Analysis of The Count of Monte Cristo
The theme of The Count of Monte Cristo is one of vengeance and forgiveness, power and powerlessness. When Dantes is unfairly given a life-prison sentence by his enemies (Villefort, Danglars, and Fernand), he spends every waking moment planning his revenge. As soon as Dantes miraculously escapes and returns to the world with riches, he sees it as a sign that God has opened for him the door of revenge.
He is no longer his former self. Fourteen years behind bars in a dark cell has given him a criminal’s mind. Instead of the innocent, carefree, life-loving boy of nineteen, Dantes is now a hardened, cynical, and mistrustful man in his mid-thirties. It seems a reverse baptism of sorts takes place instantly as Dantes hits the water after being thrown off the cliff by the prison guards. Immediately Dantes begins lying to and using those around him. No longer is Dantes the clear-cut hero.
To show that he is a different person, Dumas refers to Dantes as the Count of Monte Cristo once he returns to society. Now the count, now he has enemies, and plays games with those he dislikes. Though he rewards those who treated him and his father well, most of the story is devoted to Monte Cristo’s desire for vengeance. Throughout the story, Dantes changes disguises in order to deceive those around him and further his own agenda of punishment for his enemies.
Yet when he sees Villefort’s dead son, a truly innocent victim, the count realizes that he has gone too far. For the first time he comes to the realization that perhaps he doesn’t have the gift of Providence, the right to punish others. In efforts to reconcile these feelings, Monte Cristo arranges the marriage between Maximilien and Valentine.
At first he hopes to punish himself by committing suicide, but when Haydee admits her love for him, the count takes it as a sign from God that he is forgiven.
In this book, The Count of Monte Cristo, many readers find the use of honesty in the novel to be problematic. The Count of Monte Cristo or in other words Dantes, is dishonest by lying to everyone about who he is. Because he was in prison for such a long time, his looks changed and when he got out no one knew who he was.
“Humble yourself or life will do it for you.” Having too much pride can cause karma to hit you very hard in life. The Count of Monte Cristo and Ozymandias are very common because they have very similar themes of being humble instead of having too much ego. In The Count of Monte Cristo Edmond Dantes, the main character, is in love with a beautiful young lady, Mercedes. His life is going very good to begin with anyway. He was promoted to captain of the Pharaon and was now making much more money than he used to be making. Although Edmond was a very happy and sympathetic person, some people were very envious of him. So Ferdinand, Danglars, and Caderousse, which were envious for very diverse reasons, decided to write a letter to the public prosecutor stating edmond’s visit to The Isle of Elba actually did indeed happen. The public prosecutor, Villefort, sees that the letter was intended to be
This quote symbols all feelings of sympathy and kindness have left Datnes heart as he now get revenge on all those who betrayed him. Dantes wants to be the instrument that hands out the punishment to his enemies.
The Count of Monte Cristo, a captivating novel written by Alexander Dumas, tells the story of a young French sailor, Edmond Dantès, in 1815 who spends fourteen years in prison through the acts of his jealous and conspiring enemies. He eventually escapes with hatred and a vengeance that calculatingly dictates the kind of man he develops into. In this novel the Count of Monte Cristo, in secret Dantès, seeks nearly unrelenting revenge when he returns to Marseilles looking for his enemies. Acting under the self proclamation of divine providence, Dantès spends the first ten years of freedom, a prisoner of no emotion other then vengeful hatred.
After being out of prison for some time, Dantes ventures back to his wretched house of imprisonment, where he takes on many feelings of nostalgia. Dumas writes, “The victory was complete: the count had twice vanquished doubt” (504). Dumas uses this language to express to the reader that in the mind of Dantes, his definition of vengeance was satisfied by the actions he committed against the people. The word, “complete,” demonstrates that the justice, that was never properly given to the ones who wronged Edmond, was finally done. The charade of The Count of Monte Cristo could stop, and Edmond’s life journey was now subdued. “Twice vanquished doubt,” helps to strengthen the fact that dantes was successful for the justice he needed so greatly. Everyone in Dantes life assumed him to be dead, and also not to be able to touch his successful enemies, yet he did not let that stop him. The fact he twice exceeded expectations is what gives more of a feeling of success to his whole quest. While Dantes proves to be successful for his justice, the damage caused to the innocent is what makes him not entirely successful. Following Dantes’ acts of revenge, reality sets in, making him realize that he has exceeded the rightful limits of justice, leading him to elaborate, “...God grant that I haven’t done too much already” (487). Dantes’
...onjointly, Dante’s strategically used imagery shows the horrors are merely the hidden sins committed on Earth and that caused them to be punished in Hell to their sins’ equal severity. The crowning jewel of Dante’s illustrative text was the pilgrim’s development from a pure human being to one filled with evil and hatred after seeing Hell’s truths and how he changed negatively from his exposure. These clues left by Dante display show the reader the precise reason why the Church is debauched and how it affected its misguided people.
Though he may seem acquitted and amiable, Gerard de Villefort can be dangerous and even murderous. Gerard has done numerous things in his life to corroborate his sinfulness, including the assayed murder of his son, Andrea, by burying him alive when he was a newborn. Gerard is also one of the three main conspirators in the Count's arrest and imprisonment; it is he who is the most measurable of the three. The Count, Edmond Dantes, was an innocent man about to be married, before Gerard’s conception between right and wrong was twisted by the name of his father in a letter. Also, Gerard forces his wife to commit suicide; even though he had had many faults of his own.
Many have said that romance brings love and affection, but when taken to the extreme, it can lead to tragedy and despair. Among the great literary tragedies, Romeo and Juliet may be the most famous of them all. The eternal feud between the Montegues and Capulets prohibits the love of Romeo and Juliet and ultimately results in their unfortunate deaths. It may be difficult to truly determine who is to blame for the tragedy, because their lives had been influenced, criticized, and controlled by many figures. Among the most important characters, Friar Lawrence enables the forbidden marriage of the two lovers and devises a plan to ensure that they end up together. On the other hand, Lord and Lady Capulet feed into the rivalry between the two families and refuse to listen to their daughter’s request, ultimately driving Juliet to fake her own death.
While he lies on the ground gasping for breath, Caderousse tells the Abbe Busoni that he does not believe in God. Only moments later, Edmond Dantes reveals himself to him, and he spends his dying breath asking the Lord to forgive him. Edmond Dantes, looking at his corpse, whispers “one”. This was the first evident moment in Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo where Edmond Dantes achieves any justification on his enemies for the wrongs they have done to him. After twenty years of meticulous planning, Dantes carries out his plan of ultimate revenge on his enemies in order to achieve the justice he believes he deserves. In his novel, Dumas shows that to obtain true justice—whether personal or societal—one must understand the limits of
The story begins with the Marquise de Merteuil corresponding with Vicomte de Valmont regarding a luscious new act of ‘revenge’, as she describes it, against the Comte de Gercourt. The young Cecile de Volanges has just come home from the convent and her marriage to Gercourt has been arranged. However, before he can wed the innocent child, Merteuil proposes Valmont ‘educate’ her, thus spoiling Gercourt’s fancy for untarnished convent girls. Valmont is uninterested in such an easy seduction and is far more aroused by the thought of lulling The Presidente’ de Tourvel, the very epitome of virtue, into submission. And so the tale unfolds.
...ards monstrous figures and sympathy towards those who seem to be tortured unjustly. In his perverse education, with instruction from Virgil and the shades, Dante learns to replace mercy with brutality, because sympathy in Hell condones sin and denies divine justice. The ancient philosopher Plato, present in the first level of Hell, argues in The Allegory of the Cave that truth is possible via knowledge of the Form of the Good. Similarly, Dante acquires truth through a gradual understanding of contrapasso and the recognition of divine justice in the afterlife. Ultimately, Dante recognizes that the actions of the earthly fresh are important because the soul lives on afterwards to face the ramifications. By expressing his ideas on morality and righteousness, Dante writes a work worth reading, immortalizes his name, and exalts the beliefs of his Christian audience.
their self accomplishments. In the astounding novel, The Count of Monte Cristo,by Alexandre Dumas, Edmond Dantés is betrayed by several characters as he is sent off to prison for something he did not do. Fernand Mondego not only betrays Edmond, but also betrays Haydee, the count’s slave and lover. In the novel, Fernand Mondego acts as the ultimate betrayer because he is envious of Edmond for his happy life and killing Haydée’s father.
Dante's "Inferno" is full of themes. But the most frequent is that of the weakness of human nature. Dante's descent into hell is initially so that Dante can see how he can better live his life, free of weaknesses that may ultimately be his ticket to hell. Through the first ten cantos, Dante portrays how each level of his hell is a manifestation of human weakness and a loss of hope, which ultimately Dante uses to purge and learn from. Dante, himself, is about to fall into the weaknesses of humans, before there is some divine intervention on the part of his love Beatrice, who is in heaven. He is sent on a journey to hell in order for Dante to see, smell, and hear hell. As we see this experience brings out Dante's weakness' of cowardice, wrath and unworthiness. He is lead by Virgil, who is a representation of intellect. Through Dante's experiences he will purge his sins.
Dante feels hell is a necessary, painful first step in any man’s spiritual journey, and the path to the blessed after-life awaits anyone who seeks to find it, and through a screen of perseverance, one will find the face of God. Nonetheless, Dante aspires to heaven in an optimistic process, to find salvation in God, despite the merciless torture chamber he has to travel through. As Dante attempts to find God in his life, those sentenced to punishment in hell hinder him from the true path, as the city of hell in Inferno represents the negative consequences of sinful actions and desires. Though the punishments invariably fit the crimes of the sinners and retributive justice reigns, the palpable emphasis of fear and pity that Dante imbues on the transgressors illustrates his human tendency to feel sympathy towards one who is suffering. For example, when Dante approaches the gat...
Dante begins The Inferno by embarking on a journey to Hell with his poet guide, Virgil. Along the voyage, the reader gets a taste of the gruesome imagery and depictions of the punishments for the different levels of sinner. Throughout this journey Dante encounters many sinners whom he knew or knew of in the real world, and in the beginning the sinners wanted their name to be spread in the world when Dante got out of Hell. But, as Dante explored further and further into the underworld, the sinners got less and less enthusiastic about themselves, which eventually turned into outright shame among the sinners in the lower depths of hell. Dante uses over the top examples of punishments for sins committed and the differing levels of shame the sinners feel to cause the reader to reevaluate his or her own life in the context of religious wrongdoings. The over the top punishments and shame are needed in this work of art to relay the predominant meaning.