hard to make their life easier and happier. So try to feel and try to share. Sometimes only when participating in their life, we can figure out what we really care about and decide what we want to be. No matter who we are, the poor or the rich, we should get involved. The ability to love is always there, waiting for us to get it. It is never too late to get repacked and start our journey.

Actually it is easy to tell what beauty is because the criterion lies in people ?s hearts. Everyone is just like a piece of white paper at the beginning of his life, and then he draw many different pictures with all kinds of colors or sometimes be painted by their parents, friends and even strangers. But finally what he need to do is erase all of these and review himself as a human

being. Our minds have led us to go so far in the way to future. And we need to go on.