Erik

History

In the original novel, few details are given regarding Erik's past, although there is no shortage of hints and implications throughout the book. Erik himself laments the fact that his mother was horrified by his appearance and that his father, a master mason, never saw him. It is also revealed that "Erik" was not, in fact, his birth name, but one that was given or found "by accident", as Erik himself says in the novel. In the novel, Leroux sometimes calls him "the man's voice;" Erik also refers to himself as "The Opera Ghost", "The Angel of Music" and attends a masquerade as The Red Death.Most of Erik's history is revealed by a mysterious figure, known through most of the novel as The Persian or the daroga, who had been a local police chief in Persia and who followed Erik to Paris; some of the rest is discussed in the novel's epilogue.Erik is born in a small town outside of Rouen, France. Born hideously deformed, he is a "subject of horror" for his family and as a result, he runs away as a young boy and falls in with a band of Gypsies, making his living as an attraction in freak shows, where he is known as "le morte vivant" ("the living dead"). During his time with the tribe, Erik becomes a great illusionist, magician and ventriloquist. His reputation for these skills and his unearthly singing voice spreads quickly, and one day a fur trader mentions him to the Shah of Persia. The Shah orders the Persian to fetch Erik and bring him to the palace.The Shah-in-Shah commissions Erik, who proves himself a gifted architect, to construct an elaborate palace. The edifice is designed with so many trap doors and secret rooms that not even the slightest whisper could be considered private. The design itself carries sound to a myriad of hidden locations, so that one never knew who might be listening. At some point under the Shah's employment, Erik is also a political assassin, using a unique noose referred to as the Punjab Lasso.The Persian dwells on the vague horrors that existed at Mazenderan rather than going in depth into the actual circumstances involved. The Shah, pleased with Erik's work and determined that no one else should have such a palace, orders Erik blinded. Thinking that Erik could still make another palace even without his eyesight, the Shah orders Erik's execution. It is only by the intervention of the daroga (the Persian) that Erik escapes.Erik then goes to Constantinople and is employed by its ruler, helping build certain edifices in the Yildiz-Kiosk, among other things. However, he has to leave the city for the same reason he left Mazenderan: he knows too much. He also seems to have traveled to Southeast Asia, since he claims to have learned to breathe underwater using a hollow reed from the "Tonkin pirates".By this time Erik is tired of his nomadic life and wants to "live like everybody else". For a time he works as a contractor, building "ordinary houses with ordinary bricks". He eventually bids on a contract to help with the construction of the Palais Garnier, commonly known as the Paris Opera House.During the construction he is able to make a sort of playground for himself within the Opera House, creating trapdoors and secret passageways throughout every inch of the theatre. He even builds himself a house in the cellars of the Opera where he could live far from man's cruelty. In his isolation, Erik spends twenty years composing a piece entitled Don Juan Triumphant. In one chapter after he takes Christine to his lair, she asks him to play her a piece from his masterwork. He refuses and says, "I will play you Mozart, if you like, which will only make you weep; but my Don Juan, Christine, burns." Eventually, after she has wrenched off his mask and seen his deformed face, he begins to play it. Christine says that at first it seemed to be "one great awful sob," but then became alert to its nuances and power. Upon its completion, he originally plans to go to his bed (which is a coffin) and "never wake up," but by the final chapters of the novel, Erik expresses his wish to marry Christine and live a comfortable bourgeois life after his work has been completed. He has stored a massive supply of gunpowder under the Opera, and, should she refuse his offer, plans to detonate it. When she acquiesces to his desires in order to save herself, her lover Raoul and the denizens of the Opera, we find out that his part of the bargain was to take the Persian and Raoul above ground. He does so with the Persian, but Raoul was "a hostage" and was "locked up comfortably, properly chained" in the dungeon under the opera. When he returns, he finds Christine waiting for him, like "a real living fiancee" and he swore she tilts her forehead toward him, and he kisses it. Then he says he is happy that he fell at her feet, crying, and she cries with him, calling him "poor, unhappy Erik" and taking his hand. At this point, he is "just a poor dog ready to die for her" and he returns to her the ring she had lost and said that she was free to go and marry Raoul. Erik frees Raoul and he and Christine leave. But before they do, Erik makes Christine promise that when he dies she will come back and bury him. Then she kisses Erik's forehead. Erik dies soon after, but not before he goes to visit the Persian and tells him everything, and promises to send him Erik's dearest possessions: the papers that Christine wrote about everything that had happened with her "Angel of Music" and some things that had belonged to her. Christine keeps her promise and returns to the Opera to bury Erik and place the plain gold band he had given her on his finger. Leroux claims that a skeleton bearing such a ring was later unearthed in the Opera cellars.

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Fatal Flaw

Naive and Meek

While no one wanted to take care of Erik as a child, he was left to seek shelter in the first building that was warm, an Opera house. He knew he couldn't be seen, so he stayed behind the rafters. Because he was staying alone in the shadows left him without much experience. The most he knew was what he say in the operas performed. Rarely did people speak to him. He gave into others who were around him, to let them control his actions. He submitted to their whim in order to gain acceptance.

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Occupation

Opera House "Phantom"

He protects the Opera House from people who wish to do harm to it or burn it down. It was a restoration project by a girl and her father. Since this girl fed her and talked to him by accepting him. When they disappeared, he continued and slowly tried to repair the Opera house to repay her kindness. He doesn't have a big job and most people don't know he exists. He doesn't have money so he moves slowly on the project.

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Connections

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Biography

Erik was turned away by the family that was supposed to take care of him at just an infant. Discarded and left to die, Erik was abandoned in a dumpster inside a bag. Some kind woman found him and took him under her wing. He was able to grow as a relatively happy child up until she was killed in a tragic car accident. Her house was repossessed leaving him homeless in the winter time.He traveled around in search of warmth as a young child and eventually found shelter within an abandoned and broken down Opera House. He stole blankets and food in order to survive.One day his world was turned upside down when two strangers came into the building claiming they bought it and were going to restore it. He tried to stay hidden but he was caught sneaking into the back one morning by the daughter. She left him some food day in and day out. Eventually he came closer to her. He eventually came to talk to her but in little spurts as a time.Christine tried to show her father about the boy who lived in the Opera House, but he feared that if he was seen he'd be sent away. He had lived here long enough to know all the hiding spots and stay out of view from anyone coming in. He would watch her from a distance and make sure she was safe even after he showed it was unsafe. She was someone who needed to be protected.Then one day, they stopped coming. Food stopped. Christine had given him a purpose and then she was gone. It was heartbreaking but for some reason, when he could find the supplies, he'd fix up things within the Opera house. As he grew the less and less he ventured out in the world because of his looks and lack of agility. It was going to be easier to catch him and be punished for stealing.He knew his time had come, knowing and waiting for the time he would pass away. He just wished he'd be able to see her one last time before he left the world.

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