The Count of Monte Cristo — Alexandre Dumas
If we played a word association game, when saying ‘count of Monte Cristo’ I am certain most people would say ‘revenge.’ This is the story of Edmond Dantès, the young sailor coming back to Marseille to marry his fiancée Mercedes and become the new captain of The Pharaon, who is betrayed by jealous friends and wrongfully imprisoned at the Chateau d’If. After years of enclosure, he manages to escape with the help of the Abbé Faria, and with his treasure he makes a meticulous plan until the day he arrives to Paris and exacts his revenge. And the revenge will be brutal.
Written by Alexandre Dumas and his collaborator — the known but never mentioned — Auguste Maquet and published in 1844 as a series in the weekly newspaper Journal des Débats, the story became an instant success. The public would wait impatiently for the next installment and it became the talk of the town. I can imagine a sort of Game of Thrones style of craze. Afterwards, it was published as a book and remained a best-seller in Europe for a long time. Since then, it has been translated into more than 100 languages and has been adapted for TV, film, and theater multiple times. At any rate, it is one of those books you know about without having read it.
Dumas wrote that the idea for the novel came from an anecdote published in the memoires of an archivist from the police of Paris. Instead of a sailor it was a shoemaker, and instead of being accused of being a Bonapartist traitor, the shoemaker was accused by three of his friends of being a spy for the English. He inherited a fortune from the cleric he served while on house arrest, came back, and killed his friends. However, when you learn about Dumas’ father, it is easy to see another possible source of inspiration. Thomas-Alexandre Dumas was born as a slave in what is now Haiti. He was the son of a French nobleman and an enslaved woman of African ancestry. When he was taken to France by his father in order to educate him, he ceased being a slave — slavery was illegal in France since 1315 –, and ended up becoming a brilliant general of the French army, the first one to be of African descent. After a verbal confrontation with Napoleon Bonaparte, he was taken as a prisoner of war in Naples. Instead of attempting a rescue, the soon-to-be emperor abandoned his general, who spent almost two years locked in a dungeon from which he came out blind from one eye, temporarily deaf, and partially paralyzed. Perhaps the count avenged the general as well.
Whoever ventures into reading this book will face a sizeable challenge. Any edition is easily over a thousand pages long. Nonetheless, the diligence will be rewarded. Dumas was often paid by the word and that is probably one of the main reasons for the length of his novels, but in the case of this one that fact is nothing to lament. Between an intricate plot, characters full of intrigue, and mordant commentary — “Like all upstarts, he had had recourse to a great deal of haughtiness to maintain his position” — a good time is certainly guaranteed with this book, however long it takes you to read it.
Naturally, the character we spend the most time with is the count. His transformation from Edmond Dantès, the cheerful, kind, and naïve young man, to the count of Monte Cristo, a manipulative villain, fits very well, I think, with the archetype of the anti-hero. For most of the book, the count behaves and talks like a real misanthrope, yet you can hardly wait for him to triumph in his revenge. The other characters excuse him as an eccentric because he is handsome, intelligent, cultured and, above all, extremely rich. But perhaps we, the readers, do it because of that instinctive sense of justice we possess. We like to see the bad guys pay.
Is revenge actually sweet though? Just like Tom Hanks said in the movie ‘You’ve got mail’ to Meg Ryan when she expresses envy of his ability to talk back when provoked: “When you finally have the pleasure of saying the thing you mean to say, at the moment you mean to say it, remorse inevitably follows.” At the end of the story, when you see the traitors fall to their tragic end and the count himself doubt his right for retribution, maybe you, too, will end up with some remorse.
Although, judging by the enduring popularity of this book and the countless stories it has inspired, there is no denying its storytelling power over us. Revenge may not be sweet, but it sure is beguiling.
This review was originally published in Spanish at Cuaderno Reciclado.
