I love your line of truth "pretty from afar, far from pretty." That is an excellent characterization of this novel. It has a lot of great parts, but the whole is less than satisfying.
For me Erik was the only fully formed character in the entire novel, but he was so extreme and annoying. He flew from "I'm going to blow up everyone and the Opera House to whoa is me, you don't love me but I will let you go." It was over the top. I keep describing the interactions between the characters that way, as overly dramatic, but maybe that was what Leroux meant to do. This story IS centered around opera and theater, and those disciplines do run towards the overblown drama.
The "anonymous" comment is mine, sorry I didn't log in or whatever. Stupid technology that I haven't mastered yet. Oh, I'm so mad. Mad I tell you! I will destroy the opera house, I'll do it if the technology won't agree to work for me. I'll ... oh, sorry, uh, never mind.
As to the people under the building, the way I understand it is that these people are the ones who work unseen to keep th opera house going.
I like your take on the theater and how this book used it to create much of the horror. We see many examples of the "trick of the light" as you put it. One of these is when we see the rat catcher in the basement. At first he is a ball of fire and things begin biting at their legs. When the trick is over we see that he is only an exterminator of sorts. Also the whole part of the Persian's narrative where they are locked in the torture room is a another example of this. As to the suspense of "eleven o'clock" setting up a ticking clock always works to create this feeling of suspense.
Overall the book was very boring to say the least. Erik was, as others have said, the only 'real' character (true), but I thought that maybe Raoul had a bit of a fire in him. Although it consisted of him hounding Christine into marriage or following her to her mother's house. But he was a persistant little bugger. In my blog I just pondered the idea of Christine creating mad men with her beauty or love that they both wanted. Her affect on them.
You make some good points. The torture chamber being one. A good device to create the tension and horror that Gaston wanted. I too liked the Persian. And I too was distracted by the narrator's way of story telling.
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For me Erik was the only fully formed character in the entire novel, but he was so extreme and annoying. He flew from "I'm going to blow up everyone and the Opera House to whoa is me, you don't love me but I will let you go." It was over the top. I keep describing the interactions between the characters that way, as overly dramatic, but maybe that was what Leroux meant to do. This story IS centered around opera and theater, and those disciplines do run towards the overblown drama.
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I like your take on the theater and how this book used it to create much of the horror. We see many examples of the "trick of the light" as you put it. One of these is when we see the rat catcher in the basement. At first he is a ball of fire and things begin biting at their legs. When the trick is over we see that he is only an exterminator of sorts. Also the whole part of the Persian's narrative where they are locked in the torture room is a another example of this. As to the suspense of "eleven o'clock" setting up a ticking clock always works to create this feeling of suspense.
Nice post.
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You make some good points. The torture chamber being one. A good device to create the tension and horror that Gaston wanted. I too liked the Persian. And I too was distracted by the narrator's way of story telling.
Nice post! Glad this book is done. :)
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