musicals were my first love

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—The Phantom of the Opera (pg. 94)

I don’t think this was supposed to make me laugh, but it did lmao

in my honest opinion erik is a title to himself just as the phantom and the angel of music are, they r new identities for him to hide himself in!! erik even says that the name is “something he came to on accident” (not direct quote im sure) and since it’s not a French name one can assume he chose it to familiarize himself with christines Swedish nature. but even if u think erik has been this name for longer than he knew christine, which makes sense since daroga calls him by this name, he still chooses to introduce himself with this name when he begins to “court” christine and come at her as a man wanting to love her instead of an angel sent from heaven. in other words erik is who he wants christine to turn him into!! a real man!! an ordinary man who lives above ground!! no smokes and mirrors!!

“if u loved me i would be as gentle as a lamb” “if i am to be redeemed it will be because of your love!!” (again probably not direct quotes and the second one IS from the 1925 movie but i digest) all of them have a similar idea, that CHRISTine will redeem a sinner with her love and transform him from an undead corpse from hell into a holy new man!! see what I did there because christine represents a kind of Christ-like figure in her redemption and unwavering compassion to the damned and the sinful?? sorry if u read my other long post it probably feels repetitive

anyways, despite all of this talk abt how if she loved him he would be good, he is unable to really hold himself to this standard until the very end. him referring to himself in the third person shows this struggle to BECOME erik, to really encapsulate the gentle ORDINARY husband, he is unable to be erik in the way he wants to, at the end of the day even erik himself knows that his character of ordinary, husband erik is just that - a character