The Count of Monte Cristo - review

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Read this years ago, but just finished it again.

A sweeping, dramatic, Romantic tale of unjust suffering, vengeance, and providence.

Edmond Dantes is wrongly accused of a political crime and locked away, so a “friend” can marry his girlfriend instead of him. After 14 years in a dank dungeon, Edmond emerges educated and fabulously wealthy, thanks to a fellow prisoner and priest. Edmond proceeds to wreak slow vengeance on each of his persecutors, seeing himself as an agent of God’s avenging providence. He is confident, patient, methodical, and unyielding, bringing each to their knees in terrible suffering for what they have done. But when at the very end his actions take the life of others he did not intend, he stops, realizing that God alone can bring justice to men. He saves the life of the innocent, leaving much of his wealth to them.

Dumas includes many different situations of injustice. A spoiled child, a jilted lover, a Romeo and Juliet scene, a son confident of his father’s innocence when he is actually guilty, a man wrongly imprisoned for 14 years, and more. Most of these are resolved in the story, giving the impression that justice CAN be done on earth. One wonders if Dumas had read Kant, about justice being left for the next life, and mostly demurring in this grand novel.

Providence is a recurring theme. The Count is repeatedly referred to as the hand, the very voice, of God Himself. He seems all-knowing, but can any mortal truly be so? To what extent can we carry out God’s will as human agents? Will we miscarry and harm others in the process? If we pursue justice over-much, does poetic justice turn into injustice? Is it right to take up vengeance personally, or should we leave it to much less competent and knowledgeable civil magistrates?

I HIGHLY recommend this book, both for these weighty themes and for the entertainment of the story itself, very well written. Dumas is a high romantic, so it may come across as overly dramatic and fraught at points. But it’s a great story, in the Princess Bride vein, which also raises important themes we should think more about.

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