"The Count of Monte Cristo": Finding Love In A Hopeless Place
You barge in on me on the day of my wedding?
[First Published: March 4, 2022]
There are many books everyone encourages you to read. The same is true for film. While you will find most of these works in summer reading assignments, college courses, or among the first books chosen by your book club, they persist in popular culture because of two things—message and characters. Relatable characters, irrespective of time, partnered with a resonant message to readers are those elements you will find in nearly every book in such a category of essential reads. While I take a fair amount of pride in my list of completed classics, Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo fell through the cracks until last week. It was unintentional, but several of you messaged me to read it and write a review. To those people, thank you.
The Count of Monte Cristo was completed in 1844. Dumas, also known for works such as The Three Musketeers, writes a lengthy yet immensely easy-to-read novel. The page count for my edition is just over 600 pages. As I read through the book, I could not help but notice Dumas's deliberate writing style. At times, it felt as though I had read an entire novel’s worth of subject matter in a period of fewer than 50 pages. Sentences felt as powerful as entire chapters while never feeling overwhelming. The Count of Monte Cristo is a story with unique characters and a compelling story. You will be unable to put it down.
The book begins with the return of the Pharaon, which is a cargo ship. As the ship comes to port, 19-year-old Edmond Dantès, the first mate, quickly goes ashore to be with his father and bride-to-be. His father loves him; his fiance adores him; his fellow sailors respect him. All seems perfect. Yet, all that glitters is not gold because success stirs up jealousy. Mercedes, Dantès fiance, has a not-so-secret admirer (also her cousin), Fernand, who wishes to marry her and not Dantès. Also, the Pharaon's treasurer Danglars wants captain's promotion the first mate seems a shoo-in to receive. Upon the beloved sailor’s return, things seem to be going well. In fact, at his betrothal feast, Dantès says something must happen because everything is going too well for him.
Be careful what you wish for, eh? Before he and Mercedes are wed, police accuse Dantès of being a Bonapartist sympathizer. Followed by no trial and some back door political cunning by a prosecutor named Villefort, Dantès is sent to the infamous Château d’If, where the government keeps the most dangerous political prisoners (think Guantanamo Bay).
While in prison, Dantès meets Abbé Faria, an Italian priest and intellectual imprisoned for his political views. The two form a father-son friendship, allowing Faria to confide certain secrets that await him and Dantès outside the prison walls and keeps the disheveled and falsely imprisoned Dantès from suicide. The priest teaches the sailor science, language, and philosophy via a secret tunnel Faria dug between their cells. Most notably, is when Faria confides in Dantès a hidden treasure on the abandoned island of Monte Cristo.
Through a series of fortunate and quite unfortunate events, Dantès finds himself free of Château d’If. What follows is a beautiful and satisfying vengeance tour for those who wronged him and a redemption tour for those that risked everything for him. Upon returning to those individuals of his former life now as the Count of Monte Cristo, the unrecognizable sailing prodigy uses his fortune to expose the riches of his perpetrators in unconventional manners. The covert benefactor helps settle financial records for others with no recognition sought in the process. Thanks to his relationship with Faria, the Count of Monte Cristo becomes an all-knowing and unstoppable individual in orders of charm, wit, and wealth.
The connection to films such as a personal favorite, The Shawshank Redemption, along with The Revenant and Django Unchained, is prevalent throughout. It is beautifully written from beginning to end, gripping entirely from page-to-page and will leave you eagerly anticipating what the Count will do next. It pulls no punches on the deprivation and isolation one can experience in this life or the wrongs people posing as friends will commit behind your back for love, money, or influence. Most importantly, it is a tale of relentless devotion and patience. It forms an archetypal protagonist that advances through obstacle after obstacle. Many, if not all, trials faced are due to the shortcomings, timidity, or atrocities of others, not those of his own volition.
Dumas does an excellent job of not allowing the character to seem unfazed by such injustice. Dantès cries, experiences extreme moments of agonies, starves himself, and even comes to the brink of suicide. Even at the lowest moments of this character’s journey from a prodigious sailor, to “political traitor,” to isolation in a maximum-security prisoner, to a friend of a “mad” priest alone in a dungeon, and through his interesting and rewarding journey, after he is free of the prison, Dumas allows the reader to internalize the pain and suffering in order to make it through to the other side with the knowledge gained from such experiences. The reader is left with a final thought:
"All human wisdom is contained in these two words, 'Wait and Hope.’”