Study Guide Questions At the betrothal feast, Dantes is arrested for being a Bonapartist and a traitor on the basis that a letter he delivered was treasonous. Villefort is the deputy public prosecutor. He is also the son of Nortier, a well-known traitor to the king. At first, Villefort likes Dantes and likes how honest he is, but when Dantes reveals the name of the man the letter was sent to, Nortier, Villefort cannot let the fact escape and he sentences Dantes to prison. Mercedes wants to find information about what happened to her fiance, Dantes.
Villefort feels guilty that e is destroying the life of a man he knows is innocent. He meets the Abbe Faria who has built a tunnel all the way from his own cell to Dantes’. The two men become friends. The abbe tells Dantes that there is a treasure on the Isle of Monte Cristo. It contains jewels that equal to millions of francs. He escapes by putting the abbe’s body in his bed and replacing it with himself in the sack, then cuts himself free once they toss him into the sea. He comes across smugglers that take him aboard. He finds the treasure the abbe spoke of by using the will and clues he had, given to him by the abbe.
He pretends that he is an abbe and the executor of Dantes’ will. The first is Abbe Busoni, an Italian priest that Dantes poses as to learn what he missed. The second is as a representative of Thomson and French. He uses that identity to find out who told Villefort about the letter and to invest in Morrel’s business. Then, he uses it to allow Morell a 3- month extension when the Pharaon is lost. He then uses the alias “Sinbad the Sailor” to help Morrel with his debts. Morrel has been hit by a financial crisis due to losing his ships.
Dantes helps him pay his debts and gives him money under the guise of Sinbad the Sailor. He gets captured by the infamous bandit, Luigi Vampa. Monte Cristo pays the ransom that Vampa set, but asks Albert to introduce him to people in Paris when he visits. He meets Lucien Debray, Beauchamp, the Baron of Chateau- Renaud, Maximilian Morrel, Fernand, and Mercedes. She recognizes him and is scared, warning Albert to be cautious. Monte Cristo purchases them and then rides them to Danglars’ house. Madame Danglars gets angry that her husband sold them, but later Monte Cristo returns them generously.
However, when Madame Villefort borrows them, he arranges to have them go wild. Haydee is Monte Cristo’s twenty-year-old Greek slave that supposedly loves him and wants to stay with him even though she is technically free in France. He finds out that they knew the true identity of the man that saved them, Dantes. He says that if Valentine marries Franz, then she will be written out of his will. Monte Cristo has someone give a false report, so Danglars sells all of his stocks in Spain, but when it comes out that it was false, he lost one million francs because of it.
He says that Morcerf was originally a fisherman named Fernand Mondego. The marquis de Saint-Meran is the father of Villefort’s irst wife. He dies from a poison. She agrees after he tries to convince her, but doesn’t show up at the time they had set to go. Nortier is Valentine’s grandfather. Valentine loves him deeply and respects his decisions. He tells Franz that he killed Franz’s father in a duel. Haydee says that her father was betrayed by a French soldier and was murdered while her and her mother were sold into slavery.
She says that to Albert, but she didn’t say that it was his father who betrayed them. Barrios dies after he takes one single drink from Nortier’s lemonade because it contains a large amount of brucine. He swears to get revenge on the man that ruined his father’s honor and realizes that Monte Cristo must have known. What is the result of the visit? She comes to beg for him to spare her son, Albert. He agrees eventually, though he knows it might cost him his life. He gives her a dose of the red drink that can heal people almost immediately and makes her act like she’s dead.
Her stepmother believes it and she is saved. Without Abbe Faria, Dantes would have most likely killed himself. Faria, however, helped him regain the hope he had lost in prison and helped him, ultimately, escape. This directly arallels Monte Cristo’s relationship with Maximilian because Maximilian also contemplates taking his own life, but Monte making sure that he could be with his love, Valentine. He made Maximilian understand that death couldn’t be reversed and helped make sure he didn’t end his own life.
After almost an entire novel of Dantes being impatient with justice, this quote seems somewhat hypocritical. It can, however, be interpreted that Dantes had finally realized that his act of “playing God” was immoral and wrong. He warns Maximillian not to do the same thing, advising him to not actively seek revenge and just “wait and hope” that it comes, lmost like the concept of karma. The Count of Monte Cristo has many other names that he goes by and he changes the name he uses to fit the acts he does. For example, the Count is used when he is getting revenge.
Abbe Busoni is used when he is kind and trying to get people to trust him. Sinbad the Sailor is Cristo he him avoid it an alias of his alias Lord Wilmore. Both names are used when he is doing something particularly eccentric and generous. In the beginning of the novel, he is Edmond Dantes – a promising young man that rose up from being poor and has everything going for him. However, when he is betrayed and sent to prison for life, he changes. The bright optimism he had is taken when he realizes that his closest friends would sell him out.
After he escapes, he just wants revenge on those that made him like he is now – cold and cruel and vengeful. No, Alexandre Dumas is not claiming that it is basis for revenge. Through the novel, it may seem that way. However, the end is where Dumas’s true opinion shows. It is when Monte Cristo tells Maximilian to “wait and hope. ” Dumas truly believes that, while false imprisonment is most definitely wrong and should be punished, it is not the ictim’s place to punish the person or people there.
On page 79, Edmond Dantes is thrown into the sea while pretending to be his dead friend, Abbe Faria. He is assumed dead after that – drowned by the sea. Dantes realizes that he can never go back to his old life. So, he assumes a new identity. While the main character, who is technically Edmond Dantes, did not drown in the sea, Dantes did. He resurfaces from the water, ready to begin anew. Fitting with the many, many religious themes of this novel, it can be seen as him being “reborn” in the waters of the ocean, becoming the Count of Monte Cristo and the other aliases he uses.
