Monte Cristo - Kristi's Response

What struck me most, as I read through this book for the second time, was the transformation of our protagonist, Edmond Dantés.

As our story opens, Edmond is a simple, hardworking man who feels loyalty to his family and friends and expresses his friendship and love in such a way that others sense his genuineness and instinctively like him. His life is not complicated as he lives to secure the happiness of himself, his father and the young woman he loves. Injustly imprisoned, this simple Edmond is convinced this is a mistake. He knows he is innocent and so he trusts that justice will set him at liberty. As time passes and this is not the case, Edmond makes his first change: he loses his confidence, his joy, and his will to live. He is still a simple man, and those simple pleasures he had previously lived for now being denied him, he sees no reason for continuing his existence.

Then enters the Abbé Faria, and through his friendship and tutorship, Edmond’s mind broadens. With new ideas and the true understanding of why he is imprisoned, Edmond’s heart is almost split in two. He still loves his father, his betrothed, and his newfound friend, but he would no longer be satisfied to just seek their happiness, if the opportunity was given to him, but he also lives to destroy those who were the cause of his misery. From this point on, the simple boy Edmond is no more and the masked, plotting Dantés enters the world. He is filled with hate, and is determined to wreak vengeance on his enemies.

When the treasure enables him to become whomever he pleases and do whatever he wishes, Dantés becomes convinced that he is the hand of Providence—that God himself is sending Dantés to punish those who have acted wickedly toward him. This belief soothes his conscience as he lies and steals in order to do “God’s” bidding, and allows him to callously watch the sufferings of those he has pronounced guilty. This almost sadistic Dantés no longer resembles the simple boy Edmond who took pleasure in making those he loved happy.

My favorite part of the book is when Mercedes casts herself at the feet of Dantés (now posing as the Count of Monte Cristo) and begs of him, “Edmond, you will not kill my son?” Mercedes pleads to a man who has not existed for a long time; she pleads for mercy from the man who has loved her. Dantés is struck, but fights his former nature of mercy. He speaks in resurrective terms to her saying “I, betrayed, sacrificed, buried, have risen from my tomb, by the grace of God, to punish that man. He sends me for that purpose, and here I am." He compares his betrayal and suffering to that of a man who suffered 1800 years prior. Mercedes, perhaps recalling the purpose of the first man’s suffering entreats him, “Forgive, Edmond, forgive for my sake, who loveyou still!" Eventually the Edmond who once lived to secure her happiness, yields to Mercedes request.

At this point in the story, the reader hopes the sinister Dantés will fade away and allow Edmond to find joy and contentment again in life. But although he has seen how his vengeance on one enemy has also struck two innocent beings, he still persists in his plans. Since he does not die in his duel with the viscount Morcef, Dantés remains convinced that God is calling him to bring low his remaining enemies. And so he does. In the progress of destroying Villefort, he almost destroys the love of his friend, the son of Morrell. Monte Cristo rectifies this mistake but continues his work until Villefort is utterly ruined. Only after Villefort shows him his dead wife and son does Monte Cristo begin to feel that ”he had passed beyond the bounds of vengeance, and that he could no longer say, ‘God is for and with me.’”

To me, the strangest part of the story is that Dantés does not immediately repent of what he has done. When he is speaking with Mercedes in Marseilles, he still maintains that since God provided him with the means to and allowed him to revenge himself, he had been God’s instrument in doing so. He does not see, however, that God permitting these fiends to betray him could have been a part of a different plan of God—a plan of enrichment, restoration and forgiveness.

I wish that Dumás, our author, would have played out more the remorse of Edmond. Instead all we get is his parting letter to Maximillian and Valentine where he asks them to pray sometimes for a man, who like Satan thought himself for an instant equal to God, but who now acknowledges with Christian humility that God alone possesses supreme power and infinite wisdom. Perhaps those prayers may soften the remorse he feels in his heart.

The tragic transformation of Edmond Dantés is perhaps best summed up in his words to Mercedes: “Good-natured, confiding, and forgiving as I had been, I became revengeful, cunning, and wicked, or rather, immovable as fate. Then I launched out into the paththat was opened to me. I overcame every obstacle, and reached the goal; but woe to those who stood in my pathway!" In the end of the story we see just the beginning of a return of the old Edmond as he begins to once again experience the joy of love