The Count of Monte Cristo

The satisfaction that comes with reading a 1200 pager is a wonderful feeling! I started The Count of Monte Cristo as a buddy read with Kelly in January 2021. We did three discussions, making it halfway through the book (see Parts 1, 2, and 3) and read the remaining book separately. That is one challenge with buddy reading – you start off with a system to take notes but it is not always possible to stop yourself from reading on and reflecting on each section. For the last half of the book, while I continued to highlight quotes, I did not make extensive notes but instead enjoyed the story for itself.

Picking up a 1200 page tomb after leaving it unfinished for over 8 months and halfway is a daunting task. My worry was that I would be unable to get back into it but the world that Alexandre Dumas has created is much more interesting than my day and hence it was very easy to pick up again. All I needed was some help to recall the characters.

On The Count of Monte Cristo – The Book

The Count of Monte Cristo is the most readable classic I have ever read. For a book this length, the plot moves at a spectacular pace and with so many characters to follow, it can be a challenge to maintain interest in all of them. Alexandre Dumas is a phenomenal writer and I love the way the chapters are organized and how the story unfolds. As I jump from Danglars’ narrative to the Count’s, I still want to know what is going on with Noirtier but I also want to know what the Count is upto so I am happy to read that.

The Count of Monte Cristo is a revenge story like no other. Edmund Dantès is wrongly accused of being in league with Bonaparte and is sent to prison on the Chateau d’If. There he goes through an existential crisis, living in horrible conditions until he meets an old abbe who has been digging a tunnel to escape from prison. The abbe gives Edmund a purpose. He now has the opportunity to learn to read and write from a knowledgeable teacher. After 14 years at the chateau, Dantès escapes. As a parting gift, the abbe gives me the key to a fortune.

On learning what happened to his friends and family, Edmond devises a devilish plan of revenge. Once he has established himself in the world through his wealth, he creeps into the lives of the people who destroyed his life. He makes friends with their enemies and children, never once letting them suspect that their reckoning is coming.

Dantès had been engaged to marry Mercédès, who ended up marrying his frenemy Fernand. I had forgotten in the months that I spent away from this book that Dantès never had any intention to get her back. His life was consumed by revenge, and eventually by love for his friends. He did not care why this had happened to him, all he cared about was justice and making the people who caused him and his father so much pain to suffer. Their suffering may not be comparable to the crisis he went through in prison, but it would be something. I wonder if at a particular point in the story (not revealing due to spoilers), Dantès sees himself from when he was at the chateau in one of the characters.

Though Dantès introduces many people to each other, I love how tactful he is when he talks about them. For example, while Prince Cavalcanti is an acquaintance of his, he is very clear in saying that he does not really know him. He was vouched for by a friend of his (more on that in a second) but that does not mean that the Count trusts him too. While his friends take that as him vouching for someone, he has already washed his hands off of them.

Then there are Dantès’ many disguises. In the course of the story after his escape from prison, Dantès becomes the Count of Monte Cristo but he also has three other personas that we see interact with other characters. Abbe Busoni is a priest friend of his (and how the Abbe intermingles with the lives of Villefort in particular towards the end is an amazing plot by itself), Sinbad the Sailor is his persona when he interacts with the Morrels, Lord Wilmore is his alter ego, another frenemy who appears as a reference in places. In maintaining all these different roles, there is also the number of properties that the Count buys (and for very specific reasons, and note that he does not lack money), the friends he makes and the way he utilizes them to win the trust of his enemies is so much fun to read.

One of the most fascinating ways in which the Count gets his revenge is by gathering people who have some woes with his enemies. While he orchestrates their meeting, he lets the torment be natural and allows the people he has found to cause their mutual enemies pain. But that’s not all. There are other people with agendas that the Count does not know of and they cause havoc in their own way.

One of my favorite characters in this book was Noirtier, Villefort’s father and a Bonapartist himself. While in the second half of the book, he is an invalid and cannot speak or move, his love for his granddaughter Valentine is to die for. His sharp mind realizes that someone is trying to kill his family and he starts to prepare Valentine so that she survives. 

And then there are also characters like Danglars’ daughter who may have 2 chapters where they speak but such sharp minds that I instantly adore them.

Will revenge indeed be satisfying for Dantès? Or will the Count go too far? What will life be like for him after his mission of almost two decades is completed? These are all questions that The Count of Monte Cristo answers in its captivating narrative.

Some of my favorite writing

All human wisdom is contained in these two words: ‘wait’ and ‘hope’.

Pg 1243 

‘Alas,’ said Monte Cristo, ‘our poor species can pride itself on the fact that every man thinks himself unhappier than another unfortunate, weeping and mourning beside him.’

Pg 1205

‘Yes’, the count said curtly. Some words end the conversation like a steel door falling. The count’s ‘Yes’ was one of those words.

Pg 946

Moral wounds have the peculiarity that they are invisible, but do not close: always painful, always ready to bleed when touched, they remain tender and open in the heart.

Pg 952

In any case, even the most corrupt of us finds it hard to believe in evil unless it is based on some interest. We reject the idea of harm done for no cause and without gain as anomalous.

Pg 833

On The Count of Monte Cristo – The Movie

Clinton and I have a new year tradition to watch an old movie I have not seen and he has liked. This year it was The Count of Monte Cristo. Now you know why I gave myself a year to finish this book. 😉

Anytime something cool would happen in the book, I would explain to him, assuming that at least the characters were there in the movie. He has never read the book and really enjoyed the movie when he saw it and he did not correct me that a lot had changed from the book to the movie adaptation. That is to be expected as fitting an unabridged 1200 page book into 2 hours of visual storytelling is an impossible task.

While I enjoyed the movie, the book was quite fresh in my mind and the revenge in the movie does not come close to the revenge in the book. It is to be expected that many characters and plot lines were removed to make the movie straightforward to follow. If anyone decides to do a vampire retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo both the Count and Villefort are amazing candidates to be cast as vampires and that is kind of how I felt about their movie version.

I absolutely do not agree with the storyline for Mercédès and her relationship with the Count. As I mentioned above, in the book, he never wanted her back while in the movie, she was portrayed as wanting him back and pursuing him until he agreed. Why she married Fernand is very different between the book and the movie. While that is  probably more watchable than the original plotline, I am still ticked about it. 

Danglars and Morrel are pretty much meshed into one character and I found the revenge on Danglars quite unsatisfying in the movie. Valentine and Noirtier were completely missing from action and while I totally get their absence in the movie, their relationship was one of my many favorite things about the book and I missed seeing them.

If I had never read the book, this would be a great movie.

But I have read the book, and while the movie does justice upto the point where Dantès escapes, the rest is WAY better in the book. If you are willing to read a 1000 more pages, of course.

---

I could sit and tell you about each of these characters if you wanted to know. I loved being in the 1800s with the count, loved the world that he lived in with its political twists and hidden agendas. I loved the count, his personality, and his development. He had so much knowledge and wisdom and he was compassionate and kind to those he recognized as having loved him and brutal to those who destroyed his life. When the ones he cared about might be hurt by his revenge, he had some decisions to make and his chain of thought is admirable. 

I am thrilled to have read this book and have since learned of some cousins of Clinton’s who have equally enjoyed this book. Sometimes I think avid regular readers like me scare away from huge books while people who read not as regularly are able to give time to these great works of fiction without worrying about their TBR. I don’t think they call it a TBR. I did not until I started book blogging. I did not pay much attention to the books I wanted to read until I started reviewing. But that’s a story for another time. 😉

Would I go back and relive this story of revenge? Yes, I absolutely will one day. It is worth every word. Have you read it?

Cover Photo by Pika Alyani on Unsplash