I bumped this novel forward on my reading list due to the praise and recommendation of friends— and also because the fiction I’ve been reading lately hasn’t merited a blog post. I say in my “About Me” section that this site is for fondly looking back on good fiction, and I’ve had a bit of a dry spell as far as good fiction lately.
This is a classic I never read in school, and also my first work by Dumas as well. I won’t say I was apprehensive about this being a translation, but I was definitely curious as to how it might affect my read and enjoyment. I was 85% of the way through when I realized there are annotated translations which I would recommend to anybody picking up “The Count of Monte Cristo”. That is unless you’re pretty familiar with France— I found myself Googling most of the Proper Nouns in Paris and even doing a few refreshers in European History for context.
Being my first work by Dumas, I went ahead and did a bit of research on him as well. Without exaggeration, Alexandre Dumas seems like a storybook character himself. Look him up!
In the chapters prior to his arrest, Edmond Dantes is the paragon of good and a Boy Scout through and through. All the antagonist characters are a bunch of haters. Danglars is jealous of Edmond’s promotion, Caderousse is petty in his debt to Edmond’s father, and Fernand is a dweeb jilted by Edmond’s fiancé Mercedes. Their common trait is their avarice towards Edmond and his recent fortune earned with honest hard work.
The fact that the antagonists are so terrible really inspires sympathy for Edmond in the reader. I felt personally betrayed by the trio, as well as Villefort the prosecutor.
“For the happy man prayer is only a jumble of words, until the day when sorrow comes to explain to him the sublime language by means of which he speaks to God.”
Alexandre Dumas, “The Count of Monte Cristo”
While imprisoned within the Château d’If, I really enjoyed the tutelage from Abbe Faria. This sequence may at first seem like a trope, but it never feels cliche or tired. This entire act was nice and comfy and really made me care more for Edmond, Faria, and their hopeful ambitions. Departing from tropes — and to my great surprise — Edmond acquires “the treasure” without any protracted melodrama. Nice. I realized that the MacGuffin wasn’t gold, it was vengeance, and Dumas had me hook, line, and sinker.
While technically the following may be a spoiler, I don’t think it’s going to spoil anything for a single reader: Edmond gets out of jail. If he didn’t, then 90% of this novel would have to be the raving madness of a man trapped in the bowels of a dungeon on an island. But don’t worry, M. Night Shyamalan wasn’t born until 126 years after The Count of Monte Cristo was published. Edmond gets out.
“‘And now,’ said the young man on the yacht, ‘farewell to kindness, humanity, and gratitude. Farewell to all sentiments that gladden the heart. I have submitted myself for Providence in rewarding the good; may the God of Vengeance now yield me His place to punish the wicked!”
Alexandre Dumas, “The Count of Monte Cristo”
And when he gets out, the name “Edmond” is gone, only to return at the crux of several enormously satisfying climaxes. He is now “The Count of Monte Cristo”. He is now “Sinbad the Sailor”. He is now “Abbe Busoni”.
“He leaned over the dying man and whispered in his ear, ‘I am—‘ And his lips uttered a name so softly that he himself seemed to be afraid to hear it.”
Alexandre Dumas, “The Count of Monte Cristo”
While spinning many threads, Dumas breaks away from “over the shoulder” third person limited narration to begin utilizing an omniscient narrator, e.g. in chapter XXXIX beginning with “Let us leave the banker…” He does it a few other times, and surprisingly I liked it. Throughout the entire book, I actually felt like it was written as a drama intended for live theater.
There’s a middle stretch that gets a little “soap opera’ish”. The worst I can say about it though is that it required several refreshers on minor character’s identities. It was all very worth it. (If you get an annotated copy, this won’t be an issue.)
About halfway through the book, I thought to myself “Gee, Dumas really uses poison a whole bunch—OHHH… So we’re going to get all symbolic with this, eh?” I had never heard of the poison “brucine” before, but I went ahead and gave it a Google. Non-coincidentally, Brucine appears to have been discovered and researched during the exact timeframe of “The Count of Monte Cristo”. Furthermore, this research taught me the term “Mithridatism”, which is the concept of slowly dosing oneself in an effort to develop an immunity to a poison. While I didn’t know the name for this practice, I, along with most of you, was familiar with this concept along with other bits of wisdom like “Never get involved in a land war in Asia”—and only slightly less well-known: “Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line”. ”My name is Inigo Monto-Edmond Dantes. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
The intentional and heavy-handed recurring use of poison made me pause and appreciate it as more than just a weapon or plot device. With the recurring Christian themes and references throughout the book, a glaring problem presents itself. Dantes believes himself to be the executor of Divine Providence through his vengeance, but the Apostle Paul’s epistle to the Romans clearly forbids Christians from taking revenge. The Count of Monte Cristo carries “poison” with him everywhere he goes, both literally and symbolically. Literally, he always has brucine on his person, and figuratively his desire for vengeance has poisoned him to the point of transforming him into several totally different people to carry out his vengeance.
With the physical poison brucine, we can draw a clear parallel to modern drugs by noting the systemic use, abuse, and inevitable dependence. The brucine is used as a remedy for multiple maladies, abused and used as a weapon, and dependence is exhibited at the end of the story when the Count’s first instinct is that he can undo the death of an innocent— having been so used to his mastery of fate through the poison.
The concept of physical Mithridatism is repeated in the novel, and I believe it would be silly to neglect to note it’s symbolic occurrence as well. Each dose of vengeance stokes the fervor in the Count of Monte Cristo, and he becomes bolder and bolder with his vengeance.
It’s hard to avoid spoilers, but the aforementioned problem with the poison of vengeance and Edmond’s belief in Divine Providence gets sorted out. Rest assured, that by the end of the book, neither poison plagues Edmond, Maximillien, or Valentine any longer.
“The Count of Monte Cristo” is a 10/10, and I recommend it to anyone looking for a classic, an adventure, or a tale of redemption.
“Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes.”
Alexandre Dumas, “The Count of Monte Cristo”
