“I swear, you are frightening me!” said Dantès. “Is the world full of tigers and crocodiles, then?”
“Yes, except that the tigers and crocodiles with two legs are more dangerous than the rest.”
— The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
When I went to Eastern Lebanon County High School (Elco) each year we were given a list of books appropriate for that grade to read for book reports. If I recall correctly, we were allowed to read books that weren’t on the list, it was merely a guide, but it was a handy one.
In tenth grade one of the books I read was The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, sometimes known as père to indicate “father”, to differentiate him from fils, his illegitimate son with the same name.
I loved it.
Of all the “classic” novels that I’ve ever read, I don’t think I’ve ever loved any of them more than I did The Count of Monte Cristo.
I’m now going to reveal a few broad details of the plot, but I wouldn’t really call them spoilers because they’re pretty generally known anyway.
It’s the story of merchant sailor Edmond Dantès who is betrayed by an ambitious crew mate, a romantic rival, and a corrupt prosecutor and then sent to a dungeon in the Château d’If. There Dantès languishes for fourteen interminable years until he seizes on a desperate plan and makes a hair-raising escape. (It still gives me goose bumps just thinking about it!) He was given a map to a treasure by a fellow prisoner who died, and following the instructions, he finds the treasure and becomes wealthier than he ever imagined. He makes plans to use his wealth to help the people who were kind to him and take vengeance on those who betrayed him by assuming the guise of the Count of Monte Cristo, which is the island where he found the treasure.
This all plays out beginning in 1815 when Napoleon left his exile on Elba and tried to return to power. Napoleon is one of the characters (albeit a minor one) in the book, as the story is influenced by historical events.
And that’s a broad summary of the first 200 pages or so of the book.
The book, at least the complete unabridged version, is a bit over 1200 pages long.
In high school I read an abridged version that I think was about 400 pages or so.
What I really liked about it was the part that I summarized. The rest of it, where he takes his revenge was all right but it didn’t stick in my memory like the first part of it did.
A few months after I read the book and had turned in my book report, the teacher had us give our book reports orally. I don’t remember what my book was that month, but I do recall Tom Seubert’s. I can still remember him getting up in front of the class and starting his report thusly:
“My book is The Count of Monte Cristo. It’s about Edmund Dantees. He calls himself the Count of Monte Cristo and he goes around getting revenge on people.”
What?!?!?!
Did Seubert actually read the book? He skipped right over the best part! I couldn’t believe he wouldn’t at least talk about that daring prison escape! And the motivation for taking revenge! All I could think was that he must have read the Classics Comic Book and it was missing the first 20 pages. Why else start in the middle of the story?
Anyway, over the years I’ve seen several movies and mini-series based on the book. No two hour movie can really do justice to that sprawling story, of course, but there have been more than 20 versions over the years. And plenty of TV adaptations as well.
More than that, it’s exerted a big influence on story tellers of all kinds through the years who have borrowed its themes of betrayal and vengeance. For example, when Christopher Bond decided to write up his own version of a notorious serial killer from 19th century London, he motivated his anti-hero by giving him a backstory of being unjustly shipped off to an Australian penal colony only to escape years later to seek revenge.
It was Bond’s version that Stephen Sondheim decided to turn into his celebrated Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
I noticed that there was both a new French movie version and a TV mini-series released in 2024 and that got me to thinking that maybe it was time to actually read the complete unabridged novel. All 1200 plus pages of it. Apparently plenty of others did as well, because I see that Project Gutenberg’s downloads of the book have swelled in the last few months.
Bu I decided to get the latest English translation by Robin Buss, and I devoted the month of January to reading it. In toto.
And I finished it on January 28.
To be continued.
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