Yuffie's Book Reviews

Phantom of the Opera - by Gaston Leroux

I have mixed feelings about Gaston Leroux's Phantom of the Opera, and there were some great moments and great plot overall, but the underlying messages were just . . . wrong.

Allow me to start from the beginning.

So this book is about this opera house in Paris haunted by the "Opera Ghost". The opera house comes under new management of two men who think the whole opera ghost thing is just a practical joke, so they don't humor the ghost's demands (money and his own private viewing box in the theater). So the ghost retaliates and drops a chandelier on the crowd in the middle of a show, killing someone and injurying a lot more.

The other part of this story is about the opera singer, Christine Daae, who at first thinks the Opera Ghost is really the Angel of Music because he can sing really well and secretly gives her singing lessons. But then she sees him for the first time and ... spoilers.

All this was actually pretty interesting. I was intrigued by the Opera Ghost and piecing together who--and what--he really was. So the mystery behind him and all the little teases he gave of his "ghostliness" were pretty interesting and kept me turning pages.

The story went to sh*t when Christine's childhood friend, Raoul de Chagny, a viscount, coems to visit. He watched her show and fell madly in love with her. Like, REALLY MADLY. Some of the stuff he does in the name of love is just psychotic. He stalks her around the opera house and back to her dressing room, eavesdrops on her, and then goes inside her dressing room when she leaves and looks around.

And then he breaks into her room and snoops around AGAIN. And then when he tells Christine this, she accepts it as perfectly normal and then proclaims HER undying love for him.

..... I'm going to drain a lake and throw ALL the wet fish at these characters.

Raoul is a lovesick IDIOT. He's always crying and running around screaming and wailing and yelling and just being really petty and jealous and idiotic. I . . . I don't even know what else to say about him. I can't even with how awful of a person he is and how that's romanticized (or at least, it's not frowned upon in the story and seen as awful behavior).

Christine is just as bad. She manipulates Raoul, saying stuff like "if you love me, you'll *do something she wants him to do*". Not just once, but multiple times. And she does it with the Opera Ghost, too. *shakes head and walks away*

Then she and Raoul get "pretend" engaged. She knows she can't marry him because he's a viscount and she's just a lowly opera singer, so she just pretends to become engaged with him and they literally play pretend engagement for a week. The book actually used the word "pretend", I'm not joking.

I just want to reach into the book and shake these characters and yell: "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?" Christine needs a sassy gay friend (search youtube: Sassy Gay Friend) right about now.

Luckily the creepy and unhealthy romance stuff only lasted about the middle 1/3 of the book. The last 100 or so pages, the plot and mystery really picked up. The opera ghost kidnapped Christine, and Raoul and some random Persian guy go on an adventure through the opera house to find and rescue Christine, and they debunk a lot of the opera ghost's "ghostiness" for mere illusionary parlor tricks. That was actually pretty fun to read, and I really was excited to find out what would happen when they found the opera ghost (whose name is Erik).

Unfortunately, expectations shattered at the end (spoilers ahead for the ending, if you want to look away). Erik is just this guy who was born incredibly ugly. He fell in love with Christine, and she's not really afraid of him more than she pities him and his ugliness. But Erik found out she loves Raoul, so he kidnapped her and gave her an ultimatum: Marry him (Erik), or he'll blow up the entire opera house with everyone inside it, including himself and Christine.

Holy crap, Erik went from being an interesting character, who could've given us some enlightenment on physical appearance not being everything, to that misogynistic bastard who went on a shooting spree because a girl rejected him.

This could've been an AWESOME and terrifying villain if not for the portrayal of this idea right here: At the end of the book, he became a martyr. A freaking martyr. You're basically telling me right now that he just kidnapped a girl, threatened her to marry him or else he'll kill her, but he still deserves pity because he let her go at the end and was UGLY. The fact that he was ugly got a huge emphasis and felt like the main reason he was forgiven at the end.

The message of this story, as I interpreted it, was basically: It's completely justified to kidnap someone and force them to marry you at the threat of death and destruction if you're ugly and had a hard past. Yeah, he let her go at the end, but it was because she was sobbing uncontrollably and some of her tears fell on him and he was so happy to cry along with her, his "wife", that he showed mercy and released her. Yeah, he got points for letting her go, but the reason behind it was still so f*cked up and mysoginistic, as if she's just his property and he's doing her a huge favor by not forcing her to marry him and not killing off all her friend and her lover.

He didn't have some kind of moral epiphany that what he'd done was wrong, and he didn't try to repent for it later. He just kind of ... wasted away and died. The book ends with the air of pity and sympathy toward Erik, which felt so . . . wrong.

This whole message could've worked out beautifully if not for the tone of the narrative during the ending scenes. It made it feel like Erik's despicable actions were justified because he was ugly, and he deserved sympathy because he was ugly and no one loved him. Yeah, that deserves sympathy, but you can't wave off all his murders and psychological and physical torture just because the guy's ugly and lonely.

It wasn't like he saw the error of his ways, rather, he saw himself as doing Christine a favor by letting her go. He let her go because she let him kiss her on the forehead, and that made him truly happy. So not only are we supposed to overlook all his crimes just because he's ugly, but it's also okay now because HE'S finally happy, and that is an awful message in my opinion. You could argue that he released Christine for her happiness, but there was still that thread of motive that he only let her go because HE was finally happy and satisfied, and that's really.... creepy.

Then again, my interpretation might be completely off, so I'd love to hear your interpretations of the story, too.

Overall, it was definitely a unique book with an interesting thread of mystery and horror pulling us along. The romance in the middle made me want to bash my head against the wall, but I suppose that was just the culture of the time, too. The climax action was pretty awesome, so the book definitely gets points for that. I can't comment on the writing because this was just an English translation, but there was definitely a bit of a chronological jumping problem as the narration kept backtracking and then going forward and back again, so it was a bit confusing to figure out what events were happening simultaneously and what had happened in the past.

3/5 stars