The Count of Monte Cristo

The Count of Monte Cristo

Introduction

Alexandre Dumas's “The Count of Monte Cristo” is considered as one of the most epic vengeance stories in the history of both French and English literature. Unbelievable as it gives the impression, the novel might be derived from a true story took place some 30 years prior to the writing of the novel, a story on the subject of a man named François Picaud who had been deceived by friends and mistakenly locked up. He had inherited a huge fortune from a man imprisoned with him and thus after his release, took a successful revenge in opposition to those who had deprecated him.

Discussion

Besides getting involved with Dumas's nature as an author, the story also reverberates with the writer for other bases: Dumas harbored a number of grievances in opposition to society generally and not in favor of individual enemies particularly. His father had been mistreated and victimized and he himself had been under duress by creditors and defamed. It is not difficult to believe that Dumas actually penned down his own feelings of retribution in this book.

The double themes of revenge and justice integral to The Count of Monte-Cristo will forever be comprehensible: Revenge as a source of power has figured outstandingly all through the literature, from the Bible to the literary works of great writers like William Shakespeare, Mickey Spillane and Edgar Allan Poe. Dumas carried the thought of revenge to another extent: Fathers' sins are visited upon their broods; therefore the defeat of Edmond's enemies is definite. Similarly, the idea of acquiring a huge fortune that makes everything achievable is the stuff fantasies are made of. The implacability and resourcefulness of an Edmond Dantès, formed by situations and conditions ahead of his control into someone who is, at the same time capable of terrible cruelty and great charm, makes him a commendable hero; it is possible that such situations as that in which Edmond runs off from the frightening Chateau d'If by stitching himself into a funeral sack to be throw into the marine will long stay behind in the memory.

On the other hand, in spite of such inherent powers, The Count of Monte-Cristo claims much from contemporary readers. Similar to majority of Dumas's most well-known novels and similar to the literary work of other popular writers of the 19th century like Charles Dickens; the part-melodrama, part-adventure, novel was initially serialized ...