Quick Essay about The Phantom of the Opera (404 words)

Okay this is a quick essay I wrote for English. I had to write how Gaston Leroux made the Phantom a likeable character. I had a bit of an issue writing on this and I know you can tell but the main thing I am worried about is the grammar and my tense usage. I have an issue with switching tenses. So if you could grammar check this and make sure I stayed in the same tense that would be great!

"To be great is to be misunderstood." - Ralph Waldo Emerson. In The Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux portrays the phantom as a very likeable character. Gaston illustrates this by playing up Raoul as a rather childish and immature character, showing the Phantom's vulnerability to attract sympathy, and finally in the end, showed his selflessness by allowing Raoul and Christine to be together.
In the book throughout various scenes you can count on seeing Raoul crying. Many times over rather juvenile topics. “She had passed without answering his cry....And he was thinking of dying; and he was twenty years old!” (88). Beyond his juvenile drama his reasons for loving Christine were rather superficial. He did not come back into Christine’s life until she was a big opera star. They had been friends when they were younger but no where during those many years had he even attempted to contact her.
All of his life the phantom has been ridiculed because of the distortion of his face. “My mother, daroga, my poor, unhappy mother would never... let me kiss her...she used to run away...and throw me my mask!” (253). Not even his parents were loving to him. Instead of cherishing their child they attempted to hide him and runaway from him at every chance they got. The first kiss, the first sign of affection he ever received was right before his death. This was when Christine allowed him to kiss her.
In the end of the book the Phantom is completely overcome with love. But he realizes that he loves Christine so much that he has to let her go to Raoul He is big enough and understanding enough to know even though he loves her so, she loves another man. “...I was only a poor dog, ready to die for her...but that she could marry the young man when she pleased...” (254). He allowed the only love and only compassion he had ever received in his life to drift out.
Throughout the book the Phantom was played off as a likeable character for three reasons: Raoul acting immature, Leroux playing up the Phantom’s vulnerability, and in the end he shows the phantom is actually a good person by his selfless act of letting Christine and Raoul be together. Not only does it show him as a good character it is also showing that no matter what your past is you can always triumph.