The Count of Monte Cristo

Alexandre Dumas. The Count of Monte Cristo. Barnes & Noble Classics. 2004. 1-59308-151-0.

In 1815, Napoleon is exiled on Elbe and young Edmond Dantès is falsely accused for supporting Napoleon’s return. Imprisoned, Edmond is torn from his beloved fiancé, Mercédès, and his promising career at sea. A few stout friends appeal for his release, but to no avail. Edmond is given a life sentence.

While imprisoned, Edmond meets a fellow prisoner who provides him an advanced education and the location of a huge secret treasure buried on a small deserted island called Monte Cristo. After fourteen years in his dungeon, Edmond escapes captivity, takes possession of the fortune, and discovers the identities of those behind the false accusations that led to his incarceration.

So in 1829, the man formerly known as Edmond Dantès is reborn as the Count of Monte Cristo. His first task is to thank, anonymously, the friends who appealed for his release. After saving a family near bankrupcy, he embarks on his darker journey to take revenge on those responsible for his years in prison.

The Count arrives in Paris several years later. With a meticulous attention to detail, he becomes the center of an odd summer that sees the downfall of several prominent families. His orchestrations are both subtle and bold, assisting and defending the innocent while exposing and destroying the guilty.

The theme of revenge is not necessarily for the faint-hearted, but Dumas assuages his readers somewhat by ensuring that Edmond’s early foes never change their stripes. They are just as despicable as established gentlemen as they were when they brought disgrace to Edmond.

The biggest problem I have when reading The Count of Monte Cristo is keeping track of all the various characters and their interrelations. There are a half-dozen key families, and nearly all their members play key roles in the Count’s designs. That, and political intrigues in the Ottoman Empire as well as Europe figure into the tale. A first-time reader is definitely encouraged to have a basic grasp of nineteenth-century French history and to keep a cast of characters on hand!

Perhaps the most pitiable character is Mercédès, Edmond’s young love. She yearns for him, but, thinking him dead, eventually marries another. Sadly for her, her husband is one of the men responsible for Edmond’s captivity. At story’s end, she has lost her husband, fortune, and place in society. Was her failure to “wait and hope” really so deserving of such a fate? Dumas himself seems somewhat ambivalent about her predicament; her protestations that the Count’s cause was just ring a bit hollow in the face of her downfall. The story seems to indicate that she would have to endure a purgatory not unlike Edmond’s time in prison, with happiness to come later, but it’s easily the story’s most untidy resolution to a plotline.

Otherwise, this is a rollicking good book. It was originally pubished in serial form, so each of the 71 chapters in this slightly abridged edition has a fairly clear dramatic role. Dumas is sometimes guilty of padding a chapter here and there (to fulfill his word-count quota?), but the story largely moves at breakneck speed. The innocent are noble, the guilty easy to despise, and the Count a near-perfect agent of vengeance.

—November 28, 2005