Dumas often writes of Edmond Dantès’s time in prison as if it were a death. What do you think is the significance of this choice of language?
Though Dantès does not physically die in prison, he does lose nearly all of his previous character traits. He enters prison innocent, honest, kind, and loving, but leaves it bitter, vengeful, and full of hate. What really seems to die within Dantès is his basic humanity. He is left without compassion and without the capacity to experience normal human emotions, such as sadness, joy, and remorse. It is not Dantès’s experience of prison itself that causes this transformation but rather his knowledge that he is suffering this miserable fate because of evil done to him by other human beings. Dantès’s desire for vengeance acts as a poison, killing the pleasant side of him and leaving only spite.
Describe how The Count of Monte Cristo reflects the nineteenth-century Romantics’ obsession with the exotic.
Dumas was well known as a travel writer long
before he began writing fiction, and we can see this talent for
painting exciting portraits of exotic locales in
It is not only the novel’s locales but also the people
represented that make
Monte Cristo’s last words to Maximilian are “Wait and hope.” What is the significance of this statement? How does it connect to the larger narrative of the novel?
From the time that Edward de Villefort dies, Monte Cristo grapples with doubt about the justice of his mission. The death of an innocent boy is clearly not a just outcome; it casts a shadow on Monte Cristo’s entire project. Monte Cristo’s parting statement to Maximilian, then, can be seen as a final renunciation of his project, an acknowledgment that God is the only one who can act as Providence and decide people’s fates. Rather than try to carry out justice themselves, human beings should simply “[w]ait and hope” that God really does ultimately reward the evil and punish the good. Monte Cristo is not abandoning his strong belief in a person’s right to try to shape his or her own destiny, but he is giving up the belief that a person has a right to step in for God and shape the destiny of others.