129 pages • 4 hours read
Alexandre DumasThe Count of Monte Cristo
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1844A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Vengeance
Monte Cristo’s desire to take revenge on the three men responsible for his imprisonment functions as his primary motive throughout most of the novel. Monte Cristo shapes his life around the pursuit of vengeance and does not question the rightness of this pursuit until after the death of Edouard. In addition to Monte Cristo, Haydée is motivated by a desire for revenge, as is Bertuccio, in his vendetta against Villefort and Benedetto when he publicly exposes Villefort as his father.
The way in which Monte Cristo equates personal vengeance with divine justice implies a belief that making others suffer the same pain that they have made their victims suffer does not merely relieve the victim’s anger, it also restores balance to the world. Similar to honor and obligation, vengeance is often discussed by characters in the language of debt and repayment. The classic vendetta engaged in by Bertuccio formalizes the concept of vengeance in one way, and the ritualized duels fought by several characters formalize it in another.
Monte Cristo does not see the justice system and capital punishment as serving the needs of vengeance nearly as well as these more individualized forms, as he explains to Albert and Franz before the public execution in Rome, and makes a similar point in his first conversation with Villefort. By contrast, Monte Cristo seems to see a clear relationship between divine justice and human vengeance, believing for a long time that by seeking the latter he is also administering the former, though, in the novel’s end, he questions this.
The Byronic Hero
The Byronic hero of the Romantic era takes his name from Lord Byron, who both created many such figures and seemed to embody one himself. The Byronic hero is, essentially, an anti-hero, a highly individualistic figure defined by the suffering he has experienced and by his rebellion against social or religious orthodoxy. The character of Monte Cristo, who appears to others as an aloof and often frightening figure who ignores social norms and seems to have crafted his own moral code, clearly follows in this tradition.
The figure of the Byronic hero has its origins in literary characters such as Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost, regarded by many Romantics as the true hero of Milton’s epic; and Faust, of Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus, who sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for wisdom. The references in The Count of Monte Cristo to Monte Cristo as a Satanic figure, or as a man who has made a Satanic pact, place Monte Cristo in this lineage. His identification of himself as a man without a country or a people, and therefore with no normal loyalties, also underlines his Byronic nature.
Additionally, the text makes reference to works written or inspired by Byron. Haydée shares a name with the Greek pirate’s daughter who rescues Juan and becomes his lover in Byron’s mock-epic Don Juan. Monte Cristo complains that one of Albert’s friends is determined to depict him as a “Manfred or Lord Ruthwen” (372). Manfred is the Faust-like hero of a drama by Byron, while Lord Ruthven refers to the title character of John Polidori’s novel The Vampyre, widely assumed to have been based on Byron himself. Monte Cristo’s framing strongly suggests that The Count of Monte Cristo should not be read simply as a rousing adventure story but, like other works in this tradition, as the story of a hero exploring the limits of good and evil.
Rebirth and Reinvention
Throughout the novel, various characters shed one identity and assume another. Edmond assumes multiple identities: the Count of Monte Cristo, Abbé Busoni, Lord Wilmore, and the unseen Sinbad the Sailor. Fernand, Benedetto, Albert, Eugénie, and Caderousse also change their names and assume aliases, while the near-death experiences undergone by other characters, notably Valentine and Maximilien, at points of crisis in their lives show characters being reborn in another manner.
The ease and frequency with which characters reinvent themselves imply these shifts are not just a practical device to move the plot along but an exploration of the nature of identity. People are, essentially, who they say they are, a situation Monte Cristo readily takes advantage of (as do others). Within the novel, identity seems acquired, rather than innate, a function of the titles and roles people are assigned or that they assign themselves. Rather than fixed, identity is presented as malleable and not inherent to societal standards, as characters easily switch between social status and gender norms. Fittingly, at the end of the novel, Edmond sails away from his identity as Monte Cristo in order to reinvent himself yet again.
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By Alexandre Dumas
