The Count of Monte Cristo

By Alexandre Dumas

There is something deliciously satisfying about a revenge story, which is why we still talk about TV series such as Dallas and Dynasty with their twisted characters who made life miserable for everyone around them, especially those who tried to play along.  We watched week after week being teased along by the possibility of the evil ones getting theirs in the end, but JR and Alexis always managed to stay one step ahead of their avengers.  Revenge stories are as ancient as human society, as if we are as troubled by this need for blood as we are fascinated by it.  When someone does us a great wrong, we often desire revenge with a hunger bordering on obsession.  

Before the rule of law, revenge was handled by the injured parties through duels, which were considered honorable, or by some other means requiring a visit to the confession booth for absolution.  Today, our system of laws and justice takes on the role that eye-for-an-eye vigilantism did in times past.  While this enables us to live in peace, for the most part, there is something a little bit too sanitary for some of us about delegating the function of revenge to a government body.  For these folks, even the death penalty is too humane. 

Revenge is a theme for many of literature’s great and enduring classics.  Ahab seeks to avenge the loss of his leg by killing Moby Dick.  Medea defeats her faithless husband by murdering their sons.   Don Giovanni is undone by his own unwillingness to repent for the harm he has caused countless women.   In The Count of Monte Cristo, like most of these other stories, revenge comes at a high cost and we have to ask was it worth it? 

Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) was a prolific writer of historical fiction in a highly romantic style.  The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo were wildly successful and remain in print a century and a half later.  Both tales involve protagonists seeking revenge for injustices, but The Three Musketeers is more light hearted fun.  The Count of Monte Cristo, on the other hand, is about revenge taken to its ultimate conclusion.  In this book, the main character – a good natured and genuinely honest merchant sailor named Edmond Dantés – falls prey to the ambitions of people he had trusted as friends.  A self-serving politician, whose father’s loyalty to Napoleon could doom his own future, sentences the innocent Dantés to prison for treason in order to prevent his father’s identity from becoming known.  Dantés’ strength of character saves him during his fourteen years in prison because he befriends an ailing priest who imparts a lifetime of education and culture upon this loyal and generous young man.  Dantés’ reward for putting the wellbeing of the priest ahead of his own escape is to learn of a treasure hidden by the priest on a tiny island called Monte Cristo, not far from Elba where the deposed Napolean was sent to exile.

Time, imprisonment, and new-found riches so transform Edmond Dantés that no one recognizes him when he returns to seek revenge against those who had wronged him.  It is only after his escape from prison that he discovers the treachery of people he had trusted and the faithlessness of the woman he still loved.   The once guileless and innocent Dantés is reborn as the Count of Monte Cristo, a compelling and opaque figure with so much money that no one questions who he really is.  The Count studies his enemies to learn their weaknesses in order to ruin them without their knowledge and in the most painful way possible. 

The historical backdrop for The Count of Monte Cristo is the period after Napoleon’s exile, in accordance with the 1814 Treaty of Fountainebleau, leading up to his final defeat at Waterloo.  Napoleon had come to power by exploiting the instability created by the French Revolution.  As emperor, he became an aggressive conqueror and at the height of his power ruled over most of Europe and nearly brought down Russia.  His defeat at Leipzig, in October of 1813, allowed a coalition of nations to install a government in France headed by the long deposed French King.  With the Revolution still fresh in the national memory, many French citizens considered Louis XVIII to be illegitimate.  Napoleon loyalists met in secret to find a way to bring him back from exile and succeeded – for one hundred days until he was overwhelmed at the Battle of Waterloo and banished to the island of Saint Helena off the coast of Africa where he eventually died of cancer.

The betrayal of Edmond Dantés was the result of a conspiracy on the part of two of his friends and the paranoia of a government official whose father had killed a Royalist in a duel.  Dantés could have born all of that had his fiancée, Valentine, remained faithful.  Instead, she married one of the conspirators believing her beloved to be dead and with him had a son whom she loved dearly.  When Dantés, in the person of the Count of Monte Cristo, exacts his revenge there is no way for the story to have a happy ending for the protagonist.  That is the most important lesson from the book.  Revenge may be sweet but it leaves a bitter aftertaste and in the end fails to satisfy.

Copyright 2012 Teresa Friedlander all rights reserved

Les Misérables

by Victor Hugo


A man steals a loaf of bread to feed his sister and her seven hungry children. For this crime, a French court sentences him to five years in prison. While in prison, his sense of outrage festers and he breaks out repeatedly, only to be recaptured and sentenced to additional time for each escape. While serving his time the man, Jean Valjean, exhibits almost superhuman strength in his ability to lift and carry great weights. His prison guard Javert, a man of questionable heritage, becomes obsessed with bringing Valjean to his knees. Nineteen years after stealing the loaf of bread, Jean Valjean walks out of prison a free man. Javert, however, cannot let go of his need to crush his mighty nemesis and devotes the rest of his life to this pursuit.

Les Misérables is an intricately crafted novel that is both epic in scope and hugely entertaining; hidden inside the story is a treatise on how the human condition depends on the will of the people to improve their collective lot. Literally translated, the title means “the impoverished” or “the wretched”. In 19th century France, following the fall of the Bastille and the Reign of Terror, the poor found themselves, once again, at the mercy of the rich, forced to steal food and then being mercilessly prosecuted for trying to survive. Victor Hugo (1802-1885) and his contemporaries believed that wretched conditions created criminals, in contrast to the prevailing view that one’s basic nature and potential were determined at birth. Outsized punishment for desperate acts of survival fueled the still simmering rebellion which had brought down a series of leaders as France struggled to govern itself. In the aftermath of the French Revolution, the government wavered between attempts at forming a republic and reverting to a monarchy, and this instability provided a charismatic Italian artillery officer the opportunity to stage a coup d’état. During his reign, Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte restored to France a false sense of glory by waging wars of aggression. Hubris led Napoleon to believe he could conquer Russia, leaving France weakened for the next many decades.

In Les Misérables Jean Valjean represents the voiceless underclass while Javert represents the abuse of power, under the guise of maintaining law and order, in service to authoritarian rule. Jean Valjean is no angel: upon his release from prison, he steals from a priest and is cruel to a little boy. The priest, representing the Christian notion of forgiveness, enables Jean Valjean to redeem himself by thwarting Javert’s prosecution of the theft. Javert knows that the priest is covering for Jean Valjean and reports the theft anyway. Humbled by the priest’s kindness, Jean Valjean devotes his life to atonement by doing good in the world. In order to live in peace, he changes his name to Monsieur Madeleine, becomes a successful businessman and prominent member of society, and lifts many out of poverty by providing jobs at his factory. None of this matters to “blind justice” in the person of Javert who discovers the true identity of “M. Madeleine” in an ironic plot twist. Javert gleefully arrests his quarry, but once again, Jean Valjean escapes, this time with money in his pockets. While on the lam, Jean Valjean rescues a little girl from servitude at the hands of her foster family and the two bond as father and daughter. Jean Valjean places the child, Cosette, in a convent for her safety while he stays one step ahead of Javert. Meanwhile, other characters and events conspire to bring Jean Valjean and Javert together repeatedly over the next few years.

While Javert pursues Jean Valjean, the Emperor Napoleon becomes desperate to hold onto power. Following France’s humiliating defeat at the hands of Russian General Kutuzov in 1812, the emperor’s former European allies turned against him and formed the so-called Sixth Coalition, putting as many as one million soldiers at the ready. Napoleon, by contrast, had fewer than 500,000 loyal troops remaining. This disadvantage did not stop him from attempting to retake parts of Germany which France had once controlled. The battle at Leipzig resulted in Napoleon abdicating the throne and being exiled to Elba, a small Italian island in the Tuscan Archipelago. A few months later, Napoleon escaped Elba and returned to France where his followers awaited his return from exile. King Louis XVIII left Paris as Napoleon returned in a blaze of glory. Given his outlaw status, a Seventh Coalition of nations established a strong military position along the border shared by France and The United Kingdom of the Netherlands (present day Belgium and The Netherlands). Rather than wait for the Seventh Coalition forces to invade France, Napoleon went on the offensive and quickly found himself surrounded on three sides by British, Dutch, German, Austrian, and Prussian forces. Three days later, on June 18th, 1815, the Battle of Waterloo ended with Napoleon’s final defeat.

Fifty thousand men died at Waterloo, a geographically small area, and the battlefield was literally an enormous pile of rotting bodies. While looting the bodies, Monsieur Thénardier, Cosette’s former guardian, discovers an injured colonel. M. Thénardier claims to be one of Napoleon’s soldiers and promises to help the colonel but instead moves out of sight. A short while later, Jean Valjean discovers the same unconscious colonel and carries him out of the battlefield. M. Thénardier gets credit for the rescue, however, and this leads to the colonel’s son Marius tracking down the wicked Thénardier family in order to give them a reward. By chance, Marius also meets up with Jean Valjean and Cosette who coincidentally all find themselves in the same place at the same time. Marius overhears the Thénardiers plotting to kill Jean Valjean and Cosette, with whom he has fallen in love, and reports this to local police inspector, who is none other than Javert.

Meanwhile student groups in Paris, outraged by the oppressively conservative Orléanists who seized power following Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, stage a rebellion to support creation of a republic which would provide justice for the poor. Marius is part of this movement and believing that Cosette has left Paris, throws himself into the fray. Jean Valjean, none too pleased that Marius and Cosette are in love, can’t decide whether or not he wants Marius to survive the fight, but in the end does the right thing by carrying the injured young man to safety through the sewers of Paris.

The sewers serve a number of purposes in Les Misérables. First, to Victor Hugo and his contemporaries, sewers were a modern day marvel which enabled cities to grow and thrive by carrying away the human waste responsible for cholera epidemics. Sewers are an acknowledgement of the ugly reality of human existence: that everyone’s body produces foul waste regardless of social status. Jean Valjean, fugitive from twisted justice, must enter this fetid underworld conduit in order to save Cosette’s lover and himself. In the same way that blind justice is often unjust, sewers can carry away good things along with waste. Binary thinking, in other words, denies the complexity of humanity.

A prolific writer and poet, Victor Hugo, studied a number of political and philosophical themes throughout his life including good and evil, the “social contract”, equality, justice, utilitarianism, and morality. Les Misérables brings these ideas to life and demonstrates how public will in the form of representative government is the best way to advance the human condition and provide “the greatest good for the greatest number”. Governments “of, by, and for the people” acknowledge both our flaws and our aspirations and, when functioning properly, protect us from ourselves. The people of France followed America’s lead in attempting to create a state based on “liberty, equality, and brotherhood”; unlike forming a new nation where none existed inside of one hot summer, France struggled for more than a century to achieve political stability. While misery and injustice still exist in France, as in the United States, the overall human condition has vastly improved in these two countries.

As we have seen in Japan, however, the human condition can change in a day. We Americans take our government for granted, often vilifying it, even though it is a reflection of ourselves – good, bad, and ugly. State governors who disdain the federal government, are usually first in line for handouts when disaster strikes, and then quick to criticize the assistance as too little too late. Considering the alternatives to our imperfect more perfect union, certain politicians doth protest too much methinks.

Copyright 2011 Teresa Friedlander, all rights reserved

A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” so begins Charles Dickens’ story of the French Revolution. For the ruling classes in 18th century France, it was indeed the best of times. The monarchs and many members of the First and Second Estates – nobility and clergy, respectively – enjoyed lives of great comfort, luxury, and often decadence. For members of the Third Estate – peasants, commoners – life was a constant struggle. Many people died of starvation and even more suffered from malnutrition while aristocrats grew fat and surrounded themselves with gilded opulence. It is during this time that Queen Marie-Antoinette famously responded to reports that the people had no bread, “Well, let them eat cake!”

Across the Atlantic Ocean, meanwhile, the American Colonies declared independence from Great Britain and pledged their lives and treasure to the cause. Hostility between Britain and France was long-standing and King Louis and other nobles, having been tutored on the strategic importance of an alliance with America by Benjamin Franklin, provided the vital naval force that the colonies lacked. Supporting the Americans’ bid for independence came at a price, however, and France’s national debt skyrocketed. Inspired by the success of the American Revolution, French commoners began to give voice to their discontent and sought greater representation in the nation’s General Assembly. Food shortages and low wages, a direct result of the national debt, brought long-simmering resentments to a head and the French Revolution began in April of 1789.

With this political backdrop, Charles Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities partly to entertain his readers (and to pay his bills) but also to illuminate the cruelty and savagery of war and oppression. The story begins in a stage coach, carrying Jarvis Lorry, a manager of Tellson’s Bank, with offices in London and Paris, to Dover where he will take a boat to France. En route, a rider stops the coach and gives Mr. Lorry a message that he is to wait at Dover for a young lady who needs an escort to Paris in order to retrieve her father who has been released after eighteen years in The Bastille. The prisoner, Dr. Alexandre Manette, has been imprisoned for political reasons which are integral to the story, although never fully explained to the reader. Lucie Manette, his daughter, had believed herself to be an orphan until receiving word that her father had survived his ordeal but was gravely ill and near death.

The year is 1775 and travelers between England and France are viewed with great suspicion on either end, given France’s alliance with the rebellious American colonies. The French aristocrats and peasants are increasingly suspicious of each other and treachery is rampant. When Miss Manette and Mr. Lorry arrive in Paris, they make contact with Dr. Manette’s former servant, Monsieur Ernest Defarge, who has become a wine merchant in a poor section of the city. After passing the scrutiny of Madame Thérèse Defarge who keeps track of traitors – those who would crush the fermenting revolution – by knitting their names and descriptions into a shroud, Miss Manette and Mr. Lorry are led to the ailing Dr. Manette whose imprisonment has left him in a psychotic state. Two things had sustained the doctor during his ordeal: making shoes and caressing a lock of his baby daughter’s hair, the “golden thread”.

Between the time of Dr. Manette’s release from the Bastille and the storming of that infamous prison on July 14, 1789, the story of the French Revolution takes place. Dickens uses his characters both to represent certain factions as well as to provide a human dimension to the realities of this war. Monsieur Defarge represents the rational revolutionaries who were influenced by some of the great thinkers of the time, notably Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His wife, Madame Defarge, on the other hand symbolizes the pent-up blood lust that, after the fall of the Bastille, corrupted the revolution. Lucie Manette, a rather one-dimensional character, represents pure goodness and light in contrast to Madame Defarge’s vicious darkness. Charles Darnay, whom Lucie eventually marries, is also a mostly uninteresting character. His story, however, of expatriation and repatriation, of mistaken identity, and loyalty gives life to the difficulty of being a French nobleman with a conscience during a time when nobles were indiscriminately slaughtered.

Curiously, the most interesting characters in the book play supporting roles, and Dickens takes his time in developing them. Sydney Carton, a look-alike for Charles Darnay, spends most of the book being an underachieving, alcoholic with a brilliant legal mind. Dr. Manette starts out in a state of pathetic psychosis, regains his mind, loses it again, and by necessity becomes heroic. The Marquis d’Evrémonde is the villain we love to hate who gets his just desserts. Finally, Jerry Cruncher provides some comic relief in his role as a “resurrection man”, who literally raises the dead, although not in the biblical sense.

Charles Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities as a serial which he published himself. In spite of the commercial nature of this work, akin to a TV mini-series, it is a compelling story well-deserving of the label “classic”, not only for its literary merits but also for the universal truths it reveals. The French celebrate Bastille Day the way we Americans commemorate Independence Day. King Louis the 16th and his predecessors used the Bastille, and other prisons, to house enemies of the state. These prisons were places of torture, where suffering was prolonged because death was considered too humane. The storming of the Bastille marked the end of the monarchy; the Revolution, however, had not run out of steam and in the years following Bastille Day, political instability and the invention of the guillotine led to a period known as the “Reign of Terror”. During this time, King Louis the 16th and his queen, Marie Antoinette, lost their heads along with as many as 40,000 others. The oppressors became the oppressed, the prey became the predators.

What A Tale of Two Cities illustrates better than anything else I have read is how the lust for vengeance can easily drown out the voice of reason, turning a fight against a repressive government into a vehicle for another, more brutal, form of repression. Madame Defarge slowly gains the upper hand in her marriage and in leading the revolution after the fall of the Bastille, causing hundreds, perhaps thousands, to line up for the guillotine. No one is safe from her vengeance; even her husband feels her scorn for his loyalty to Dr. Manette during “The Terror”.

From a literary standpoint, A Tale of Two Cities is about duality – as indicated by the title and the opening line – in life and human nature. Certain characters are purely good or evil to emphasize this theme. London is a place of civilized tranquility while in Paris, blood runs down the streets like one of Monsieur Defarges’ broken wine barrels. Charles Darnay, a Frenchman of noble blood, tutors the children of aristocrats in London to support himself and his family. He is hard-working and honest while his double, Sydney Carton, is a ne’er do well who earns enough to support his drinking habit by ghost-writing legal briefs for a prominent barrister. As time passes, however, certain characters develop an internal duality making them far more interesting than Lucie Manette and Charles Darnay, the superficial protagonists of the book.

A Tale of Two Cities ends as it begins, with a famous quote: “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known.” The writing in between the first and last lines is worthy of such timeless brackets.

Copyright 2011, Teresa Friedlander, all rights reserved