The Night Circus: Difference between revisions

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[[File:nightcircus_9262.jpg|frame|[[Arc Words|The circus arrives without warning.]]]]

 

{{quote|The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.|''The Night Circus'', opening lines}}

However, something strange is going on behind the scenes. Prospero the Enchanter and Mr. Alexander H-- have a game. Trained from a young age, their students [[Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter|Celia]] and [[Hermetic Magic|Marco]] compete in a battle of imagination and will. The scene of their battle is the ''Cirque des Reves'' and the game affects the lives of the patrons and performers alike. The only catch to the game? The competitors don't know the rules, they don't know how to win or when they'll win, and they don't even know who their opponent is (at first). All they know is the intimate sense of familiarity they get from one another with each breath-taking addition to the circus that pushes the boundaries of reality.

 

 

Published in fall of 2011, the Night Circus is Erin Morgenstern's debut novel. The novel also was adapted into a web game by Failbetter Games, the creators of [[Echo Bazaar]].

 

{{tropelist}}

* [[Abusive Parents]]: Hector Bowen.

** Celia's unnamed mother is implied to be this. She called her "the devil's child" and is presumably the reason the mother committed suicide.

* [[All Part of the Show]]: Vast components of the circus that should be physically impossible are simply accepted as being extraordinary engineering, resourcefulness and showmanship.

* [[Alternate History]]

* [[An Aesop]]: Where to ''begin?!'' The book is expertly laced with them.

** {{spoiler|Stories have power ('magic' as it is stated)}} is presented at the very end, a lesson most tropers probably appreciate.

** The Challenge is inevitable. Both participants had no choice in starting it. Neither of them know the rules, and at the start, there is no discernable way to "win". Sound like [[Real Life]] to anyone else?

* [[Angsty Surviving Twin]]: {{spoiler|Lalaine Burgess, of the Burgess sisters, who are not strictly identical twins but fraternal sisters that people regard as twins}}.

* [[Awful Truth]]: {{spoiler|The Challenge ends when one competitor dies. Which sucks in itself, but is especially painful given Marco's and Celia's infatuation with one another.}}

** {{spoiler|And if Tsukiko's story means falling in love with your competitor is normal then}} this sad turn of events is tragically standard.

* [[Book Ends]]: {{spoiler|"The circus arrives without warning. . ."}}

* [[Broken Bird]]: Tsukiko.

* [[Doing It for the Art]]: Chandresh, in-universe.

** To clarify, the introduction of Chandresh is him throwing a knife at a review of one of his productions that describes it as "almost transcendent." He is [[Berserk Button|positively furious]] at the word ''almost.''

* [[Driven to Suicide]]: {{spoiler|The challenge is a contest to see which student breaks first and can only end when one of the challengers decides to end it themselves. Tsukiko's opponent in the last challenge ended it when she burned herself with her own magic.}}

** Also, Celia is first delivered to her father after her mother kills herself. {{spoiler|When Celia considers ending the challenge herself, she tells Marco that she was always more her mother's daughter.}}

* [[Earn Your Happy Ending]]

* [[A Fate Worse Than Death]]: {{spoiler|Hector's attempt at permanently dodging death results in him being trapped forever as an insubstantial ghost-thing. It's never quite explained.}}

* [[Foreshadowing]]: This exchange.

'''Hector:''' [[Tempting Fate|She'll either grow out of it or learn to control it. It's a minor issue.]] }}

* [[Fortune Teller]]: Isobel. Celia pretends to do this in her youth as a way to make money. {{spoiler|Poppet replaces Isobel at some point according to the second-person circus-description sections.}}

* [[Geas]]: Celia and Marco are bound using rings. {{spoiler|If they try to leave the field of play and mean it, they experience unendurable pain.}}

* [[Hermetic Magic|Hermetic Mage]]: Marco.

* [[Ho Yay]]: Celia notices that Chanderesh is this for Marco.

* [[Ironic Nickname|Ironic Stage Name]]: Hector Bowen is the exact opposite of his stage name's namesake, [[The Tempest|Prospero the Magician.]] Whereas Prospero was was a loving father who willingly gave up his magic at the end of his story, Hector is both physically and emotionally abusive to Celia and is consumed by his magic.

* [[Lipstick Lesbian]]: Tsukiko is implied to be one.

* [[Magitek]]: Most of the tents in the circus consist of magic charms overlaying simplistic clockwork toys.

** The trope is invoked by Mr. Barris, the engineer, working in collaboration with the Circus' two magicians to create works that should be physically impossible, but by the very flambuoyant nature of the Circus such architechtural extravagance is accepted by the general public and it goes unnoticed.

* [[Telepathy]]: Generally all the magical characters have some bizarre perception of the world that is never fully explained, but it allows them to pick up on weird things like whether someone is using an alias. Widget's in particular is very accurate and powerful.

* [[Think Twins]]: The Murray twins.

** Specifically, her father repeatedly [[Abusive Parents|slashes her fingers open]] in order to force her to learn healing magic.

** Not to mention he kills a bird right in front of her when she says she's uncomfortable trying to 'fix it'. Keep in mind Celia is maybe six years old when this happens.

* [[Unto Us a Son and Daughter Are Born]]: the twins were born on the night the circus opened.

* [[Unwitting Pawn]]: Probably everyone.

[[Category:Fantasy Literature]]

[[Category:Alternate History Literature]]