Essay/Term paper: The count of monte cristo: revenge

Essay, term paper, research paper:  World Literature

The Count of Monte Cristo: Revenge


The Story of Edmond Dantès, the Sailor, who Becomes the Rich & Powerful Count of
Monte Cristo and Takes Revenge on all his Enemies.

Chesky Hoffman June 17, 1996 Dr. Goodale

In this essay I will show how Edmond Dantes punishes his four enemies with
relation to their specific ambitions. Edmond is sent to jail due to his
enemies' jealousy. After he escapes he becomes rich and powerful and gets back
at them. Before I relate to you how Dantes gets back at his enemies I would
like to familiarize you with the story.
The story describes the life of its main character Edmond Dantes. He is
promoted to captain of his ship. This promotion ignites the jealousy of his
fellow shipmate Danglars. Dantes is then falsely accused of being a Bonapartist.
This means he sides with Napoleon Bonaparte and is committing treason against
his own king. He is sent to a prison called the Château d'If. The Château d'If
was surrounded by water and was known as a place of no return. When Dantes
escapes, he takes revenge against his four enemies who conspired against him to
send him to prison, in the manner of an eye for and eye. These four
conspirators are Danglars, Caderousse, Fernand Mondago, and Villefort. In order
to take revenge on his four enemies, Dantes uses a variety of names and
disguises. The main new identity he uses for himself is The Count of Monte
Cristo.
Danglars, as mentioned above, was the Count's shipmate when his name was
still Edmond Dantes. When Edmond went to jail, Danglars ran away and became
very rich. Caderousse was a tailor. He was also the Count's father's landlord
and once the count was sent to prison, Caderousse allowed Dantes' father to
starve to death. Fernand Mondago was in love with the count's fiancee Mercédes.
When the Count was sent to jail Fernand married her on the pretext that the
count would not return. These three enemies all got together one night and were
all responsible for writing an incriminating letter about the Count to his
fourth enemy, Monsieur De Villefort, who was the city's temporary prosecutor at
the time. He was responsible for the actual sending of the Count to prison.
After the Count escaped from prison, he discovered that all his enemies
had moved to Paris. He became acquainted with people from that city and
eventually moved there so that he could have his revenge. The revenge taken on
Danglars matches the crime which he committed toward the Count. When Danglars
wrote the incriminating letter about the Count, calling him a Bonapartist, his
intention was to get the Count's position as Captain of the ship for himself.
This shows how power hungry he was. In order for the Count to take proper
revenge on this man, he recalled Danglars's great lust for power and decided to
gradually diminish Danglars' wealth. This in turn made Danglars lose his
reputation as a good banker. As a result, Danglars had to run away from the
embarrassment of losing all of his power and high stature.
We see the same concept of 'an eye for and eye' played out in the Count's
revenge toward Caderousse. When the Count escaped from jail he remembered what
a love for money Caderousse had. Therefore he brought Caderousse a diamond.
When an appraiser came to Caderousse's house, he paid for the diamond and then
stayed for the night. In middle of the night Caderousse killed the appraiser
and took both the diamond and the money paid for it. He was caught and
sentenced to hard labor in prison. The Count chose this form of revenge because
he knew that Caderousse could not resist the temptation of extra money. The
Count punished him in this fashion because Caderousse took away all the money
that Dantes left for his father. This loss of money caused Dantes' father to
starve to death. The Count understood Caderousse's greed and punished him
through it.
The Count took revenge on Fernand Mondego by causing his wife Mercédes and
son Albert to leave home. To do this, the Count introduced Albert to
Danglars's daughter. The couple became engaged. A few days before the wedding
was to take place, Danglars asked the Count for information about Fernand. The
Count told him to send a letter to where Fernand worked as guard for the Ali
Pasha. When Danglars received a reply to his letter, the news spread quickly
that Fernand was a traitor and let the enemy become victorious. The Pasha
entrusted Fernand with his wife and daughter. Fernand sold them indirectly to
the Count. The main point of this punishment was to make Mercédes and Albert
leave Fernand. This punishment relates to Fernand's ambitions because the Count
thought about how back in Marseilles Fernand took away his family (Mercédes and
his father). In getting his revenge, the Count causes Fernand to lose his
family.
Villefort was a loyalist, His father was a Bonapartist. He was always
trying to get the favor of the King so that he could get an even higher position.
One way to accomplish this task was to find Bonapartists and put them in jail.
Villefort sent the Count to jail only because the latter knew that Villefort's
father was a Bonapartist. When he sent the Count to prison he thought he was
covering up his secret about his father for good by burying the Count in the Châ
teau d'If. Then the Count reappeared. In his revenge toward Villefort, the
Count uncovered a secret which Villefort thought was literally buried many years
ago. The Count discovered the secret of an illegitimate child which had been
born of a union between Villefort and Madame Danglars. Villefort had buried the
child alive, but someone had rescued him. The Count of Monte Cristo disgraced
Villefort by revealing the secret of his illegitimate child to the public. This
method of revenge was symbolic. Villefort thought he had buried the disgrace of
his dead son forever. He also thought he had "buried" the secret of his father,
the Bonapartist, by sending Edmond Dantes, the one who knew his secret, to the
Château d'If. Edmond came back from the dead as did Villefort's son.
We see from this story that it is not wise to take revenge. It is up to G-
d to decide what each person deserves. In our story, a man named Edmond Dantes
thought it wise to take revenge on his enemies. He took revenge on each person
in a way that related to the way they originally conspired against him. However,
at the end, instead of feeling good about himself, he felt confused. On the one
hand he got back at his enemies, but on the other hand, he lost the affection of
Mercédes, whom he loved. He then recognized that if a person does take revenge
into his own hands, G-d now has a way of punishing him. Edmond Dantes ruined
everyone who hurt him and in the process, he ruined himself.