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Analysis Of Cyrano De Bergerac By Raymond Rostand

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People should like other people the same way they like a fridge, they like what's in the inside. Edmond Rostand’s play Cyrano de Bergerac is about a swashbuckling poet and musician, who unfortunately has a very large nose. Due to his large nose, he doubts himself and prevents himself from believing he has a chance with his beautiful distant cousin, Roxanne. Roxanne however, loves a man she thinks isn't a fool for his outer beauty named Christian. Rostand masterfully shows the flaws of society that perturbed him. The biggest one is obviously the fact that society focuses more on outer beauty than inner beauty. This societal flaw is shown in Roxanne, Christian and Cyrano’s actions. First, Roxanne shows this flaw the most out of all of the main …show more content…

In the first act, he is talking to Ligniere about how much he loves Roxanne just from seeing her but he also says, “How can I talk to a woman in that style? I have no wit. This fine manner of speaking and of writing nowadays, not for me!” (Rostand 9). Christian admits that he isn’t the most eloquent talker, he isn’t a poet and he really isn’t the ideal chivalric hero. He embodies the part of the chivalric hero that is supposed to be handsome but he lacks the other part that Cyrano embodies. He further establishes this when he first meets Cyrano, “But with any woman, paralyzed, speechless, dumb. I can only look at them. Yet sometimes, when I go away, their eyes…” (Rostand 84). He is implying that whenever he is in a room with women, they all stare at his beauty. He again establishes that he knows he isn’t witty but his beauty attracts women to him. Later, he decides to be brave and talk to Roxanne without Cyrano’s help. After telling her that he loved her a couple of times she says, “I ask for cream you give me milk and water” (Rostand 102). She wants something more poetic but he can’t give it to her. By loving him for his beauty and not his personality and wit, she ends up marrying someone who can barely even talk to her. Because of the lie created by Cyrano, Roxane marries someone she only knows superficially and she never got the chance to truly meet him and know who he …show more content…

When he tells his friend Le Bret who he loves he says, “Whom should I love? Why, of course, it must be the woman in the world most beautiful” (Rostand 40). He does also love her for her wit and personality which he says right after, but he doesn’t describe her as the smartest woman in the world. He even says that she would never love him due to his nose, “My old friend, look at me, and tell me how much hope remains for me with this protuberance! (Rostand 41). He is so skilled with his sword he can take on 100 men by himself, he is so smart he can create a poem about a fight he’s fighting in as it occurs and can come up with many insults in varying forms about his own nose. Even though he is almost like a living legend, he believes himself incapable of being loved by Roxanne because of such a small and unimportant feature in the grand scheme of life. When Cyrano is almost dead and Roxanne realizes he was the one that wrote all the letters she says, “I never loved but one man in my life, and I have lost him twice…”(Rostand 193). She finally realized that she never loved Christian, she loved Cyrano regardless of his large nose. With the inclusion of this line right before Cyrano’s death and the end of the play, Rostand shows that society always goes for the attractive people and doesn’t realize what they could of had until it's too late.

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