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In the Spring of 1815, Edmond Dantés has everything going for him. At only nineteen years of age, Dantés seems destined for success, great wealth, and notoriety in the French Aristocratic society. He has just been promoted to captain of Monsieur Morrel’s Pharaon and is about to marry Mercedes, the girl of his dreams. However, while on the cusp of a bright future, Dantés is arrested and wrongly accused of being a Bonapartist at a time when the royalist ruled France under King Louis XVIII.
Dantés is forced to live fourteen years locked away in a dungeon in the isolated Château d'If, betrayed by three people: Danglars who wrote the letter to convict him, Fernand who delivered the letter, and Villefort who imprisoned him to protect himself and the secret of his family, all of whom go on to live successful lives as members of the elites in the Parisian society. Despite his imprisonment, Dantés' time is far from wasted.
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He spends the next fourteen years, carefully calculating how he plans on exacting revenge. Instead of the innocent, carefree boy who had a full life ahead of him as captain and husband, Dantés is now a hardened, cynical, and distrustful man desperate for vengeance. In The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, the cruel acts perpetrated against Edmond Dantés by his jealous rivals act as a tipping point changing Dantés’ personality as he meticulously hunts down his enemies and hopes to enact a slow and painful revenge through acts of cruelty of his own.
This leads to the broader point that those who are wrongfully accused will try to seek personal revenge towards those who betray them.
The Count of Monte Cristo and Dantes have a particular urge for vengeance towards Fernand. Not only did Fernand deliver the incriminating letter to the authorities, but also was able to live a happy and wealthy life with Mercedes, Dantes’ beloved, while Dantes was rotting away in isolation in the Chateau d’If slowly morphing his identity into the Count of Monte Cristo. Once Dantés escapes, there is a definite change in personality: it seems a reverse baptism of sorts takes place instantly as Dantés plunges “into the sea” by the prison guards thinking he was the dead Abbe Faria (Dumas 29). Immediately Dantés begins lying and manipulating those around him. No longer is Dantés the clear-cut hero. Instead, he takes on the identity of the wealthy Count of Monte Cristo, a man with a “desire for revenge” motivated by the fact that his revenge is authorized and orchestrated by a higher power, God’s will (Dumas 348). Fernand’s family is the first to fall victim to the Count’s web of deceitfulness as the Count tries to drive a wedge between each member of his family. To do this, the Count of Monte Cristo introduces Albert, Fernand’s son, to Danglars' daughter, Eugénie Danglars. The Count of Monte Cristo unites the couple , two wealthy individuals high up in the French society, because he knows that Fernand’s greed would compel him to approve of the marriage. Even though Fernand approves of the arrangement, Mercedes most certainly does not, believing that Eugenie is “too rich for [her son]”, which is the first sight of the wedge that the Count has driven between the family (Dumas 228). In spite of the internal disagreements within the family, the couple eventually becomes engaged. However, the Count of Monte Cristo does not stop there. He goes a step further in tearing down Fernand’s reputation, accusing him of murder. In a move that shows just how calculated and meticulous the Count is in getting his well deserved revenge, he has his beloved slave girl Haydee, who has been by his side for years as if he has been carefully training her for this critical moment to testify towards a French court, revealing that Fernand murdered her father, a Turk named Ali Pasha. The Count exacts his revenge on Fernand by causing his wife Mercédès and their son Albert to leave home. With his family having abandoned him, Fernand turns a gun towards himself and commits suicide, but not before realizing that the Count is Edmond Dantes.
Another man on the Count’s list for vengeance is none other then Danglars. From the beginning of the story, Danglars has always been extremely envious of Dantes’ quick success. It is his jealousy in turn that plays an instrumental role in the downfall of Dantes’, having been the primary reason for why he crafted the incriminating letter. It is important to note that Danglars and Dantes never saw eye to eye. There was always some animosity towards one another, dating back to the time of Dantes as a shipmate and Danglars as purser. In fact, Dantes confirms this when he told Monsieur Morrel that there is “a great difference of expression” between the two men (Dumas 4). Once Dantes was sent to jail, Danglars feared a potential blow back and thus covered his tracks by “escap[ing] to Spain”, where he thrived in the banking industry (Dumas 30). When Dantes was resurrected as the Count of Monte Cristo, that is precisely how he targeted Danglars, through his finances. With his wealth, the Count of Monte Cristo focused on Danglars’ business as a banker. Oblivious to the grand scheme at hand, Danglars was merely eager to do business with a new wealthy individual. Little did he know it was all a plan to attack his reputation as a prominent banker. The Count of Monte Cristo used his wealth to establish credit for both him and his associates with Danglars. Highlighting just how cleverly designed Count’s plan is and the depth of patience that he has, he could have chosen a method of swift vengeance towards Danglars. However, that would not be rewarding or fair to him. Instead, he uses Danglars’ selfishness against him. The Count knows that Danglars would behave as a typical banker does and uses his clients’ money. Knowing this, the Count decides to let his money set with Danglar. After a while, he then demands the return of his money in full, knowing that Danglars did not have the total sum. As a result of being taken advantage of by the Count and his deceitful ways, Danglars had to run away in complete and total embarrassment, having lost all of his power, wealth, and high stature as a banker. Given that Danglars ruined Dantes’ future as a wealthy individual, the Count of Monte Cristo thought it would be only fitting to carry out revenge that would cripple Danglars’ finances in “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” manner (Dumas 142). The Count had a clear axe to grind with Danglars and was successful in achieving his personal revenge.
The final man that the Count of Monte Cristo has to cross off his list in his grand plan for vengeance is Villefort, a man of many trades. He is either a loyalist or a Bonapartist, depending on whether it is convenient to him and his political aspiration. His father, on the other hand, is a devout Bonapartist. While King Louis XVIII was in power, Villefort was always trying to earn favor from the King so that he could advance in French society. One way to make favors by the King is to find Bonapartists and put them in jail to prevent a potential Bonapartist resurgence from a “Bonapartist agent” (Dumas 14). Villefort illegitimately sent Dantes to jail not only to earn favors from the King but also to protect the fact that his father was a Bonapartist. Had the public, and especially the King, known about his father’s political views, it would have lead to his political demise. As a result, when he sent Dantes to prison, he thought he was covering up his secret, sending it to die in the Chateau d’If. However, when Dantes later reappears in French society as the Count of Monte Cristo, in his revenge toward Villefort, he uncovers a secret that Villefort thought he had buried safe, the fact that he “buried his [illegitimate] child” (Dumas 179). The Count of Monte Cristo publicly disgraces Villefort by revealing the existence of his illegitimate child to the public. Villefort naively thought that he had buried his secret forever. Additionally, he felt that he had hidden the secret of his notable Bonapartist father by sending Dantes to the Château d’If. The fact of the matter is that the Count of Monte Cristo knew ahead of time that Villefort had an illegitimate son. What he chose to do was keep the knowledge of the secret to himself until it was time to let it out publicly. The Count of Monte Cristo determined that there was no better time or place to spill the secret then at a dinner party at the very place where the baby was buried alive. The Count had a front row seat to see the anguish and anxiety that Villefort was exhibiting due to the unearthed news, which was all the more rewarding to him. However, the Count does not stop there. Similarly to with Fernand’s family, the Morcefs, the Count of Monte Cristo is successful in driving a wedge between the Villeforts leading to their eventual downfall, to which the Count takes great pleasure. The Count is able to do this by introducing his “poison[ous]...red liquid” to Madame Villefort, whom he senses has an intriguing fascination with poisons. As the Count both suspects and plans, Madame Villefort then uses it to murder people including members of her own family using the Count’s poison (Dumas 402). This slowly results in a significant divide within the family between Monsieur and Madame Villefort which results in the family’s eventual downfall, the Count’s end goal.
Throughout the whole novel, it is clear that the Count is committed to revenge. The Count of Monte Cristo does not believe that his enemies deserve a quick death. On the contrary, he thinks they deserve a slow, painful, and torturous downfall for the cruelty that they inflicted on him with his fourteen-year imprisonment at the Chateau d’If. A quick death would not do him nor his suffering justice. It would not come anywhere close in equivalence to the fourteen years he spent in prison while his enemies carried on with their lives, thriving in the French aristocratic society. The Count of Monte Cristo is entirely at ease with himself carrying out revenge on his enemies as believes it is God who is enacting revenge though him, which makes all the more right in his eyes.
Commitment To Revenge In The Count Of Monte Cristo. (2024, Feb 22). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/commitment-to-revenge-in-the-count-of-monte-cristo-essay
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