Is this REALLY a novel??

Personally, I think maybe Gaston Leroux actually did investigate the legend of the Opera Ghost inside the Opera House, and he didn't just make things up. But how come our teachers told us that this is just a classic FICTION, and nothing more. What do y'all think???

I think that it is really just a literary tool used by the author to make the novel seem more plausible. It's something very similar to what Fitzgerald did in The Great Gatsby, except Leroux used more effective techniques. Instead of inventing a narrator like the Nick Carraway in Fitzgerald's novel, he made himself part of his own story. Also, not only does he insist that the story is true, he backs it up with "evidence" from the other characters in the story, like diary entries or bits of memoirs. If The Phantom of the Opera wasn't a novel, it may very well be a historical account, but because Leroux published it as a novel, we must assume that all of the second-hand accounts and "evidence" is simply a literary technique used to make the novel seem plausible.

If you notice the author was alive when Erik was, how is he waited ttil he died to ivestigate. I am sorry but gaston has not told the complete truth in his book and I am not the only one I know who blieves this. I have a handfull of friends who have read the book or know the story and state clearly, when it comes to him and christine it is all lies and what happened to them neve happened. ther was no love loss between them. Remember in life God has a mate for everyone and he had one for Erik and it was not the murdering Christine.

I think it was real because each time I read it, I keep reading the Prolouge and Epilouge and all those people, (Like M. Faure, the examining magistrate on the whole case,) who talked to Gaston about it, and I am increasingly convinced it's real.
P.G.7.