Action. Adventure. A mysterious figure who knows your darkest secrets.
Alexandre Dumas’s 1844 novel is an epic that sweeps from the high seas to dark fortresses, and from the East Orient to Parisian glitterati. It’s stuffed with intrigue, betrayal, bandits, poisonings, secret loves, and daring feats.
But The Count of Monte Cristo isn’t just the Napoleonic Era’s version of The Bourne Identity. It also raises eternal questions about despair, injustice, and what it takes to be truly happy.
In fact, this novel is such a one-two punch of page-turning action and great themes that I put it on my list of top ten best classic books for beginners.
There’s never a bad time for a good old-fashioned adventure novel, so go ahead and lose yourself in action and intrigue with this Count of Monte Cristo summary.
What is The Count of Monte Cristo About?
The Count of Monte Cristo is one of the most complex novels you’ll find on a classic literature bookshelf.
The plot follows four different families who have complex interconnections of betrayals, marriage, secret engagements, and murders.
As if that weren’t enough, many of the characters go by multiple titles and names. The main character alone has nine aliases!
Since we can’t get into all the intricate subplots, we’ll focus on the main story thread.
Plot Summary:
The story opens with Edmond Dantes, a young French sailor, returning from a successful voyage.
Edmond has his whole life ahead of him. His employer, Morrel, is about to promote him to captain, and he’s about to marry the beautiful Mercedes.
One of Edmond’s shipmates, Dangars, is jealous of his promotion. Mondego, the cousin of Mercedes, wants to marry Mercedes himself.
The two meet up on the night before Edmond’s wedding and plan to destroy the unsuspecting sailor.
The next day, as Edmond prepares for his wedding, Danglars and Mondego frame him for supporting Napoleon Bonaparte - which, at the time, was an act of treason.
Edmond is immediately arrested and hauled before the crown prosecutor, Villefort.
Villefort realizes that Edmond is innocent. However, to protect his own political career, Villefort refuses to give Edmond a fair trial and condemns him to a life sentence.
Locked in the dark Chateau d’If, a fortress prison on a tiny island, Edmond grows bitter and suicidal.
However, just as he begins to despair, Edmond meets another prisoner: Abbé Faria, an educated and creative priest. The Abbé accidentally tunneled into Edmond’s cell while trying to escape, and invites Edmond to join his escape attempt.
Over the next eight years, the Abbé gives Edmond a thorough education, transforming him from an uneducated sailor into a crafty man of the world.
The Abbé also reveals the location of a hidden treasure that he discovered just before his imprisonment.
When the Abbé dies of a stroke, Edmond seizes his chance to escape.
He hides the Abbé’s body and takes its place inside the death shroud. The jailors throw the shroud into the ocean, allowing Edmond to swim away.
Now free, Edmond recovers the hidden treasure and prepares to settle the scores of the past. He gives himself a new title in honor of the island where he found the treasure: the Count of Monte Cristo.
First, he finds his old employer, Morrel, now on the brink of bankruptcy. Edmond secretly pays his debts and sends him a ship full of cargo, restoring him to wealth.
Next, Edmond goes after his enemies: Count de Morcerf (Modego), Danglars, and Villefort. All three have grown successful and wealthy.
Mercedes gave up hope for his return and resigned herself to marrying Modego, with whom she now has a son, Albert.
The Count of Monte Cristo cleverly ingratiates himself with Parisian high society, including his old enemies, who do not recognize him as the man they betrayed.
Soon, however, they come to fear the Count and his seemingly endless knowledge of their dark secrets. Edmond engineers the downfall of each one, ensuring that they receive the just reward for their sins.
First, Edmond uses the testimony of an enslaved Greek girl, Haydeé, to reveal that Modego made his fortune through murder and slavery.
This revelation causes Mercedes to leave her husband. Albert also disowns his father, causing him to commit suicide.
Mercedes and Albert learn the truth about the Count of Monte Cristo. Edmond gives them enough money to live a modest lifestyle, while Albert seeks a new life as a soldier to restore his family’s honor.
To avenge himself on Danglars, Edmond uses his wealth to manipulate the stock market and Danglars’ creditors. The greedy Danglars is left penniless while Edmond restores Danglars’ wealth to the hospitals he embezzled it from.
Edmond reserves the worst punishments for the corrupt official Villefort - who is not only guilty of falsely imprisoning Edmond, but also of attempting to kill his own illegitimate child.
Villefort’s wife hates him for this. Edmond teaches her the art of poisoning, and she begins to psychologically torture Villefort by killing off all the members of their family.
Finally, Villefort ends up in court with proof of his evil crimes. Faced with his life of evil, he goes completely insane.
Edmond arranges one more act of generosity: he arranges the marriage between Villefort’s daughter, Valentine, and her lover, the son of his kind employer Morrel.
First, though, he allows young Morrel to believe that his beloved has died. When Edmond finally reveals that she is alive, Morrel can experience true happiness because he has known true despair.
Edmond finds love with Haydeé and returns to normal life.
Themes in The Count of Monte Cristo
Envy vs Happiness
Most of the evil characters in The Count of Monte Cristo are driven to evil acts because they envy what others have.
Danglars is greedy for Edmond’s promotion; Mondego wants Mercedes for himself; Villefort is reaching for an illustrious career.
In contrast, blessed with a good job and a beautiful fiancée, Edmond feels content with the small happiness he has.
That’s why Edmond’s last act as the Count of Monte Cristo is a strange blessing to young Maximilian Morrel: letting him believe that his beloved is dead before revealing that she’s really alive.
“There is neither happiness nor misfortune in this world, there is merely the comparison between one state and another,” Edmond tells Maximilian. “Only someone who has suffered the deepest misfortune is capable of experiencing the heights of felicity.”
By letting Maximilian think that he has lost the love of his life, Edmond ensures that he will never take her for granted. Maximilian will always cherish the happiness that he has instead of giving in to self-destructive envy.
You may have a whole stack of goals left to achieve - in your personal life, your career, your fitness journey, and so on.
But can you be proud and content with the progress you make every day? Or do you let yourself get eaten up with envy and comparison?
Before you get caught up in the rat race, ask yourself: what’s really worth chasing? Are you going after a goal that will cost you something that’s too precious to give up?
Or, in Dumas’s words, “Often we pass beside happiness without seeing it, without looking at it, or even if we have seen and looked at it, without recognizing it.”
Human Justice vs God’s Justice
Dumas uses the shaky political atmosphere of nineteenth-century France to pit his protagonist against a corrupt system of justice.
The law of France cares about impressing its international allies by crushing pro-Napoleon ideology - not setting innocent people free.
Edmond soon realizes that the law can’t help him. If he wants to get justice for his fourteen years in prison, he’ll have to take revenge into his own hands.
Ultimately, though, he recognizes that his vigilante justice is imperfect. He can’t read his enemies’ souls, so he can’t know exactly how much someone has to suffer to make up for their crimes.
Not only that, but getting revenge tasted sweet in the moment, but didn’t really satisfy him. It was only when he fell in love with Haydeé that Edmond began to heal from the past’s injustices.
His final words of advice are to forget about revenge and entrust justice to God: "So, do live and be happy, children dear to my heart, and never forget that, until the day when God deigns to unveil the future to mankind, all human wisdom is contained in these two words: 'wait' and 'hope'!"
You may not believe in an afterlife where everyone receives justice for their actions. But whether or not you do, there’s still an important lesson about revenge here.
In The Count of Monte Cristo, the title character arranged the circumstances for each of his enemies’ downfalls.
But Edmond didn’t have to do much - he just brought his enemies face to face with their own evil deeds and rotten souls.
In other words, the evil characters discovered that a life of evil is its own punishment. They fell victim to their own greed and corruption.
Dumas seems to suggest that even if Edmond hadn’t destroyed his enemies, it might have only been a matter of time before they destroyed themselves.
When a friend stabs you in the back or a boss throws you under a bus, it’s natural to want to see them get theirs. Or at least to tell them what you think of them.
But instead of acting on a vengeful impulse, take a lesson from The Count of Monte Cristo. It’s not up to us to administer ad hoc justice, but we can let nature take its course; their own character will probably make them suffer more than you can.
Politics vs Morality
Dumas sets the beginning of his story amid the political instability of nineteenth-century France.
In 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte had overthrown the French monarchy and declared himself the first Emperor of France. But by 1814, Napoleon’s political enemies forced him into exile and restored power to the monarchy.
If you were a supporter of Napoleon during this time, too bad - you’d be exiled or imprisoned too.
It didn’t matter that, only a matter of months prior, it was an act of treason not to support Napoleon. Personal convictions were swept aside, and, as in Edmond’s case, all it took was an accusation of “Bonapartism” for you to find yourself behind bars for life.
It’s no secret that American political attitudes are changing and polarizing faster than ever before. It’s a common complaint that a political belief might be out-of-date as soon as you adopt it, and staying out of step with the push of progress can get you canceled.
What’s the point? Political norms come and go - in the dramatic days of Napoleonic France as well as on our own social media feeds.
As Dumas puts it, “The difference between treason and patriotism is only a matter of dates.”
How you respond to those trends, though, is a matter of character.
One of Edmond’s neighbors, Caderousse, overheard Danglars and Modego cooking up the false accusation of Bonapartism.
Caderousse was even present when Edmond was arrested on these charges, but was too afraid of being marked as a Bonapartist himself to vouch for the innocent man. Later, Caderousse’s weak character becomes his downfall.
Dumas shows us that you can’t dodge a political witch hunt - but you can meet it with integrity.
And if you don’t, you might find that the consequences of staying silent are worse than those of speaking up.
What is the Moral of The Count of Monte Cristo?
Ultimately, the message of The Count of Monte Cristo is that no life is safe from injustice or hardship, but opposition can be the best thing that ever happened to you.
Edmond eventually admits that his imprisonment was a blessing in disguise. Without it, he would have had nothing to strive for, no reason to improve himself.
The intense pressure of his misfortunes spurred him on to incredible accomplishments and forced him to gain deep wisdom.
As Edmond puts it, “Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes.”
Stay Strong with Classic Literature
The quote above from The Count of Monte Cristo is exactly what classic literature is all about.
It’s about learning that life is full of stormy troubles and developing the virtues that help you ride out those storms.
Classic literature is such a good training in virtue that it can literally change your life.
That’s why I wrote an ebook to unlock the greatest classic works of them all: the plays of William Shakespeare.
Download your free copy of The Bard and the Bees: What Shakespeare taught me about sex, evil, and life in our modern world and discover how the Bard’s plays change your life!
Until next time,
-Evan