The Art of Revenge Imagine being thrown in prison unjustly and forced to spend fourteen years there. As these fourteen years passed, one would spend an abundant amount of time pondering on their past life. Edmond Dantes does just this in prison while he plans his revenge. Before he is thrown into prison, he is a young man full of hopes and dreams. After escaping prison, he changes his name to The Count of Monte Cristo. The Count of Monte Cristo is a bitter man who seeks to get revenge on the people who have wronged him. A careful study of The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas reveals that Edmond Dantes plans the revenge of the antagonists specifically for that person. The first victim of Edmond Dantes’s particular revenge in The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas is Caderousse. Caderousse has done many horrendous acts towards Edmond …show more content…
The crime that Danglars commits is that he wrote the letter that sends Edmond Dantes to prison, and he takes part in Dantes’s father’s death. All of the crimes he commit stem from a place of jealousy in Danglars’s heart because Edmond was promoted captain of the Pharaon, the ship on which they both worked as young men. As Danglars’s punishment, “Monte Cristo arranged for Danglars to be ruined financially” (The Count of Monte Cristo). The Count knows that all Danglars cares about is his money, so to mess with his money means to mess with his life. Monte Cristo has Danglars captured by Luigi Vampa, an Italian bandit. In captivity, Danglars is forced to spend all his money on food if he wants to eat. When he ran out of money, he “had begun to devour the matting which covered the floor” (Dumas 521). Danglars eventually repents for his wrongdoings, and The Count lets him go, but he is officially a poor man. This was The Count’s goal all along. After Danglars, The Count of Monte Cristo’s days of revenge are
“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
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.
In the acclaimed novel, main character Edmond Dantès is consumed by the idea of getting revenge on every person who did him wrong. In the novel, Dantès is falsely accused of high treason by his former best friend, and is exiled to a secret prison where he is expected to spend the rest of his life. However, Dantès escapes and discovers a hidden treasure worth millions. Unfortunately this comes after thirteen years of pain and anguish in a brutal prison, he then vows to use his new-found wealth "for vengeance". Dantès then transforms himself into The Count Of Monte Cristo, an aristocrat that is possessed by revenge. The Count then becomes focused on revenge, "In order not to interfere with his freedom to take revenge, he never eats or drinks in his enemy's house." This quote shows just how much he thinks about revenge, so much so that it has became a part of his daily routines. Dantès is not afraid to take a life and holds nothing back when it comes to revenge, He even says "Beware, our revenge will be terrible when we take it." This identifying kindred ideals with Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride. The two characters (though both noble) will stop at nothing until they get their revenge, the thought of revenge often becomes their will to live. Alexander Dumas wants us to know that revenge can affect even the most noble and merciful people, and although people may seek revenge they can still be good in their hearts. We see this at the end of the novel, where Dantès decides to put the rest of his wealth towards peace, no longer haunted by idea of
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.
	His dream soon becomes shattered by three of his enemies, Danglars, Fernand, and Caderousse. As these three people plot against Edmond, he is about to become married to the beautiful Mercedes. On his wedding day, his betrothal feast was interrupted when the police came barging through the door and arrested Edmond Dantes. Dantes was accused of giving a letter to the usurper while the Pharaon stopped on the Isle of Elba and returning a letter from the usurper to the Bonapartist party in Paris. After his arrest, Edmond was interrogated and questioned by the public prosecutor, Monsieur de Villefort. During the interrogation Villefort promised Edmond freedom, but that was before Monsieur de Villefort read the letter from the usurper addressed to Monsieur Noirtier, Villefort’s father. Edmond Dantes was sent to prison.
Before Dantes was ever locked into a dank and dark cell he was a carefree and naive young man. His life was looking great. He was a soon to be husband and had a great
The story of “Killings” by Andre Dubus looked into the themes of crime, revenge and morality. The crime committed in the story depicted the father’s love for his son and the desire to avenge his son’s death. However, his own crime led to his own destruction as he was faced with questions of morality. The character found himself in a difficult position after taking his revenge. He failed to anticipate the guilt associated with the crime he committed. Feelings of anger and righteousness are illustrated by the character throughout the story.
...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.
In The Count of Monte Cristo Dantès is an extremely successful young man with a great fortune ahead of him. Dantès however, clearly knowing he is blind due to love, cares nothing of the happenings around him. He is unaware of the fact that the people all around him have something against him. Dantès therefore, ends up inviting his enemy to his wedding, thus causing himself to be at harm at a place at which he knows he will be at unawares because of the “love that blinds him”. Therefore, Dantès is a tragic hero because it is his fault that he wasn’t aware that the people all around him were plotting against him.
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...
While getting inspiration for Monte Cristo, he heard a story about a man, which inspired the plot for his novel. Picaud, the man whom inspired the story, gained vengeance in a much more gruesome way than Dantes does. Picaud takes vengeance whereas Dantes is avenged. Justice is achieved because good is stronger than evil, not because of the Count’s power (Stowe 125). Perhaps this is Dumas’s opinion on vengeance. If it is well earned, then it will fall into the man’s hands rightfully (Maurois). Dumas’s inspiration for the novel also came from his personal life. His father was heavily mistreated, and as he watched helplessly for his whole childhood, it became important to him to avenge his father. Although people in his own life may not have wronged him as they did his father, he believes in revenge, and sought revenge through his literature (Maurois). Through the character of Edmond Dantes, Dumas portrayed his own desire to justify his father’s oppressors. In Maurois’s article, he speaks about this, saying, “He must have been sorely tempted to find compensation in fiction for the iniquities of the real world.” Perhaps he was afraid to vocalize his opinion publicly, so he decided on a more subtle route, which was to create a story that everyone could identify with. Writing Monte Cristo must have been closure for Dumas at the expense of his father. He sought vengeance in the form of literature
Seeing as this work was written by Dante, and the journey is taken by Dante, he has a unique opportunity to judge his fellow man and decide how they will be punished. He also gets to place his enemies in hell, forever besmirching their names for generations to remember. Perhaps unknowing to Dante, that is worse than any of the punishments that he placed his enemies in. The reality of The Inferno is unlikely and therefore these punishments are nothing but a fictiona...
(For clearer explanation in this essay, Edmond Dantès refers to Edmond Dantès and what he becomes later novel after his symbolic death in prison, the Count of Monte Cristo.) In action of his revenge, the murder of Caderousse’s wife, Monsieur le Marquis de Saint-Méran and Madame la Marquise de Saint Méran, Héloïse de Villefort, and Barrois happen with no from remorse Dantès. These victims most had nothing to do with the Dantès directly. They were just pawns of his little game of revenge. “The problem of innocent suffering does not trouble Monte Cristo, even though his revenge wreaks devastation on whole families.”(Aubrey 2) Even though he is sent to prison wrongfully, he should not be able to ruin so many lives for his act of revenge. Also, over the course of the book, he confuses his desire for revenge and claims various times that his revenge is for justice. “Revenge is mostly about “acting out” (typically through violence) markedly negative emotions. Revenge is, by nature, personal; justice is impersonal, impartial, and both a social and legal phenomenon.” (Seltzer 1) Revenge is the thing that clouds his morals most, and the fact that he even thinks he is God-like for most of the story shows how disconnected he is, morally. “Dantès puts himself in a position that is god-like to exercise complete
The protagonists, The Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, consider it their life’s ambition to sadistically control and dominate those around them through sexual intrigue. These two villains are indeed locked in psychological combat to see who can actually ‘out-do’ the other in stalking, capturing and destroying the souls of others. Taking absolute pleasure in ripping any virtue from the hearts of their prey, Merteuil and Valmont wave their accomplishments in front of each other like spoils of war. The less the chance of surrender, the more relentless is the pursuit.
Dante’s Inferno presents the reader with many questions and thought provoking dialogue to interpret. These crossroads provide points of contemplation and thought. Dante’s graphic depiction of hell and its eternal punishment is filled with imagery and allegorical meanings. Examining one of these cruxes of why there is a rift in the pits of hell, can lead the reader to interpret why Dante used the language he did to relate the Idea of a Just and perfect punishment by God.