The difference between revenge and justice is hardly noticeable. These two words are so similar that many people often get the two confused and connect the two as if they were the same. Revenge is not something that can right an injustice; a form of justice can be revenge to someone but it doesn’t mean it’s right. Not only can revenge be justice but justice can be seen as a way of revenge. There is still a difference between them though– don’t forget that. According to Dantes, exposing someone of their wrongdoing is the ultimate form of revenge.
You can clearly see that principle with the many people he kept alive after getting revenge on them. This is true though, seeing someone suffer after you have gained vengeance on them is quite satisfying. When you are trying to get revenge, your emotions get the best of you. Anger starts to swell and you just can’t help but want to get back at that one person for doing you wrong. When justice is taken into action, you should be using your brain and not letting your emotions win over common sense. With Morcerf, Dantes gained revenge by exposing his secret of betraying his former patron to Mercedes and Albert.
This caused Mercedes and Albert to leave Morcerf and he endured the end of his life alone. In this situation Dantes was thinking of his love for Mercedes. He was extremely upset with Morcerf so he did what he thought anyone would do for the love of their life. It wasn’t a great act of revenge, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg. But, even this caused Morcerf to commit suicide. This is an awful kind of revenge that just consumes you–the things you try to do when love and hate conflict with each other. Later on, when Dantes is getting revenge on Villefort, his intentions are personal, they come from the past.
Villefort was the one that landed The Count in jail because he didn’t want his dad getting imprisoned. Why would Villefort let his dad get caught when he can just send Dantes to some island? In no way does this count as justice, you should not be bringing personal dilemmas into these situations because you will just cause more problems. After The Count got off the island he uses a well thought-out plan to slowly get revenge on Villefort–and it works. Dantes did not get legal justice, nor social justice because one can say making someone go insane is not morally correct.
Doing the right thing to be impartial to someone is how you can achieve justice and Dantes is not a good example of that because he takes everything personally and does not let it go. Doing something with justice would mean there is honor and fairness–there is no vindictiveness involved. The Count is very particular about his acts of revenge; he calculated his revenge on Villefort quite well. First, he subtly taught Madame de Villefort the art of poisoning and people were dying in her household left and right.
Then, it is revealed in court that Villefort had buried his child alive years prior–which is how Villefort was put into prison. Not only does that make Monte Cristo cruel, but you can see that he has the art of revenge mastered. He makes plans that will set people into an awful road to recovery and he just sits back and watches it all happen. He is incredibly good at exposing people and letting more and more bad things come at them. Two wrongs definitely do not make a right in this case. The Count of Monte Cristo is a great example of someone going in series of unjust acts.
Dantes is going back and forth with his retribution, you see the cycles starting over, again and again. He had to mess with Danglars by making him lose all of his money; all of the money that Dantes does not believe to be hard-earned. This is one of the last acts of vengeance that you see The Count do and by now it’s just exhausting to see him go through this constant motion of hatred. It’s almost saddening, Dantes can’t help but get revenge on the people that did him wrong decades ago. He thinks he is getting closure, justice, by doing all of this, but he is playing a game with himself that not even he can win.
Getting revenge on someone is something you do when you want to get back at them for doing you wrong. In this case, there is no way you can get justice. In order to gain justice you can’t act on spite and bitterness, but with a need for harmony and unison. Revenge will just escalate and take you higher and higher into bitterness and suddenly you can’t stop. When The Count was ridding Danglars of all of his fortune, he didn’t stop there, he had him kidnapped and almost killed–good thing he spared his life! Dantes leaves Danglars alive and–you guessed it–completely void of any money he once had before The Count “appeared.
He couldn’t just walk away from all of this, he had to make sure something worse was done to everyone than what was done to him. Dantes was actually quite successful in the sense of making others suffer more because they get to live in complete misery. When getting revenge on someone, you cannot gain justice along with it, nor can revenge right and injustice. When dealing with problems of misbehavior you can only get one or the other; in The Count of Monte Cristo, Dantes chose revenge. He was only thinking of how he felt and how he was personally victimized in the past by so many people.
Justice was not gained, there was no integrity involved, only cycles of anger and retaliation. The Count had to see Morcerf die, Villefort go crazy, Danglars suffer in all the ways he did and countless people die. In most of these cases you can see that Dantes did not want people to die, but he wanted them to live because that is how you can gain the highest level of revenge. You won’t get revenge by just simply murdering someone, go out there and make sure they live the rest of their lives in regret. To learn of ways to gain justice, I wouldn’t suggest reading The Count of Monte Cristo.
