NovelContinental · 1844Study guide · no full textSteady

The Count of Monte Cristo

Read it as a study of revenge's arithmetic: what it repays, and what it charges the man doing the repaying. Dumas makes patience itself thrilling.

Revenge Justice Identity Freedom

Study guide

This work is still in copyright, so there is no full text on the page. What you get instead: the context, the cast, the ideas and the themes — enough to read it well, and to know exactly what to watch for in the first thirty pages.

“Wait and hope.”

The cast, in the Character Atlas →Literary devices →Where it sits in time →

Go deeper

Identity — how other works handle it →Freedom — how other works handle it →Justice — how other works handle it →

The castFull atlas →

Edmond Dantès

Sailor, prisoner, then Count

The Count of Monte Cristo · Alexandre Dumas

Wants: To repay four men exactly what they took from him.
Undone by: He begins to enjoy the arithmetic of revenge a little too much.

Fernand Mondego

Soldier, then nobleman

The Count of Monte Cristo · Alexandre Dumas

Wants: Mercédès, by whatever means gets him there.
Undone by: He builds a public reputation he cannot afford to have examined.

Now read the first page with all of this in mind.

The notes here are the map; the book is the journey.

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