In the beginning of the book The Count of Monte Cristo we meet Edmond Dantes; he comes across as a model of honesty, ability, and innocence. “He was a fine tall, slim young fellow, with black eyes, and hair as dark as a ravens wing; and his whole appearance bespoke that calmness and resolution peculiar to men accustomed from their cradle to contend with danger (pg 4). ” Regardless of his youth, he is a useful leader to his sailors.
He was also very devoted to his father and fiancee. Dantes was capable of looking into the good side of the people that disliked him like Danglars “a man of twenty-five or twenty -sixof unprepossessing countenance, obsequious to his superiors, insolent to his inferiors (pg6),” Caderousse “a man of twenty-five or twenty-six years of age (pg17),” and Fernand “tall, strapping, black eyed Catalan, with a red complexion, brown skin, and fierce air (pg21).
Even thought they were mean to Dantes he always treated them fairly and civilly Alexander Dumas shows us that when Morrel asks Dantes to evaluate Danglars’s work on the ship, Dantes could easily ruin his enemy’s career with a mean word but he chooses to put aside his personal feelings and honestly evaluates Danglars on a professional level. “If you mean as a responsible agent that you ask me the question, I believe there is nothing to say against him, and that you will be content with the way in which he has performed his duty (pg12).
Similarly, rather than reproach Caderousse for mistreating his father, Dantes politely welcomes him into his home and offers to lend him money. Dantes even manages to control his will toward Fernand, his rival for Mercedes feelings. Dantes is loyal to those he loves and sees the best in those who are flawed. While Dantes sits atop the pedestal of honesty and generosity, his three enemies could not be further from it. Unaware of Dantes’s kindness and tolerance, they have convinced themselves that he is very mean.
When Dantes takes pride in his good luck, the other men feel injury to their own egos. There are only two enemies of Dantes, Caderousse and Danglars, actually dislike Dantes at this point; Fernand’s hatred of Dantes, by contrast, does not stem from any will of Dantes’s character. Fernand simply dislikes Dantes because he is the main obstacle to his own happiness with Mercedes. Alexander Dumas sets these three grudging men up as foilscharacters whose attitudes or emotions contrast with and thereby accentuate those of another characterto the noble-hearted Dantes.
Though the three men all participate in Dantes’s downfall, they are each guilty of a different crime that corresponds to their different attributes and relationships to Dantes. Duma also clearly portrays Danglars as the most villainous of Dantes’s three enemies, because he is the only one who acts on a plan. Perhaps the most important, since Danglars is the only one who suspects the contents of the letter that Dantes is carrying, he is the only one who understands the ramifications of the accusations planned against Dantes.
Well , then, I should say, for instance, resumed Danglars, that if after a voyage such as Dantes has just made, and in which he touched the Isle of Elba, some one were to denounce him to the kings procedure as a Bonapartist(pg 39). ” Fernand’s crime, on the other hand, is an impetuous crime of passion. Gripped with the overwhelming desire to have Mercedes for himself, Fernand takes Danglars’s bait and mails the letter and Caderousse is merely guilty of cowardice and weakness.
He is not an active participant in drafting or mailing the letter. Yet, though Caderousse knows Dantes’s motives regarding the letter are innocent, he says nothing in Dantes’s defense when he is arrested. Though Caderousse feels pity for Dantes as well as guilt over his part in the crime, he is too fearful of implicating himself and chooses to remain quiet and let an innocent man go to prison. Danglars’s clear, calculating ambition, Fernand’s impetuous criminality, and Caderousse cowardice and spinelessness make Dantes joy dissolve.
In this part of the book we see that France is divided by a deep political schism between revolutionary Bonapartist, who hoped to bring Napoleon and his liberal democratic ideas back to the French throne, and conservative royalists, who were committed to the old French royal family and their traditional rule. This is important role in the chapters of The Count of Monte Cristo. Characters associated with the Bonapartist cause, such as Morrel, Dantes, the dead captain, and Noirtier, are portrayed in a sympathetic light, while the aristocratic royalists, such as Villefort and the Marquise de Saint-Meran, and are cast in the roles of villains.
This stark division between good Bonapartist and bad royalists is not surprising, since Dumas was a great admirer of Napoleon and had strong democratic leanings. His father had been a general in Napoleon’s army, and Dumas grew up with a love of freedom and a respect for individual rights. Dantes is undone not only by the jealousy of dishonorable men but also by the oppressive political system of the post-revolutionary era, a system that routinely sentenced suspected radicals to life in prison with little or no proof of guilt.
Dantes is a pawn in a game of political intrigue, and his rights as an individual are ignored as Villefort uses him to advance his personal political goals. Dumas shows us that Villefort dose not obey to the promises tat he made to Dantes of freeing him because that letter that Dantes was to take to Paris is for Villeforts father Noirtier who is a Bonapartist and that can ruin his personal goals. “Had a thunderbolt fallen into the room, Villefort could not have been more stupefied.
He sank into his seat, and hastily turning over the packet, drew forth the fatal letter, at which he glanced with an expression of terrorNoirtier is the father of Villefort, I am lost! (pg 83). ” Noirtier the father of Villefort plats the character of modern political regimes when he tells his son that “in politics . . . there are no men, but ideasno feelings, but interests; in politics we do not kill a man, we only remove an obstacle. “() But sending Dantes to prison only made Villefort fill with vague apprehensions for he had destroyed an innocent man happiness.
Villefort, in his turn, burst into tears, and sank into a chairThe man he sacrificed to his ambition, that innocent victim he made pay the penalty of his father’s faults, appeared to him pale and threatening, leading his affianced bride by the hand, and bringing with remorse (pg98). ” The political system’s prioritization of ideas over men and interests over feelings, along with its perception of man as an obstacle, is a natural outcome of its impersonal and dehumanizing nature. Like Napoleon himself, Dantes eventually emerges as a champion for the rights of the individual, working against the oppressive tyranny of the political system.
Dantes simply loves and admires; he does not analyze or judge. Interestingly, when he emerges later as the Count of Monte Cristo, he is guided only by ideas. He is specifically motivated by one idearevenge; consequently, he becomes incapable of feeling normal human sentiments. For the same reason, it makes sense that when Dantes later falls into error and sin, becoming a strange mixture of hero and antihero, it is his intellect that takes over as a dominating yet dangerous force. This dichotomy between emotion and intellect allows Dumas to show his belief in the supremacy of the Romantic individual over the rational human being.
