Of vengeful counts and captains

“Should I ever get out of prison, and find a printer courageous enough to publish what I have composed, my literary reputation is forever secured.” Thus spake Abbé Faria to fellow prisoner Edmond Dantès about his life’s work, a treatise on Italian monarchy, closely written on strips from two linen shirts, and as many handkerchiefs, with blood, soot, and red wine. It would have made “one large quarto volume.”

But who could blame Edmond Dantès for showing greater interest in another one of Abbé’s works — a rope-ladder “between twenty-five to thirty feet in length” that could help him drop to his freedom, and fulfil his oath of vengeance against his enemies.

When I first read The Count of Monte Cristo, I was struck not by its celebration of revenge, but how cleverly Alexander Dumas had demonstrated vengeance as a basic human need, not merely a powerful passion.

It reminded me of another book that was published shortly after The Count of Monte Cristo. It also focussed on one man’s revenge, except it was not directed at human beings but towards a fish called Moby-Dick. The Count’s power and reach though is as improbable and mythical as that of the leviathan.

But while Edmond Dantès swims in the Parisian society and strikes at will like the hand of Providence, he is no Moby Dick — he becomes Providence himself: Here Dumas seems to play with the premise that justice itself is only a mechanism that enables victims to exact vengeance. And even though the Count pursues his enemies with single-minded relentlessness, he is no Captain Ahab. The Captain’s vengeance is an end in itself. The vision of Captain Ahab’s corpse united with the dead fish represents the full requital of this vengeance. It is a cold redemption if it can be called one.

Edmond Dantès’ vengeance was only a means toward redemption, even if it does not appear so in the beginning, as we gleefully wait for the Count to strike while he plans and plots against his enemies. Dantès’ real struggle is revealed in this passage where he discloses his identity to the last of his remaining enemies:

“I am he whom you sold and dishonoured — I am he whose betrothed you prostituted, — I am he upon whom you trampled that you might raise yourself to fortune, — I am he whose father you condemned to die of hunger, — I am he whom you also condemned to starvation, and who yet forgives you, because he hopes to be forgiven — I am Edmond Dantès!”

With these words Dantès reclaims his humanity.

In the final analysis The Count of Monte Cristo is a celebration of redemption — a redemption arrived at through vengeance. It is a bloody redemption. But it makes Dantès no less of a hero.

It is only toward the end that we realise how deeply Dumas has seen into the human soul. A lot had happened between Dantès and the woman he loved. They both know that he had destroyed her family. Renewing their love vows at that point would have been bad form, perhaps. So the author is perfectly justified in ending the book where he does. And yet, as we close the book satisfied as Monte Cristo walks away from the love of his life, we unwillingly attest that the satisfaction of revenge equals or surpasses the contentment of requited love.

Published in the Express Tribune, June 20^th, 2010.