77 pages • 2 hours read
Erin MorgensternThe Night Circus
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Part IVChapter Summaries & Analyses
Part IV Summary: Incendiary
Celia studies the book she stole from Marco in order to gain a deeper understanding of both him and his magical abilities. Through her study of his book, she hopes that she can find a way for the two of them to avoid their destined duel and be together. As she leaves Marco’s apartment after they make love, Prospero, in his ghostly state, appears before her and calls her a “deceitful little slut” (390), revealing his anger and frustration toward her. When she confronts him with questions about the purpose and nature of the duel, Prospero merely says that it is a “test of strength” (392). He tells her that she is weak and that he doubts her ability to defeat Marco.He explains that the duel will only end when one of them kills the other. Prospero also reveals to Celia that Tsukiko was the Man in Grey’s last student before Marco. Later that day, Celia confronts Tsukiko with this information. Tsukiko tells Celia that she joined the circus in order to watch her and Marco and that she feels Marco is the more talented of the two magicians. She suggests that everything Marco has done with Celia, including dedicating his love to her, is simply a “move” in the duel. Shortly afterwards, Marco arrives and confronts Celia about stealing his book. Celia tells Marco what she has learned about the nature of the duel and that they are destined to battle to the death. Marco says he will not engage in the duel if it means he might have to kill Celia. Celia, however, doubts the honesty of Marco’s assertion and asks him to leave and never return.
The story jumps ahead to 1902. Bailey searches for the circus, thinking that it might be in the midst of being transported to a different location. In a train station in Boston, Bailey locates a group of circus goers he recognizes from previous visits to the Night Circus. The circus goers explain that they expect to be notified of the new location of the circus ina few days. As Bailey waits with the circus goers—who pass the time waiting by sharing stories of previous variations of, and visits to, the Night Circus—word comes that the circus will next performin New York City. Bailey then travels with the group to New York City. One of the circus goers buys him a grey suit before they depart and another gives him a book of Herr Thiessen’s writings to study.
As Celia and Poppet travel together to New York City, Poppet expresses her concerns that the circus will soon be destroyed. She tells Celia about her visions in which Baileyis the person who will save the circus, and her fear that he will not arrive in time to save it. Celia asks Poppet to describe her visions of the future in detail to her. Poppet describes her visions of a bonfire, explaining to Celia that “you’re there. You’re with someone else and I think it’s raining, and then you’re not there anymore but you still are, I can’t explain it. And then Bailey is there, not during the fire but after it, I think” (435).
On Halloween night of 1902, Isobel visits Marco at his London apartment and apologizes to him, feeling that she is responsible for the accidents, suffering, and deaths that occurred the previous Halloween. After telling Marco that she does not hate Celia for winning Marco’s heart, she uses a magical formula to temporarily blind him and steal his briefcase.
The next night, Bailey arrives in New York City and searches the grounds of the Night Circus for Poppet. He is surprised to find the bonfire burnt out and Tsukiko waiting for him; she tells him, ominously, that “she will not be able to hold on much longer” (245).
Marco awakens from Isobel’s assault in New York City, though he had been in London shortly before. Tsukiko confronts him and tells him that she is there to provide Marco with guidance so that he can save the circus, stating that, “they think it is simple to pit any two people against each other. It is never simple. The other person becomes how you define your life, how you define yourself. They become as necessary as breathing” (452). Tsukiko suggests that Celia is suicidal and suggests a course of action that will save her life: for Marco to permanently attach himself, in a psychic state, to the circus, and allow Celia to disperse her atoms throughout the circus in order to “temper” (453) it. Doing so, Tsukiko argues, will allow Marco and Celia to exist together forever and also secure the permanent survival of the circus. As Marco attempts to bond himself with the circus by throwing himself into the now burning bonfire, Celia clutches him and joins him in the flames.The bonfire explodes and the bodies of both Marco and Celia disappear as the fire burns out.
Celia awakens and finds herself in a solid state while everything around her appears transparent. She is still at the circus and locates Marco in the Ice Garden. Upon catching sight of each other, the race into each other’s arms, kiss and say, for the first time, “I love you” (463). Celia feels herself to be under incredible strain trying to hold the circus together, especially now that the bonfire has been extinguished. Though Marco urges her to release herself and allow them to die, Celia refuses, explaining that the circus will explode without them: “it can’t be self-sufficient without us ... it needs a caretaker” (464). Bailey arrives and Marco, now transparent, greets him and gives him a tour of the circus, which is now frozen in time. Marco asks Bailey to take over the operations of the circus, which will require tremendous effort and skill. Marco explains that, if he takes over the circus, he will need to ignite the bonfire again. Together, Marco and Bailey cast a spell that will bind Bailey and the circus together. Bailey throws a number of personal and magical items into the bonfire pit—including his scarf, Marco’s magical book, a tarot card, and one of Poppet’s gloves—and wills the bonfire to reignite, which it does,saving the circus and ensuring its continued survival.
Part IV Analysis
In this part of the novel, the true purpose of the magical duel between Celia and Marco is revealed, as well as the dark—if not violent and evil—nature of the magic that exists throughout the world of the story. While the actual operations of magic are never fully explained in the story, the chaotic and dangerous nature of magic is finally detailed. Still, a number of questions concerning the nature of magic remain unanswered, such as why a regular human being, such as Bailey, is needed in order to hold the circus together.
The tragic nature of Celia and Marco’s love affair is explored in this part of the novel. While the two clearly share a great deal of affection for one another, the circumstances in which they have fallen in love, and the obstacles that prevent them from being together, lend their story a tragic dimension. In a sense, their story is similar to that of Shakespeare’s play,Romeo and Juliet. Like Romeo and Juliet—two lovers who are kept apart by outside forces beyond their control—Celia and Marco feel as if death would be preferable to living their lives apart from one another. However, unlike Romeo and Juliet, Celia and Marci are able to overcome their destiny and cheat death, by using their magical abilities to bind themselves together, and to the circus, for eternity. By joining themselves together in this manner, they not only outwit death but, moreover, the fate that Prospero and the Man in Grey set out for them. Celia and Marco’s decision to join with the circus permanently as magical spirits in order to avoid their fate highlights one of the novel’s central themes: the power of love to overcome not only fate, but even the forces of magic.
Tsukiko, who existed, in many respects, as a peripheral character for most of the novel, now comes to the forefront of the narrative. She intervenes in order to ensure the survival of the circus itself. However, Tsukiko’s reason for involving herself in the affairs of the circus, and working to prevent the duel between Celia and Marco, is never fully revealed, though it is suggested that she was once engaged in a magical duel herself as a student of the Man in Grey; the fact that she survived that duel implies that she must have been forced to kill someone she loved.
Interestingly, though Bailey does not possess magical abilities, he makes a decision somewhat similar to Celia and Marco’s: to bind himself permanently to the circus in order to ensure its survival. One of the lingering questions raised by the novel, however, is whether or not Bailey is being manipulated by outside magical forces, or whether he makes that decision of his own free will.
