Critical Analysis of "Cyrano de Bergerac"
Critical Analysis of "Cyrano de Bergerac"
In the play Cyrano de Bergerac, by Edmond Rostand, the conflict is Man vs. himself, Cyrano vs. his internal conflicts. Cyrano de Bergerac, a poet, a swordsman, a philosopher, a musician, and a member of the Cadets of Gascoyne, is deeply in love with his beautiful cousin, Roxane. Despite all of Cyrano’s skills and brilliance, he has an unusually large nose that he finds too grotesque to risk confronting Roxane with his feelings. Cyrano later discovers that Roxane is in love with Christian, a young handsome nobleman who lacks intelligence and poetic skills. Cyrano decides to help Christian write letters in the form of poetry to win Roxane’s love, which also allows himself an opportunity to secretly express his love for Roxane in hopes that Roxane would fall in love with his soul, but Christian was later fatally shot in a war against Spain and this ended his letter writings. Before Christian died, he realized that Cyrano was in love with Roxane and wanted him to confess to Roxane about the letters, which would force her to choose her love, but since Christian died, Cyrano lost the chance to do so. Fifteen years later, Cyrano’s enemies ambushed him during a visit to see Roxane, which caused Cyrano a desire to recite his last letter he wrote as Christian to Roxane. He reads it aloud by heart and Roxane learns that Cyrano was the one who wrote the letters and that it is him that she is in love with, but later Cyrano died due to the fatal blow from his enemies. Cyrano died with the knowledge of Roxane loving him, so this solved his internal conflict.
The main theme of Cyrano de Bergerac, by Edmond Rostand is that nothing is really fair when it comes to love and war.
In the beginning of this play, Cyrano, a man with many skills and wonders, falls in love with his cousin, Roxane. Cyrano has an unusually large and grotesque nose, which prevents him from revealing his love for Roxane. Later, Cyrano decided to reveal his feelings for Roxane when he thought that Roxane had feelings for him too, but he found out that she had feelings for Christian, a handsome young nobleman. Roxane’s love for Christian was based on his great appearance, the one thing that Cyrano did not possess. This type of love was not fair...