58 pages • 1 hour read
Gaston LerouxA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The Persian and Raoul overhear Erik and Christine in a room next to the torture chamber. Christine must decide whether she will marry Erik, as it is his dream to live amongst others with a wife. He has made a mask so lifelike that it would be possible, if only Christine will accept him. If she doesn't, he will kill everyone in the Opera at eleven o’clock the next day.
Erik leaves at the sound of a bell, and Raoul impulsively calls out to Christine. Christine can’t help them unlock the adjoining door because Erik has tied her up. When Erik returns, he declares the "siren" claimed another victim. Christine entreats Erik to untie her, playing on his love for her. As Erik sings a requiem for the dead man, Christine tries to steal the bag of keys.
Furious, Erik snatches the bag of keys back from Christine. She claims she is only curious about the torture chamber, but Erik sees through her trick. He illuminates the torture chamber and forces Christine to look through the viewing window. She lies that there is no one inside, but Erik still refuses to turn off the lights. With the lights on, the mirrors reflect an iron tree into an illusion of a forest.
Erik distracts Christine with his ventriloquist skills which he used to embarrass Carlotta and scare people in Box Five. He throws his voice into the torture chamber, knowing Raoul and the Persian are inside. The chamber soon grows hot, and Raoul cannot stop himself from crying out in fear. Erik drags Christine away, leaving Raoul and the Persian in the disorienting room.
The Persian, prepared for the forest illusion of the torture chamber, sets about looking for the door into Erik's house. In the meantime, Raoul slowly descends into madness, believing he has truly been flung into a tropical forest. The Persian systematically feels each mirror panel, searching for the spring to trigger the door. Finding nothing, he too succumbs to the heat and optical illusion, fearing they must traverse the forest to find Christine.
The lights dim to imitate night, and the men believe they now must fend off wild animals. They hear the roar of a lion, which is really Erik playing more tricks on them. Raoul shoots into the "trees" at the lion, breaking a mirror. The illusions of the torture chamber change, showing both an endless desert and an oasis in the distance. The men hear rain and remember their thirst. They try to reach the oasis, but they burn their tongues as they lick at the mirrors.
The Persian tries to remember his rationality and cries out to Erik, with no response. The illusions change back to reveal the iron tree, and both Raoul and the Persian contemplate death by suicide to end the torture. The Persian suddenly sees a nail on the floor that triggers a trap door. The men go through the door and down a staircase into a cellar full of barrels. They break into a barrel in search of water or wine, but they feel only gun powder, realizing Erik means to blow up the Opera.
The Persian and Raoul return to the torture chamber, hoping the eleven o'clock deadline hasn’t passed. Christine's voice reappears behind the wall, and she yells that Erik gave her keys to help make her decision. The keys open two small caskets, each containing a small bronze figure: one of a scorpion and one of a grasshopper. Christine must turn the scorpion if she will marry Erik or turn the grasshopper if she refuses. The grasshopper will send a spark to ignite the barrels and destroy the Opera house. Raoul wants Christine to turn the scorpion, but the Persian fears Erik is tricking her again.
Erik returns and forces Christine to make her decision. She finally chooses to turn the scorpion, and Raoul and the Persian hear a rush of water submerging the barrels below. They go down to quench their thirst, but the water follows them into the torture chamber. They yell at Erik to stop the water but get no response. The water quickly fills the room and the men swim and swirl about. They soon lose consciousness from the exertion and lack of air.
The Persian's memoir ends, and the narrator continues the tale using the Persian's oral account. The Persian awoke in Erik's home, being tended to by a silent Christine. Raoul was sleeping under the influence of a sedative. Erik mixes the Persian a similar draught, and the man wakes again in his own home. He tries to tell the police his story—as Raoul and Christine are missing and Philippe has been found dead—but they write him off as a madman.
One day, Erik visits the Persian in a state of illness, revealing all that happened to Christine and Raoul who are both alive and well. Christine saved the Persian and Raoul's life by promising to stay alive as Erik's wife. Christine allowed Erik to kiss her forehead, and he was so overcome with gratitude and love that he fell to the ground weeping. Not even his mother would let him kiss her, so Christine made him immensely happy. Christine cries with Erik and kisses him back.
Realizing his folly, Erik releases Christine from their engagement so she can marry Raoul. He gives her the gold ring she lost, hoping she will return it when he dies. Raoul and Christine then left for the North. Erik, dying of love, asks the Persian to place a notice in the papers when he dies so Christine can return to bury him. A few weeks later, Erik dies.
The narrator concludes his tale by recounting his personal investigation that verified the claims of the story. In the Opera, he finds a hollow column in Box Five, from which Erik threw his voice to scare the various occupants. In the managers' office, the narrator finds a small trap door near the desk, where Erik stole the envelopes from Richard's pocket. Erik eventually returned the money, no longer having any interest in the human world. Christine and Raoul fled to the north, where they live happily with Mamma Valérius.
The narrator also learned about Erik's troubled history. Erik ran away from home as a boy and joined a traveling circus troupe, learning how to perform magic, illusions, and ventriloquism, and being presented as the “living corpse” (260). His reputation caught the attention of many important leaders. The Shah-in-Shah of Persia sent the Persian—chief of police—to collect Erik. He helped the Shah assassinate rivals and designed a new palace full of hidden passages. The Shah ordered Erik's execution, as he knew too many state secrets, but the Persian helped Erik escape.
Erik traveled further into Asia where the Sultan and sultana of India employed him to design and construct similar buildings of horrors. Eventually fleeing to France, Erik determined to live normally as a contractor. When he began working in the Opera, his imagination ran wild, and he built a secret house in the cellars for himself. After such a life, the narrator entreats the reader to pity Erik, who would have been "one of the most distinguished of mankind" (262) if not for his appearance. The narrator saw Erik's skeleton in the cellars with Christine’s ring returned to his finger.
The final chapters elaborate on Erik's dream to have a wife and life an ordinary life "like everybody else" (217). Throughout his life, Erik was shunned for his different appearance, and so he missed out on regular life. For Erik, marrying Christine and going about life in Paris with his new hyper-realistic mask will allow him to be normal for once in his life. Erik shows that he doesn’t want to have to rely on illusions or deceptions anymore—other than the mask—when he curses having to live “like a mountebank, in a house with a false bottom" (226) and a torture chamber. Erik knows he doesn’t “express [him]self like other people” (226), but he is “tired” of always playing tricks. This outburst illustrates how Erik wants to change and become honest, and how he thinks Christine's love can help him achieve this transition.
The climactic point of the narrative occurs in these final chapters, which is the confrontation between Erik, Christine, Raoul, and the Persian. Erik forces Christine to decide whether she will marry him and give up her life with Raoul or whether she will refuse him and blow up the Opera House with everyone inside. Christine feels she will die either way, so she “[tries] to kill [her]self by striking [her] forehead against the walls” (220) to nullify Erik’s ultimatum. Erik uses symbolic insects on the dials Christine must turn to either accept or reject him. The confusion of these symbols makes the Persian believe Erik is playing one final trick, delaying Christine's decision, and causing panic. The scorpion represents death and destruction, but here, it is the insect Christine must turn to avoid the explosion. The grasshopper represents luck and abundance, but here, it is the insect Christine must turn to cause the explosion. The fear of choosing the wrong dial increases the tension of the situation, and Christine must ultimately trust that Erik is telling the truth. After the extended period that the men spend in the torture chamber, Christine’s final decision occurs over the course of seven minutes. The overlapping sounds of the Persian “crying out in concert with Christine” (243) and Raoul’s open praying amplifies the sensory stress of the situation.
A major setting in these chapters is Erik’s torture chamber. The room plays with the mind and all the senses. The room is a hexagon of mirrors with an iron tree in one corner, and “thanks to the mirrors, the real room was multiplied by six hexagonal rooms, each of which, in its turn, was multiplied indefinitely” (229). Combined with the electric heat that radiates through the walls and the blinding lights, the occupant thinks they are in “an African forest” (228). Erik designed the room to disorient his victim so thoroughly that, in madness, they hang themselves from the tree without Erik being personally involved. The Persian claims Erik was the first to turn the innocent "palace of illusions" (229) into a torture chamber while in Mazenderan. This setting also reflects the evil side of Erik's character, like many other structures throughout the text.
Raoul and the Persian's collective descent into madness illustrates the sheer power of the torture chamber's illusion. Raoul has a fragile and easily agitated mind, so his madness is swift and thorough. He instantly believes he has been transported into a forest, and that he had been “walking in that forest for three days and nights, without stopping, looking for Christine for days” (233)—though he never left the small room. Raoul shoots at the mirror at the false lion sound, but even the broken mirror cannot break his insanity. The Persian's madness is slower, as he knows the mechanics of the chamber and busies himself by trying to find the door out. When this task proves fruitless, however, he too succumbs to the illusion. The narrative style reflects the Persian's madness, which also disorients the reader:
We were quite lost in the forest, without an outlet, a compass, a guide or anything. Oh, I knew what awaited us if nobody came to our aid…or if I did not find the spring! But, look as I might, I found nothing but branches, beautiful branches that stood straight up before me, or spread gracefully over my head. (233)
The Persian's back-and-forth between believing in the illusion and remembering the reality of the situation creates confusion around whether the Persian and Raoul really have been transported to an underground forest. The men find the spring to a trap door in the nick of time, just as they begin to contemplate death by suicide as the torture chamber intended.
The narrative concludes in quick succession from Christine's decision to marry Erik. Christine's promise to stay alive as Erik's wife completely overwhelms him, and her willingness to let him kiss her forehead catalyzes a complete change in Erik's desires. For the happiness she gives him, Erik releases Christine to Raoul and soon after, dies from his love for Christine. The small gesture from Christine—a simple forehead kiss—having this much power over Erik shows just how much kindness and compassion was missing from his life. Erik reveals that even his mother “would never…let [him] kiss her” (251), so he has been without affection of any kind since his childhood.
In the Epilogue, the narrator further reveals Erik's tragic backstory of cruelty and rejection that made him into the murderous monster he became. The various political leaders he worked for rewarded his cruel tricks, but when he "knew too much" (262), they ordered to have him killed—showing their friendship was conditional and temporary. Erik tried to live ordinarily, but his internalized self-image of being monster made him believe he deserved a house underground “where he could hide from men’s eyes for all time” (262). The narrator concludes that Erik should be pitied because his genius and talents were twisted towards cruelty because no one could look past his deformities. Like the Persian, the narrator forgives Erik for his wicked actions, hoping the audience can as well.
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