What is The theme of The Count of Monte Cristo?

Justice, Revenge, and God’s Will

In The Count of Monte Cristo, Edmond Dantes finds himself imprisoned for a crime he did not commit, owing to the cowardice of four men: his jealous colleagues, Danglars, Fernand, and Caderousse, and the corrupt crown prosecutor Villefort, who falsifies Dantes’ case to save his own career. Dantes’ false imprisonment is devastating, because it steals from him all that he loves: his career success, his beloved fiancée, and even his…

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Changes of Identity and Station

In The Count of Monte Cristo, people’sidentities often shift due to reversals of fortune and deliberate assumptions of disguises. Dantes’ identity is the most in flux, as he is a master of disguise (living as the Count, the Abbe Busoni, Sinbad the Sailor, and Lord Wilmore) who also experiences two major reversals of fortune: his imprisonment, which steals his young life for fourteen years, and his finding the treasure of Monte Cristo…

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Love, Devotion, and Redemption

The Count of Monte Cristo is a story of revenge and redemption, but Dumas presents both revenge and redemption as being motivated by love. At the beginning of the novel, Dantes is about to marry his love, Mercedes, but the jealousy of those around him leads him to be falsely imprisoned on his betrothal day, which takes away his young life and thwarts his romantic fulfillment. Dantes is also a dutiful son to his…

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Debt and Gratitude

Dumas plays on two senses of  the word “debt” in the novel: the first is money owed, and the second is a debt of gratitude, or a sense that one’s behavior follows from, or is informed by, the good graces of another. Financial debts in the novel offer opportunities for great gains in wealth, and also for ruin of one’s reputation—but they are, in either case, debts that are easy to comprehend and straightforward to…

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The Domestic and the Foreign

European life in the nineteenth-century depended on global trade. As a result, the fabric of European culture and society was shaped by the goods and services, and the cultural and political systems, of other European nations and of foreign lands. The constant mixing of cultures both near and far is a fixture of The Count of Monte Cristo, and its setting and characters are shown to be hybrids of different cultures simply by virtue…

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Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

The Limits of Human Justice

Edmond Dantès takes justice into his own hands because he is dismayed by the limitations of society’s criminal justice system. Societal justice has allowed his enemies to slip through the cracks, going unpunished for the heinous crimes they have committed against him. Moreover, even if his enemies’ crimes were uncovered, Dantès does not believe that their punishment would be true justice. Though his enemies have caused him years of emotional anguish, the most that they themselves would be forced to suffer would be a few seconds of pain, followed by death.

Considering himself an agent of Providence, Dantès aims to carry out divine justice where he feels human justice has failed. He sets out to punish his enemies as he believes they should be punished: by destroying all that is dear to them, just as they have done to him. Yet what Dantès ultimately learns, as he sometimes wreaks havoc in the lives of the innocent as well as the guilty, is that justice carried out by human beings is inherently limited. The limits of such justice lie in the limits of human beings themselves. Lacking God’s omniscience and omnipotence, human beings are simply not capable of—or justified in—carrying out the work of Providence. Dumas’s final message in this epic work of crime and punishment is that human beings must simply resign themselves to allowing God to reward and punish—when and how God sees fit.

Relative Versus Absolute Happiness

A great deal separates the sympathetic from the unsympathetic characters in The Count of Monte Cristo. The trait that is most consistently found among the sympathetic characters and lacking among the unsympathetic is the ability to assess one’s circumstances in such a way as to feel satisfaction and happiness with one’s life. In his parting message to Maximilian, Dantès claims that “[t]here is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more.” In simpler terms, what separates the good from the bad in The Count of Monte Cristo is that the good appreciate the good things they have, however small, while the bad focus on what they lack.

Dantès’s enemies betray him out of an envy that arises from just this problem: despite the blessings these men have in their own lives, Dantès’s relatively superior position sends them into a rage of dissatisfaction. Caderousse exemplifies this psychological deficiency, finding fault in virtually every positive circumstance that life throws his way. Caderousse could easily be a happy man, as he is healthy, clever, and reasonably well off, yet he is unable to view his circumstances in such a way as to feel happy. At the other end of the spectrum are Julie and Emmanuel Herbaut—they are fully capable of feeling happiness, even in the face of pressing poverty and other hardships. The Dantès of the early chapters, perfectly thrilled with the small happiness that God has granted him, provides another example of the good and easily satisfied man, while the Dantès of later chapters, who has emerged from prison unable to find happiness unless he exacts his complicated revenge, provides an example of the bad and unsatisfiable man.

Love Versus Alienation

Dantès declares himself an exile from humanity during the years in which he carries out his elaborate scheme of revenge. He feels cut off not only from all countries, societies, and individuals but also from normal human emotions. Dantès is unable to experience joy, sorrow, or excitement; in fact, the only emotions he is capable of feeling are vengeful hatred and occasional gratitude. It is plausible that Dantès’s extreme social isolation and narrow range of feeling are simply the result of his obsession with his role as the agent of Providence. It is not difficult to imagine that a decade-long devotion to a project like Dantès’s might take a dramatic toll on one’s psychology.

Yet Dantès’s alienation from humanity is not solely due to his obsessive lust for revenge but also to his lack of love for any living person. Though he learns of his enemies’ treachery years before he escapes from prison, his alienation from humanity begins to take hold only when Abbé Faria dies. Until Faria’s death, Dantès’s love for Faria keeps him connected to his own humanity, by keeping the humanizing emotion of love alive within him. When Dantès learns that his father is dead and that Mercédès has married another man, his alienation is complete. There are no longer any living people whom he loves, and he loses hold of any humanizing force.

This humanizing force eventually returns when Dantès falls in love with Haydée. This relationship reconciles Dantès to his humanity and enables him to feel real emotion once again. In a triumphant declaration of emotion, he says to Haydée, “through you I again connect myself with life, through you I shall suffer, through you rejoice.” Dantès’s overcomes his alienation, both from society and from his own humanity, through his love of another human being.

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