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Comparison of the Characters Cyrano and Christian in Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand

Decent Essays

From the play Cyrano de Bergerac, two of the main characters are at odds fighting to win the heart of the same girl. Cyrano and Christian play as competing romantic heroes in their story, both hopeless dreamers of love and lust, both bold in their own aspects as well as incredibly insecure all at once. They also share the quality of great loyalty, and willingness to drop anything to come to the rescue of a friend. Physically, they are opposites; Christian is beautiful, and Cyrano thinks himself an atrocity. Their intellectual capabilities are also at completely different ends of the spectrum; Christian is a bumbling fool, and Cyrano can become a master at whatever task he chooses. In the aspect of poetry and the art of words, Cyrano is a true Shakespeare, and Christian is the equivalent of a second grader at best. These characters seem to be foils and, at the same time, they are wildly alike. One characteristic that they most obviously share is their quality of being complete and hopeless romantics. “Her smile sees pearled perfection. She can knit grace from a twine of air. The heavens sit in every gesture. Of divinities she’s most divine” (Rostand 29). Cyrano is describing Roxane, the woman with whom he is in love, as if she is an angel, a goddess, some sort of immortal perfection. He describes her to his friend, placing her on the highest pedestal, and worrying that he may not be good enough for her. Earlier, he explains that he kicked Montfleury off the stage not only

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