Difficulties understanding...

Ok, so I have started The Hunchback (in French) some time ago now, but, though I understand the words, the notes in the French edition are not nearly as good as the ones in the Les Misérables-edition I have. So, I find myself understanding the plot and not much more...

Anyone help? (It's not for homework)

Hugo starts his book with an introduction about how he came to write this plot and comes to a word in Greek, carved into the wall of the Notre Dame Church, but now effaced by restoration:

ANÁΓΚΗ

If I understand it well, it can mean anything from fate to torture, to intimate relationship...

In that, the image of the ladder, very important in the novel according to one of the notes, also inevitably leads up, but also to a necessary end...

Esmeralda, I find interesting. Because, from the start, she is paired with fire/passion (?). Dangerous for Frollo as a priest. But what about the goat with her? Is she also linked with Satan (the goat) or is that only a weird impression of mine?

As I understand, the Notre Dame rather functions as the protagonist than the characters. At least the times in which the story plays, are the ones of the great France (which according to the notes the majestic Notre Dame would evoke. Also fallen in disrepair, it would evoke the disrepair France had fallen into... with in the back of our minds what was going to happen which Hugo wrote in Les Misérables 30 years after he Hunchback).

Can anyone give some guidance here, or at least a useful link other than sparknotes? There is a lot of crap (excuse the word) on the net, but not a lot of good stuff to find at first sight; The French version of Wikipedi unfortunately doesn't give any information at all (which is not their habit). If anyone knows of anything, it would be most welcome.