The Count of Monte Cristo REVIEW
The theme of Alexander Dumas’ epic novel seems to be stated in the following quote from the novel.
“There’s a providence that watches over the deserving.” -M. Morell (Ch 1)
The converse is also true that God does not forget the deeds of the unjust either. Since this is so, the proper attitude to have toward any injustice inflicted on you according to Dumas is to “wait and hope” but if you can find a cave full of gold, then maybe you should regard yourself as an well-funded, divinely appointed, avenging angel.
We begin the story with a young man beginning his adulthood with a peerless love and promising prospects. Dumas describes Edmond Dantes and his fiancé as “two lovers calm and joyous as if they were the very elect of heaven.” Yeah. That’s a sweet spot to be in in life. Edmond has just been appointed captain of a ship and Mercedes is as radiant a sweetheart as literature can describe. And here, jealousy conspires with unfortunate coincidence to put a dagger in the heart of their dreams. There is another aspirant who wants Dantes’ captaincy and another young man who wants Mercedes. They conspire to frame Edmond for a crime and, as the fates would have it, the person inspecting the evidence has personal cause to send Edmond to a God-forsaken cell in an isolated island prison. When it first begins to dawn on Dantes that he was betrayed, he hints to his prison - brother from a nearby cell, the Abbe Faria, that he would prefer not to know who it was of his acquaintances that did it, knowing that the knowledge would introduce an unquenchable hatred in him.
And it does.
His life, Dantes will later conclude after 14 years of solitary confinement, has a singular meaning henceforward: Justice. And God, he believes, has forged him into the very sword of His retribution by granting Dantes a fortune in hidden treasure after his escape. Imagine how long vengeance would burn if someone stole the love of your life, ended your career, and put you in in a dungeon for something you did not do. Imagine that your fiancé’ marries the bastard that betrayed you (she not knowing what he had done) and then your father dies of starvation as a result. Imagine the three people most responsible for your demise all go on to advance in their careers and fortunes. Imagine you then had a fortune and a conviction that it was to be used to exact revenge.
And thus it is that the Count of Monte Cristo, as he now calls himself, sets out to inflict retribution on those responsible for his undeserved imprisonment. In his sights are the man who executed the plot and then married his beloved (Fernand Mondego), the man who came up with the scheme as a means of advancing himself to Edmond’s position (Danglars), the man who falsely condemned him in order to protect his own career (Rene de Villefort), the man who knew and said nothing (Gaspard Cadarousse), and possibly Mercedes herself if he comes to conclude that she was complicit.
It is impossible to read The Count of Monte Cristo without feeling for Dantes’ real and lacerating suffering – physical, emotional, and spiritual. The loss of his freedom, his purpose, his love, his reputation, his father, his dignity, and his faith in God bleeds out of every word of Dumas’ description of it.
“Oh, you do not know what is seventeen months in prison!—seventeen ages rather, especially to a man who, like me, had arrived at the summit of his ambition—to a man, who, like me, was on the point of marrying a woman he adored, who saw an honorable career opened before him, and who loses all in an instant—who sees his prospects destroyed, and is ignorant of the fate of his affianced wife, and whether his aged father be still living! Seventeen months captivity to a sailor accustomed to the boundless ocean, is a worse punishment than human crime ever merited. “
In “this horrible place contained fifty cells,” we are told of the Chateau D’if, “inhabitants were designated by the numbers of their cell, and the unhappy young man was no longer called Edmond Dantes—he was now number 34.”
Dehumanized.
Dante prays for justice from his cell. A high cold star on a winter evening is what he receives in reply. The heavens are slate to him for 14 years.
“Yet in spite of his earnest prayers, Dantes remained a prisoner.”
“Rage supplanted religious fervor. Dantes uttered blasphemies that made his jailer recoil with horror, dashed himself furiously against the walls of his prison, wreaked his anger upon everything, and chiefly upon himself, so that the least thing,—a grain of sand, a straw, or a breath of air that annoyed him, led to paroxysms of fury.”
“He told himself that it was the enmity of man, and not the vengeance of heaven, that had thus plunged him into the deepest misery. He consigned his unknown persecutors to the most horrible tortures he could imagine, and found them all insufficient, because after torture came death, and after death, if not repose, at least the boon of unconsciousness.”
When he finally escapes and acquires the Abbe Faria’s vast treasure trove, he returns as justice incarnate. Methodically, he begins with Caderousse – seeking out information to confirm his suspicions before putting his plans for vengeance into action.
“You will have the goodness to furnish me with the address of both Fernand and Danglars, in order that I may execute Edmond’s last wishes,” he says to Caderousse, pretending to be a priest in search of Edmond’s friends so as to give them a financial gift. Caderousse tells Dantes of the way that Edmond was betrayed by these same friends and suggests that their enrichment over the past two decades is evidence that there is no just God in the universe.
“You are mistaken, my friend,” replies the Abbe [Edmond Dantes in disguise];
“God may seem sometimes to forget for a time, while his justice reposes, but there always comes a moment when he remembers—and behold—a proof!”
Methodically and strategically and secretly, the Count of Monte Cristo inserts himself into the lives of his intended victims. His objectives do not involve some quick recompence. He intends to slaughter their lives piecemeal and make them suffer. Their businesses, their reputations, their finances, their families, are all objects of his murderous but calculating anger. And any mercy he might feel is “suppressed and killed” (as Henry V puts it in Shakespeare’s play by that name) by his eventual meeting with Mercedes who is every bit the lovliest woman imaginable.
“Then,” said Mercedes, “I will lead the way.” Turning towards Monte Cristo, she added, “count, will you oblige me with your arm?” The count almost staggered at these simple words; then he fixed his eyes on Mercedes. It was only a momentary glance, but it seemed to the countess to have lasted for a century, so much was expressed in that one look.”
Dantes does his best to conceal his true identity from her but she sees through his artifices.
“In France eternal friendships are as rare as the custom of dividing bread and salt with one another” he says,
“But,” said the countess, breathlessly, with her eyes fixed on Monte Cristo, whose arm she convulsively pressed with both hands, “we are friends, are we not?”
The count became pale as death, the blood rushed to his heart, and then again rising, dyed his cheeks with crimson; his eyes swam like those of a man suddenly dazzled. “Certainly, we are friends,” he replied; “why should we not be?” The answer was so little like the one Mercedes desired, that she turned away to give vent to a sigh, which sounded more like a groan.”
“Thank you,” she said. And they walked on again. They went the whole length of the garden without uttering a word. “Sir,” suddenly exclaimed the countess, after their walk had continued ten minutes in silence, “is it true that you have seen so much, travelled so far, and suffered so deeply?”
“I have suffered deeply, madame,” answered Monte Cristo.
“But now you are happy?”
“Doubtless,” replied the count, “since no one hears me complain.”
“And your present happiness, has it softened your heart?”
“My present happiness equals my past misery,” said the count.“
““You have no sister—no son—no father?”
“I have no one.”
“How can you exist thus without any one to attach you to life?”
“It is not my fault, madame. At Malta, I loved a young girl, was on the point of marrying her, when war came and carried me away. I thought she loved me well enough to wait for me, and even to remain faithful to my memory. When I returned she was married. This is the history of most men who have passed twenty years of age. Perhaps my heart was weaker than the hearts of most men, and I suffered more than they would have done in my place; that is all.” The countess stopped for a moment, as if gasping for breath. “Yes,” she said, “and you have still preserved this love in your heart—one can only love once—and did you ever see her again?”
“. . . And have you forgiven her for all she has made you suffer?”
“Her,—yes.”
“But only her; do you then still hate those who separated you?”
“I hate them? Not at all; why should I?”
He is not honest with her about just how angry he is. Not even close. “Hate them?” Of course not.
Just because he intends to grind them all into fishbait doesn’t mean that he hates them, right?
Some chapters later, the Count of Monte Cristo has lured Mercedes and Fernand’s son Albert into challenging him to a duel. "What shall I do with Albert?” the count tells his confidante.
“As certainly, Maximilian, as I now press your hand, I shall kill him before ten o'clock to-morrow morning." Morrel, in his turn, took Monte Cristo's hand in both of his, and he shuddered to feel how cold and steady it was.
"Ah, Count," said he, "his father loves him so much!"
"Do not speak to me of that," said Monte Cristo, with the first movement of anger he had betrayed; "I will make him suffer."
And this is where the story gets most interesting. The Count begins to realize that his anger is an untrustworthy guide to delivering divine justice though it be an excellent motivator. He begins to realize that an attempt to inflict appropriate suffering on Fernand and Danglars and Caterousee leads to the inflicting of inappropriate suffering on their innocent and sometimes noble children. In his human ignorance and human frailty, he is unable to make the retribution clean, no matter how hard he tries it is impossible to sterilize vengeance. Justice for Fernand would lead to undeserved death for Albert and undeserved suffering for Mercedes who had no part in the plot and still loves him.
Meeting out justice without inflicting injustice is simply beyond human ability. It may be beyond God’s ability one might suggest.
The Count of Monte Cristo begins to doubt himself and his mission. And what then? For it has been the purpose of his life since his escape. When Mercedes confronts Dantes with the suffering he is inflicting, the Count responds with an expression of his deep and abiding hatred for Fernand.
"Madame, you are mistaken, they are not misfortunes, -- it is a punishment. It is not I who strike M. de Morcerf; it is providence which punishes him."
"And why do you represent providence?" cried Mercedes. "Why do you remember when it forgets?”
That is the million-dollar question. Why do we remember the wrongs done to us when Providence seems to have forgotten?
Maybe it is because we believe that Providence has forgotten?
“The French did not avenge themselves on the traitor,” Dantes says of Fernand.
“The Spaniards did not shoot the traitor, Ali in his tomb left the traitor unpunished; but I, betrayed, sacrificed, buried, have risen from my tomb, by the grace of God, to punish that man. He sends me for that purpose, and here I am."
The poor woman's head and arms fell; her legs bent under her, and she fell on her knees. "Forgive, Edmond, forgive for my sake, who love you still!"
Is it possible to forgive someone not for the sake of the person who does not deserve it, but because of the mercy of someone else who we love who asks for that forgiveness?
That is the second million-dollar question. “Mercedes, I must revenge myself,” he replies.
“’For I suffered fourteen years, -- fourteen years I wept, I cursed; now I tell you, Mercedes, I must revenge myself.’ The count, fearing to yield to the entreaties of her he had so ardently loved, called his sufferings to the assistance of his hatred. ‘Revenge yourself, then, Edmond,’ cried the poor mother; ‘but let your vengeance fall on the culprits, -- on him, on me, but not on my son!’"
"It is written in the good book," says Monte Cristo,
"that the sins of the fathers shall fall upon their children to the third and fourth generation. Since God himself dictated those words to his prophet, why should I seek to make myself better than God?"
’Have you known what it is to have your father starve to death in your absence?’ cried Monte Cristo, thrusting his hands into his hair; ‘have you seen the woman you loved giving her hand to your rival, while you were perishing at the bottom of a dungeon?’
‘No,’ interrupted Mercedes, ‘but I have seen him whom I loved on the point of murdering my son.’ Mercedes uttered these words with such deep anguish, with an accent of such intense despair, that Monte Cristo could not restrain a sob. The lion was daunted; the avenger was conquered. ‘What do you ask of me?’ said he, -- ‘your son's life? Well, he shall live!’ Mercedes uttered a cry which made the tears start from Monte Cristo's eyes; but these tears disappeared almost instantaneously, for, doubtless, God had sent some angel to collect them -- far more precious were they in his eyes than the richest pearls of Guzerat and Ophir.”
It is a powerful moment. Dantes calls off the dogs of his own vengeance. His reward is the gratitude of Mercedes.
“Oh, I repeat it, Edmond; what you have just done is beautiful -- it is grand; it is sublime."
Is that reward enough to compensate him for the loss of his desired retribution?
That is the third million-dollar question.
Dantes goes on to confront those who had so wounded him. But he takes no more revenge on them. He simply confronts them with the searing truth of what they did and makes them feel the gravity of their crimes. He still believes himself to be chosen by God for this work. But he is less sure that he knows just what the punishments should be.
“I was but an agent, led on by an invisible and offended Deity,” he says to Mercedes,
“who chose not to withhold the fatal blow that I was destined to hurl. I take that God to witness, at whose feet I have prostrated myself daily for the last ten years, that I would have sacrificed my life to you, and with my life the projects that were indissolubly linked with it. But—and I say it with some pride, Mercedes—God needed me, and I lived. Examine the past and the present, and endeavor to dive into futurity, and then say whether I am not a divine instrument.”
It is difficult to know if there is greater joy to be found in being merciful than in getting revenge. I cannot say that I have much experience with the later. It seems to me that Alexander Dumas book is about trying to find a difficult balance between the two.
I cannot say that I have found it. Or maybe even seriously looked.
Question for Comment: How do you determine when to demand restitution of revenge and when not to when you yourself are wounded by someone.
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