I don't want to blow anyone's mind, but "The Count of Monte Cristo" is an absolute banger of a book. I was warned when I started to remember that Dumas was paid by the word and it was okay to skip boring parts but it turns out there are no boring parts in this book.
When I was a precocious reader on the cusp of adolescence, several of my aunts gifted me classics - "Jane Eyre" and "Pride and Prejudice" - and I wish to travel back in time and urge them to abandon gendered reading choices and be willing to give a young but hungry reader a 1,200 page book. I think kids that age are reading Tolkien and there is significantly less dragging filler in "The Count of Monte Cristo" than in Lord of the Fucking Rings.
Things happen in "The Count of Monte Cristo" and the originally serialized nature means they happen fast and frequently. Under ten chapters and BAM welcome to Château d'If.
It's so GOOD. The imprisonment and the scraping away the rocks and the escape in a body bag are the foundational stuff of adventure that they're easy for a small child to latch onto, like I did, but there's so much else that I can see would have fired up my imagination. The dreamy grotto of drugs and treasure made on the deserted island, the carnival, the gore of the execution, dramatic bandit backgrounds, kidnappings, horse shenanigans, poisoning, secret identities ...
Lesbians.
What's fascinating to me is that going in I knew, obviously, that the book is a tale of revenge. What I didn't understand was what a different thing that was, either in France or in the 1840s or maybe just to Dumas, because when I think of a protagonist consumed by revenge, I think tragedy.
"The Count of Monte Cristo" isn't tragic. It has a happy ending. Dantès achieves his goals. The men who ruined his life are ruined in turn. He comes to realize he has gone too far less because innocents get caught in his machinations and more because even after his escape and return to France, he can't keep himself from seeking out human kindness and connection, and one of those kind people who have kept him anchored nearly has his own happiness ruined by the uncaring tsunami that are the Count's plots. But Dumas still gives him an ending where he is loved and there is hope that he can become a man who is truly living again.
In a modern story, revenge is often about becoming the thing you seek to revenge yourself against, or the emptiness of obtaining revenge, how revenge can't undo the wrongs that have been done to you, often acting as a cautionary tale about the importance of forgiveness.
It's never suggested that Dantès should forgive Danglars, Villefort, and Fernand. They did something terrible to him and all three go on to be more terrible to others -- Villefort arguably being the exception. While Fernand lies to get what he wants on grander scales, betrays trusts for his own glory, and essentially commits war crimes, and Danglars' pursuit of greater wealth lead to him stealing from more than just a single shipowner, Villefort seems to execute his duties as a crown prosecutor seriously and diligently. But he initially had the power to stop the petty scheme of Danglars and Fernand and instead of fulfilling his duties, uses his power to make things worse than I think Danglars and Fernand envisioned. In his initial betrayal of Edmond he is betraying his duty to the idea of justice, and you come to see the rot spreading through everything in his life. By the time the Count arrives to punish these men, they've reached points where they need more than just the forgiveness of Edmond Dantès.
There is forgiveness in the Count's story, but it's about forgiving himself and I'm glad, because in 2023 there's something profoundly satisfying about being able to punish people who are absolute trash and still have the avenging angel sail off into the sunset with a beautiful woman.