Magical Realism and The Night Circus

After continuing The Night Circus with the idea of magic as the focus and the ways that magic play a part in the roles of the characters' lives as well as the readers understanding, I believe that magical realism is the core of the novel and will be the core of my research. After a quick google search, I found that magical realism is, as rightly assumed "marvelous realism in literature, painting, and film that, while encompassing a range of subtly different concepts, share in common an acceptance of magic in the rational world." There is no doubt in my mind that this is the core of the The Night Circus and the events that take place within the Cirque des Reves. It is this relationship between the characters that are aware of the presence of magic, even if not directly responisble, such as Bailey, a young boy who befriends two of the younger performers in the circus and discovers their ability to see the past and to see the future, or Isobel, a tarrot card reader, who is not magical but still interacts with Marco on an intimate level. (Tarrot cards are a deck of cards that, when shuffled and arranged properly, they can reveal a person's future based on the cards turned over.) 

These characters know that there is something more going on than just circus acts and that plays into the magical realism of the circus. For example, one of the original memebers of the circus, Tarra, realized that the members of the circus had not become ill, had any injuries, or appeared to have aged since the circus' doors first opened. On the otherside of that are the characters that are responsible for the magic involved. Celia and Marco are using the circus as a way to test one another while also making the circus the grand event that it is. The chapters are filled with magical descriptions of characters entering into tents off the black and white outside setting, to be embraced by marvelous colors, like that of "charcoal-coated kittens and red embers". This creates another interesting phenomenon within the circus, the distinciton between the performers and the vistors, as well as this division in color and setting. 

The majority of the circus is designed to be a mixture of swirling silvers, striped whites and blacks that create this magical surreal enviornment. Then there is this opposite one that is hidden behind the white and black of sharp color. This Bright orange and burgandy is where the performers live. They also use it to disguise themselves while mingling with the crowds in between shows. When disguised in the these warm and bright colors, the performers are nearly invisible and can move through the crowd unnoticed. When Bailey returns to the circus he finds Poppet and Widget, two twins who are performing with dancing cats in contrasting snow white and midnight black outfits. When they are finished, the two put on brown overcoats with matching green scarves to compliment their firey red hair. 

The more I read, the more the competition is less of the focus. I keep noticing these subtitiles of color, interaction with the fantastical, and the impossible/magical that characters experience which seems to make the climax of this "competition' far off. For example, one of my favorite scenes was when Celia goes to visit a clock maker. When in his shop she sees a fantastic clock with curling silver orbs that match the planets laying on the table. Celia puts her hand on it and the gears within begin to realign and the springs tighten to start a faint ticking noise. All the while, the clock worker, Frederick, watchs and doesn't ask how she is able to do her tricks, saying"I prefer to remain unenlightened, to better appreciate the dark." This could be the underlying principal of magic and magical realism, that we see but do not understand and yet do not investigate for fear of ruining the emotion or crippling the effect it has on us?