How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"It is Fate!—Alas, Claude! You are the spider. Claude, you are the fly too! You did seek science, the light, the sunshine; you only wanted to reach the open air, the broad daylight of eternal truth. But while darting toward the dazzling window, which opens into the other world, a world of brightness, intelligence, and science, blind fly, silly doctor, you did not perceive that subtle spider's web, spread by Fate between the light and you; you rushed into it, and now, with mangled head and broken wings, you struggle in the iron grip of Fate!" (VII.V.29)
Okay, hold on a second. This metaphor of the spider and the fly is an important one: it sets up our entire understanding of fate for the novel. So what exactly is Frollo saying? He's saying that he is as much a victim of fate as Esmeralda is. He's also saying that fate is an awful thing that you can't avoid. A fly about to be eaten by a spider is not a very happy image, right? But the idea of a web is also important: it has connotations of being tangled, of not being able to get out even though you really want to, of being so close to freedom and yet so far away. It also suggests that people's fates are intertwined: no one's life is separate from other people's lives, and everyone influences everyone else. Note: this is not the last time you will hear of spiders and flies in the novel.
Quote #2
"Alas! Alas! It was Fate that caught you, and threw you among the terrible gears of the machine that I had secretly constructed." (VIII.IV.57)
This passage tells us a whole lot about how Frollo sees the world. Try as he might, it still takes a little bit of luck to lure Esmeralda into his trap. All the more reason why he should see the hand of fate behind it, right? This luck seems to justify his actions, at least in his mind. But there is definitely something strange about how the characters seem to be at all the right places at the right times; it really does seem as if the events in this novel are somehow inevitable. You might even say that we're supposed to take our cue from Frollo here and see fate's hand in everything.
Quote #3
And when he strove to picture to himself the happiness that he might have found on earth if she had not been a gypsy, and if he had not been a priest, if Phœbus had not existed, and if she had loved him; when he considered that a life of serenity and affection might have been possible for him, too, even him; that, at that very moment, there were here and there on the earth happy couples lost in long conversations under orange groves, on the banks of murmuring streams, in the presence of a setting sun, or of a starry sky, and that, if God had willed it, he might have formed with her one of those blessed couples, his heart dissolved in tenderness and despair. (IX.I.7)
Whoa, there sure are a whole lot of "ifs" in this sentence. Sure, if things had turned out perfectly, then Frollo might have been happily united with Esmeralda, but the point is that way too many things would have had to be different. Really, there was no way for Frollo to get with Esmeralda. Frollo's fate seems tragic partly because he seems fated never to have found love with anyone.