Critical Analysis Of Cyrano De Bergerac

It’s the little things that count. This saying rings true for anything that comes on the path of life. From birth, to graduation, to the first paycheck, to retirement, to death… Even through all of the huge milestones passed throughout our lives, the little things count the most and we feel the most gratitude for them. This is present in Edmond Rostand’s romantic and tragic play, Cyrano de Bergerac, where the main protagonist Cyrano, develops a strong lust for his cousin, Roxane, over the course of 15 years and hides his secret love from her every week he visits her. However, after unfortunately injured from a brutal attack, Cyrano begins to physically and mentally deteriorate as he reevaluates his life decisions. As Cyrano’s condition worsens

Furthermore, he compares death to an “old acquaintance” of his and almost makes the two terms synonymous, as an acquaintance is a person who is a slightly close friend and has an unknown and mysterious connotation, which is similar to the obscurity of death. When he tells Roxane who the “acquaintance” was, Cyrano describes how they “met on the battlefield,” meaning that he came close to dying while fighting, also expressing how both death and him would meet again––indirectly stating that moment. Rostand’s purpose for this extreme contrast in ideas reveals how much Cyrano truly cared for Roxane. Hurting on the inside with the true reality of his upcoming death, but hiding it well on the outside, Cyrano still continued to accept his death and chose to use the comparison with a more lively approach, while concealing his truth and not drawing Roxane’s attention. Also, Cyrano almost uses this personification to brush off the fact that he is dying; he respects their limited time together and wants to fulfill his last moments with Roxane without any pain or arguments. Once

This message is evident when Cyrano observes the beautiful autumn leaves falling and states, “Despite their terror of rotting on the ground, they give their fall the grace of flight” (V,V). When he says “terror,” Cyrano is relating the leaves’ terror to his own, as he is afraid of dying and leaving the earth; he can personally relate to the leaves as they act as a timer that coincides with Cyrano’s death clock, once the leaves all die, so will Cyrano as well. Furthermore, using such a strong word of “rotting,” a visual image comes to mind of something lifeless, inanimate, and shriveled up on the ground, obviously associating with death. However, Cyrano finds a positive out of the dead leaves when he says that “[the leaves gave] their fall the grace of flight,” explaining that he sees not just the end point of the dead leaves and instead he saw the journey getting there––when the leaves were still falling from the top of the tree. Additionally, he uses the word “grace,” to describe the journey because it carries a light, fluffy, and peaceful connotation, expressing the contentedness of Cyrano’s life at that moment with Roxane right before he dies, or “rots” away. This idea of the journey of the live leaves and destination of the