The Count of Monte Cristo

Summary

The Count of Monte Cristo is a vast novel of injustice and revenge. In 1815 Edmond Dantès, a young sailor of Marseilles, returns from a voyage on which he carried a letter from Napoleon's island of Elba as a dying captain requested. He is about to be made captain and to marry the Catalan girl Mercédès. Three men conspire against him: Danglars, the ship's jealous accountant; Fernand Mondego, Mercédès' cousin and rival suitor; and Caderousse, a drunken neighbour who looks on. They denounce Dantès as a Bonapartist agent. The deputy prosecutor Villefort recognizes that the letter is addressed to his own father, the Bonapartist Noirtier, and to protect his career he has Dantès secretly imprisoned in the Château d'If. After years in solitary confinement, during which he attempts to starve himself, Dantès hears scraping in the wall and meets the Abbé Faria, an Italian priest who has been tunnelling toward escape. Faria educates him in languages, science and history, deduces who betrayed him, and reveals the location of a treasure on the island of Monte Cristo. Faria suffers recurrent cataleptic attacks and dies after the third. Dantès takes his place in the burial sack and is thrown into the sea, escapes, recovers the treasure, and becomes the immensely rich and mysterious Count of Monte Cristo. After rewarding his former employer Morrel, who had tried to help him, he spends years preparing his revenge. In 1838 he appears in Rome and Paris. Fernand is now the Count de Morcerf, a peer who married Mercédès, his fortune founded on betraying the Greek pasha Ali Tebelen; Danglars is a baron and banker; Villefort is crown prosecutor. Monte Cristo exposes Fernand's treachery through Haydée, Ali's daughter, whom he purchased from slavery, and Fernand shoots himself when Mercédès and their son Albert abandon him. He ruins Danglars through financial manipulation and has him captured by the bandit Luigi Vampa, who starves him into handing over his remaining money. Villefort's household is destroyed by his second wife, who poisons several relatives in order to secure the family fortune for her son. Monte Cristo, who had discussed toxicology with her, saves Villefort's daughter Valentine with a drug that simulates death. Exposed, Madame de Villefort poisons herself and her child, and Villefort goes mad. Caderousse is murdered by his former fellow convict Benedetto, Villefort's illegitimate son. Shaken by the innocent deaths his vengeance has caused, Monte Cristo questions whether he has acted as Providence. He unites Valentine with Maximilien Morrel, and sails away with Haydée, leaving a letter that ends with the advice to wait and hope.

Top Lessons

• Revenge exacts its own price

  Monte Cristo's plan works, but innocent people die along the way, and he is forced to doubt that he is God's instrument. The novel both indulges and questions the fantasy of perfect vengeance.

• Education as liberation

  In prison, Faria turns Dantès from a simple sailor into a learned man. Knowledge, not just treasure, makes his transformation possible.

• Institutions can be corrupted by individuals

  Villefort's abuse of the justice system shows how personal ambition can pervert law. The novel repeatedly asks whether human justice can ever be trusted.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Monte Cristo is a feast for the history of pharmacology. Its poisoning plot draws on contemporary toxicology (brucine and other vegetable alkaloids) and the Count's conversation with Madame de Villefort covers mithridatism, the building of tolerance by gradually increasing doses. The family physician, Dr d'Avrigny, recognizes the symptoms of poisoning and confronts Villefort, raising questions of medical confidentiality and duty to report. Noirtier, paralysed and mute but fully conscious, communicates by blinking and with a dictionary, a celebrated literary depiction of a condition that resembles what is now called locked-in syndrome. Faria's recurrent 'cataleptic' fits, treated with drops of a red elixir, are often read as seizures or strokes. Franz's hashish experience in the Count's grotto is an early, influential literary account of cannabis intoxication, written in the decade of the Club des Hashischins. Dantès's attempt to starve himself in prison, Danglars's enforced starvation, Fernand's suicide and Villefort's final madness complete a remarkable medical range. Retrospective diagnoses should be presented tentatively.

• Château d'If chapters (before 'Number 34 and Number 27')

  Dantès, despairing in solitary confinement, resolves to die by refusing food.

• Château d'If chapters ('The Abbé's Chamber' to 'The Cemetery of the Château d'If')

  Faria's cataleptic attacks, treated with drops of a red liquid; the third attack kills him.

• Rome section ('Sinbad the Sailor')

  Franz eats hashish in the Count's grotto on Monte Cristo and experiences vivid visions.

• Paris section ('Toxicology')

  Monte Cristo discusses poisons, tolerance and the medicinal and lethal effects of drugs with Madame de Villefort.

• Paris section (Noirtier chapters)

  Noirtier, paralysed and speechless, makes his will and his wishes known through eye signals.

• Paris section (Saint-Méran and Barrois deaths)

  Successive poisonings in the Villefort household; Dr d'Avrigny diagnoses poison and confronts Villefort.

• Late Paris section ('Locusta' and following)

  Monte Cristo substitutes a narcotic that simulates death to save Valentine from poisoning.

• Final chapters

  Madame de Villefort poisons herself and her son; Villefort loses his reason.