The Phantom of the Opera

“‘Oh, tonight I gave you my soul and I am dead!’ Christine replied. ‘Your soul is a beautiful thing, child,’ replied the grave man's voice, ‘and I thank you. No emperor ever received so fair a gift. The angels wept tonight.’”

Raoul overhears Christine speaking to a mysterious man in her dressing room, and her declarations cause him to become jealous. Erik, the Opera Ghost, appears only as a voice to Christine because he is afraid that she will reject him for his monstrous appearance. This passage displays the power dynamic between Christine and Erik, as Erik gave Christine her miraculous voice in exchange for her soul.

“they had hesitated until the last moment to tell us this curious story, which our skeptical minds were certainly not prepared to entertain. But the announcement of the death of Joseph Buquet had served them as a brutal reminder that, whenever they had disregarded the ghost's wishes, some fantastic or disastrous event had brought them to a sense of their dependence.”

This passage is from the fictional Memoirs of a Manager, in the perspective of the skeptical manager Moncharmin. The managers Poligny and Debienne share that the real reason for their retirement is their constant fear of the ghost’s retaliation for things he doesn’t like. The quotation illustrates the ghost’s power over the managers, as he uses threats of violence to receive his demands.

“But their great treat was, in the twilight, in the great silence of the evening after the sun had set in the sea, when Daaé came and sat down by them on the roadside and, in a low voice, as though fearing lest he should frighten the ghosts whom he evoked, told them legends of the land of the North.”

Christine and Raoul shared a childhood summer together at Perros-Guirec, where the two spent their time listening to Christine’s father’s Swedish folktales. Legends and folktales are a recurring motif that help background the extensive superstitious beliefs in the story. Christine’s upbringing on fantastical legends makes her more inclined to believe Erik really is the heavenly Angel of Music.

“‘I understand,’ he said, ‘that no human being can sing as you sang the other evening without the intervention of some miracle. No professor on earth can teach you such accents as those. You have heard the Angel of Music, Christine.’ ‘Yes,’ she said solemnly, ‘In my dressing-room. That is where he comes to give me my lessons daily.’”

Raoul speaks in metaphors about the Angel of Music visiting Christine to explain her miraculous voice, but Christine is perfectly serious and literal. Christine believes wholeheartedly that the Angel has been giving her daily private lessons, and that the Angel was sent by her father. Christine is willing to listen to the Angel’s—Erik’s—demands because she doesn’t want to lose the link to her deceased father.

“A few rays of light, a wan, sinister light that seemed to have been stolen from an expiring luminary, fell through some opening or other upon an old tower that raised its pasteboard battlements on the stage; everything, in this deceptive light, adopted a fantastic shape.”

This quotation demonstrates the Gothic setting of the story in the Paris Opera House. The story’s scenes often take place in low light, enhancing the sinister feeling of the surroundings—like this scene where Moncharmin and Richard go to investigate the ghost in Box Five. As illustrated here, the low light creates optical illusions with shadows, allowing ghostly ‘apparitions’ to blend in easily and frighten the characters.

“He found them both looking extremely worried. Their own friends did not recognize them: they had lost all their gaiety and spirits. They were seen crossing the stage with hanging heads, care-worn brows, pale cheeks, as though pursued by some abominable thought or prey to some persistent sport of fate.”

After Moncharmin and Richard both see a different shadowy figure in Box Five, they become noticeably agitated around the Opera. The men find it harder to believe the rumors of a ghost are a practical joke. A key theme of the story is obsession and frenzy, and from this point on, the managers become obsessed with uncovering the truth about the ghost.

“Oh, he forbids her...without forbidding her. It's like this: he tells her that, if she got married, she would never hear him again. That's all!...And that he would go away for ever!...So, you understand, she can't let the Angel of Music go. It's quite natural.”

Mamma Valérius tells Raoul why Christine can’t marry him even though she has said she likes him. Erik, pretending to be the Angel of Music, uses Christine’s superstitions against her to force her obedience through threats. Mamma Valérius, also a believer, demonstrates the superstitious state of mind that finds strange events “quite natural” in the context of the fantastical.

“Thus did Raoul's thoughts fly from one extreme to the other. He no longer knew whether to pity Christine or to curse her; and he pitied and cursed her turn and turn about. At all events, he bought a white domino.”

Raoul receives a letter from Christine after her disappearance asking him to meet her at the masked ball. Raoul still doesn’t know whether Christine is deliberately lying about having a lover or if she is being manipulated, and the confusion causes his emotions to flip between extremes of love and hate. One of Raoul’s central traits is his emotional immaturity, and this quotation displays how easily his feelings can change.

“Why, he, the man who hides behind that hideous mask of death!...The evil genius of the churchyard at Perros!...Red Death!...In a word, madam, your friend ...your Angel of Music!... But I shall snatch off his mask, as I shall snatch off my own; and, this time, we shall look each other in the face, he and I, with no veil and no lies between us; and I shall know whom you love and who loves you!”

Raoul confronts Christine about her connection to the Angel of Music, who he knows is a man in a mask. The mask—a key symbol in the text—allows Erik to conceal his identity and move about the Opera in secret. By removing the mask and looking at the Angel’s face, Raoul believes he will uncover the truth of Christine’s affair and strange behavior.

“Whence came that strange sound, that distant rhythm?...A faint singing seemed to issue from the walls...yes, it was as though the walls themselves were singing!...The song became plainer...the words were now distinguishable...he heard a voice, a very beautiful, very soft, very captivating voice […] The voice came nearer and nearer...it came through the wall...it approached...and now the voice was in the room, in front of Christine."

Raoul overhears the disembodied voice of the Angel of Music in Christine’s dressing room after the masked ball. This voice is one of Erik’s various illusions that allow him to perpetuate rumors about his superhuman abilities. He is a talented ventriloquist projecting his voice through hidden passages in the walls.

“if I do not go, he will come and fetch me with his voice. And he will drag me with him, underground, and go on his knees before me, with his death's head. And he will tell me that he loves me! And he will cry! Oh, those tears, Raoul, those tears in the two black eye-sockets of the death's head! I cannot see those tears flow again!”

Christine fears that if she doesn’t return to Erik willingly, he will force her back underground to his home himself. Erik lives in a house that he secretly built under the Opera where he brought Christine during her first disappearance. This quotation demonstrates the power Erik’s voice has over Christine and the fear his ghastly appearance instills in her.

“‘Oh, I hate him!’ cried Raoul. ‘And you, Christine, tell me, do you hate him too?’ ‘No,’ said Christine simply. ‘No, of course not...Why, you love him! Your fear, your terror, all of that is just love and love of the most exquisite kind, the kind which people do not admit even to themselves,’ said Raoul bitterly.”

After Christine recounts part of her story of abduction, she surprises Raoul by claiming she doesn’t hate Erik for his actions. Christine has conflicting feelings about Erik that confuse her throughout the book: She is at once terrified of him and his awful abilities, while at the same time, she pities him for his desire to be loved. Raoul believes that Christine would openly love Erik instead of him if Erik was handsome, which makes him jealous.

“As long as you thought me handsome, you could have come back, I know you would have come back...but, now that you know my hideousness, you would run away for good...So I shall keep you here!”

In a moment of opportunity, Christine takes Erik’s mask off to reveal the corpse-like face beneath. Erik’s mask is a crucial component of his performance as the Angel of Music, as it allows Christine to imagine his appearance and love him for the music that he gave to her. Now that Christine knows the truth, Erik knows she will never want to return to such a hideous man, so he decides to use force to keep her with him.

“Richard tore off his coat. The two managers turned the pocket inside out. The pocket was empty. And the curious thing was that the pin remained, stuck in the same place. Richard and Moncharmin turned pale. There was no longer any doubt about the witchcraft. ‘The ghost!’ muttered Moncharmin.”

Moncharmin and Richard hatch a fool-proof plan to prevent the ghost from stealing the envelope of money: They lock themselves in the managers’ office alone and safety-pin the envelope to Richard’s coat pocket. Their obsession with the ghost has made them act strangely to execute this plan, causing onlookers to think they’ve gone mad. Erik’s use of a secret trap door to steal the money causes the managers to finally believe in his existence and helps perpetuate the rumor of his omnipotent powers.

“they were soon compelled to accept the fact that M. Raoul de Chagny had completely lost his head. All that story about Perros-Guirec, death’s heads and enchanted violins, could only have taken birth in the disordered brain of a youth mad with love.”

Mifroid, the commissary of police, listens to Raoul’s story with a skeptical mind. Although the reader knows Raoul’s fantastical story is true, the policeman thinks he has gone insane from his obsessive love for Christine. Characters like Mifroid who symbolize unwavering rationality and who are dismissive of all imaginative stories are painted as somewhat foolish by the text, as the text believes in and promotes the veracity of Raoul’s fantastical tale.

“Why, the counterbalance that lifts the whole of this wall on to its pivot. You surely don't expect it to move of itself, by enchantment! If you watch, you will see the mirror first rise an inch or two and then shift an inch or two from left to right. It will then be on a pivot and will swing around.”

The Persian shows Raoul how the mirror in Christine’s dressing room rotates to reveal a secret corridor. This mechanism allowed Christine to disappear before Raoul’s eyes the night of the masked ball. To Raoul’s untrained eye, the illusion would have looked like magic, but for the Persian—who knows Erik well—the trick is simple engineering, demonstrating Erik’s mastery in creating illusions.

“Hand at the level of your eye, as though you were fighting a duel and waiting for the word to fire!...Oh, leave your pistol in your pocket. Quick, come along, downstairs. Level of your eye! Question of life or death!"

In the cellars, the Persian tells Raoul how to move around while protecting himself with his arm. In his earlier years, Erik had a talent for strangling victims unsuspectingly with a ‘Punjab lasso’ so the Persian wants to protect their necks from a similar attack. This chapter begins the rapid movement towards the climax of the plot in Erik’s torture chamber.

“Like the Persian, I can give no further explanation touching the apparition of this shade. Whereas, in this historic narrative, everything else will be normally explained, however abnormal the course of events may seem, I cannot give the reader expressly to understand what the Persian meant by the words, ‘It is someone much worse than that!’”

In the cellars, a cloaked shade passes by the Persian and Raoul, frightening the men deeply. This quotation comes from a footnote in this chapter, explaining that the mysterious figure is the only phenomenon not explainable by the text. The footnote at reasserts the text’s purpose as a “historical narrative” in its words and in its structure, as footnotes are more typical of nonfiction texts.

“He satisfied my curiosity, for Erik, who is a real monster—I have seen him at work in Persia, alas—is also, in certain respects, a regular child, vain and self-conceited, and there is nothing he loves so much, after astonishing people, as to prove all the really miraculous ingenuity of his mind.”

The Persian has a history with Erik before his life in the Opera. Their relationship allows the Persian to divulge more details about Erik’s personality that he doesn’t show to either Christine or Raoul. The reader discovers that Erik enjoys playing tricks because, like a child, they amuse him. As Erik and Raoul are foil characters, this description draws a parallel between the men who both have underdeveloped emotional responses.

“His horrible, unparalleled and repulsive ugliness put him without the pale of humanity; and it often seemed to me that, for this reason, he no longer believed that he had any duty toward the human race.”

Because of his physical abnormalities, people consider Erik to be a monster. As Erik grew up surrounded by these assumptions and names, he came to believe this identity was true about himself. Erik’s manufactured distance from the “human race” explains why he feels little to no remorse for the tricks he plays and the harm he causes.

“From being the most honest building conceivable, he soon turned it into a house of the very devil, where you could not utter a word but it was overheard or repeated by an echo. With his trap-doors the monster was responsible for endless tragedies of all kinds.”

Throughout the text, Erik is connected to various pieces of architecture which he designs himself. These buildings—like the palace in Persia referenced here—act as an extension of Erik, as a physical manifestation of the “devilish” side of his character. As Erik loves illusions and being hidden, the buildings he designs reflect his desire to move about in mysterious and secret ways.

“I can't go on living like this, like a mole in a burrow! Don Juan Triumphant is finished; and now I want to live like everybody else. I want to have a wife like everybody else and to take her out on Sundays. I have invented a mask that makes me look like anybody. People will not even turn round in the streets.”

Erik reveals that his desires are much deeper than just having Christine love him. What he truly wants is to live like other ordinary people in the light of Paris rather than in the cellars of the Opera. This revelation turns Erik into a tragic character rather than a purely monstrous one, as the explanation for his behavior stems from a simple desire to be seen as a person.

“Of love...daroga...I am dying...of love....That is how it is...loved her so!...And I love her still...daroga...and I am dying of love for her, I...I tell you!...If you knew how beautiful she was...when she let me kiss her...alive....It was the first...time, daroga, the first...time I ever kissed a woman."

After the Persian escapes Erik’s torture chamber, Erik visits him at his home to tell him that he let Christine and Raoul go free. The kiss he gives to Christine provides him with so much happiness that he has no more desire to hold her in their forced engagement. Christine’s simple forehead kiss is the first kiss Erik ever gave in his whole life, further emphasizing the tragedy of his character.