So far Phantom of the Opera is good
in my opinion. I sort of remember the basic plot from when I read it a few
years ago, but I forgot the details.
I definitely forgot how often the Phantom
is described before he actually physically appears to interact with any of the
main characters in the book, and I also forgot how he is described. Like when the ballet girl Jammes points out
the Phantom’s face and the narrator says that she points to “a face so pallid,
so lugubrious and so ugly, with two such deep black cavities under the
straddling eyebrows” (27). I’ve always wondered why his eyes are described like
that, since later on, if I’m not mistaken, he’s said to have no visible eyes.
Why do you think his eyes are unrecognizable?
As for Christine’s interactions with the
Phantom, when she’s talking with him in her dressing room, I don’t think she
loves him at all, though I know there are people who think otherwise. When he
asks her if she loves him, she clearly avoids giving a direct answer, instead
saying “How can you talk like that?” (24).
My other question about the Phantom
himself is, when the ghost appears at the dinner table with the managers and
their guests, they recall the late Joseph Buquet’s description and notice that
“according to the storu, the ghost had no nose and the person in question [at
the table] had” (29). Do you think the stories don’t match up because, like the
narrator suggests a few sentences later, he might have a fake nose, or are
there so many stories about the ghost no one knows when they’re actually seeing
him?
