Cyrano de Bergerac Essay

In Edmond Rostand’s tragic play Cyrano de Bergerac, Cyrano, the hero of our tale,

grandiose in presence, quick in wit but tragically unattractive, is in love with the beautiful,

intellectual, and the center of our central conflict, Roxane. She, herself has fallen for the

traditionally handsome, daft, but chivalrous nonetheless, Christian, who, without knowing the

true intention and feelings behind Cyrano’s words, woos Roxane with Cyrano’s poetic prowess,

all the while, Roxane unbeknownst of their arrangement, falls for the persona of Christian,

Cyrano’s soul. Throughout Cyrano de Bergerac Rostand claims that love causes oblivion and

love draws out our deepest insecurities.

Love can cause one to protect the illusion they have created around the person that holds

their affections, ignoring the other aspects of the situation that may affect their perception of that

person. In the midst of speaking with Cyrano in Act I, Roxane lists some of Christian’s

endearing qualities despite the fact that she has never met or interacted with him save it be the

soul penetrating eye contact they sustained at the theatre. Roxane has already created the man

she would continue to see in Christian even as the red flags that could’ve tipped one off that

Christian is not as he seems, continue to arise. When Roxane speaks to De Guiche about

Christian and the cadets, De Guiche and Roxane play table tennis with Christian’s qualities, De

Guiche calls Christian a fool but with Roxane’s warped view of who she wishes Christian to be,

she assumes that this intellect and poetry that he writes to her is a part of himself only she can

see, she assumes he only appears so. The balcony scene might perhaps be the pinnacle of her

oblivion, not only had she ignored the fact that Christian lacks the basic sentence structure and

his poetic inhibition, to have been the same one who had written the letter she based her

affections on, but she also overlooks the fact, even she acknowledges, that from the instances
that Cyrano had fed the words to Christian, to the point in time where Cyrano takes the

proverbial wheel and begins to speak in his own voice which of course as there was no other

alternative, his own words, Roxane attributes to this alternate register to Christian. Roxane

interprets the voice she hears as a tone for which belongs to her and symbolizes his feelings for

her, this in the fact that moments before Christian had become a fool, in direct opposition of the

man she had created, she pivots allowing this somewhat suspicious inconsistency to go unnoticed

in order for him to align with who she wanted him to be. This is a blatant disregard for the fact

that it is her own cousin’s voice that she is hearing, in fact Roxane says it best in Act V, “[She]

might have known, every time that [she] heard [Cyrano] speak [her] name!” (220). The moments

of pure emotion Roxane feels, or rather that she assures herself she feels for Christian blind her

the fact of the matter, that this figure she conjures is truly her filling in the blanks between what

is Cyrano and what is Christian, in the hopes that she would attain what she thinks love should

be and what Cyrano gave her.

In love, in the process of falling for each aspect of another person, one begins to fixate on

their own self doubt. Cyrano beginning with his admission of admiration for Roxane to Le Bret,

reveals that although his prowess may suggest otherwise, his ego is sensitive concerning those

parts of himself that present themselves as a contrast to the perfection of Roxane. When others

make it a point to speak on Cyrano’s nose, Cyrano makes it a point to show that he is unphased

by such low-grade comments and through duel or verbal drag down, expresses his indifference

but when he speaks of Roxane’s beauty it is then Cyrano’s soft spot is revealed. When Christian

tries to reason with Cyrano that Roxane loves the soul of the man and no longer equates the

value of this with the value of beauty, Cyrano is hard of hearing, he cannot accept that his looks

are a thing to be overcome. The hesitancy in his belief, feeding into the idea that he is unable to
overcome his own appearance diffidence. Cyrano’s inability to accept his own reflection carries

into his dying breaths, in the midst of his declaration of the silent relationship that he has with

Roxane. Cyrano placing himself as the Beast in the tale of Beauty and the Beast and Roxane as

his unattainable Beauty, he says that “[This] is not [their] story…[the Beast’s] ugliness changed

and dissolved, like magic… but you see [he] is still the same,” (224). Cyrano expresses that their

love would not remove the roadblock Cyrano believes keeps them apart, his ‘ugliness.’

Conversely, Christian faces a similar inhibition, for what he has in looks, he lacks in poetic

expression. In Act I as Christian asks Ligniere about Roxane, he describes this insecurity, as a

man who is not known for his wit compared to the likes of the aesthete, Roxane. Christian’s

slow-witted nature compared to Roxane’s refinery and the intellect he knew she valued, created a

sense of inadequacy within himself. Christian expresses this same sentiment to Cyrano, he says

that “[He is] a fool! Stupid enough to hang [himself]...with any woman--paralyzed, speechless,

dumb.” Christian’s inability to rhapsodize and produce eloquence as he knows Roxane is one to

want out of a romantic entanglement, affirms this fear within himself that he cannot be loved

because he has no more to offer a woman than a pretty face. Christian had known himself to be

lacking in a part of himself he saw in Roxane, just as Cyrano had, each knowing there were parts

of themselves that hadn’t measured up to the pedestal of perfection that they each place her on.

Cyrano de Bergerac, through the love triangle between Cyrano, Christian, and Roxane,

states that love causes us to become so inraptured in our feelings that one becomes enveloped in

a romantic stupor filled with oblivion and love elicits a state where one becomes hung up on

what they believe to be their own shortcomings. The emotions and inadequacies made

transparent in the relationships and longing between these characters create a realistic depiction
of the tragedy love has shown itself to be within our society. The human fault within each of us

creates, sustains, and when we are lucky, disaffirms the hopelessness of those faults.