77 pages • 2 hours read
Erin MorgensternThe Night Circus
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Part VChapter Summaries & Analyses
Part V Summary: Divination
Several months after Celia, Marco, and Bailey dedicate—or surrender—their lives to the task of maintaining and protecting the circus, Poppet visits Chandresh in his home in order to persuade him to sign ownership of the circus over to her. Chandresh readily agrees, and admits that he has been unable to think of fresh ideas for the circus since it began. In return for ownership of the circus, Poppet uses her magical abilities to grant Chandresh a fresh mind through a simple kiss, which causes Chandresh to “feel better than he has in years, as though the last of the fog had been lifted from him” (492).
A year later, Widget visits with the Man in Grey. They discuss Marco and Celia’s duel and its outcome. The Man in Grey explains the ultimate purpose of the duel: to bind Celia and Marco to one another in order to ensure that they, through their combined magical abilities, would ensure the survival of the circus. As the story closes, the Man in Grey asks Widget tell him a story. Widget agrees and tells him a story that begins with: “The circus arrives without warning ...” (502), which mirrors the opening line of the novel.
Part V Analysis
In this, the closing part of the novel, the purpose and the nature of the intended magical duel is revealed: to ensure that the circus survives and maintains a magical balance, instead of descending into chaos. However, the reasons for previous magical duels fought, by proxy, by the Man in Grey and Prospero are not revealed.
Love, at the end of the novel, is shown to be a force even more powerful than magic. The love that exists between Celia and Marco is powerful enough to save them from a destiny they were doomed to by the forces of magic. Also, the love between Poppet and Bailey allows for the circus to be maintained, again suggesting the power of love to overcome the forces of magic.
Interestingly, the novel ends much as it began, with someone telling the story of the Night Circus. In having Widget recount the story of the Night Circus to the Man in Grey, the novel suggests that the story that we have just read was itself a story told by someone else about the Night Circus, perhaps even by Poppet who, of course, has the magical ability to see into the future. This point raises a number of questions as to the reliability of the narrative—after all, if the story has been told entirely by Widget, how accurately did he represent the events that transpired?—and whether the Night Circus, as both a novel and an actual circus, exists only within the realm of fiction.
