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The Count of Monte Cristo - Lecture Two: The Abyss (Chapters X-XX) (Patreon)

Published:
2023-07-15 20:24:37
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2026-06
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Content

'Dantès had been thrown into the sea - and a thirty-six pound cannonball tied to his feet was dragging him to the bottom. The sea is the graveyard of the Château d'If...'

Today our journey through Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo continues. We're talking about transformation, history, crisis, fate, freedom, books, hope, and much more.

Timestamps:

  • 0:00 the great adventure continues
  • 2:00 contemporary critics of Dumas
  • 5:00 reader, writer & dramatic irony
  • 10:00 what makes a great antagonist?
  • 14:00 the importance of studying history
  • 16:00 on the character of Villefort
  • 19:00 Napoleon and the Hundred Days
  • 20:00 the idea that character is destiny
  • 23:00 ‘one regime follows another…’
  • 25:00 prison cell as microcosm for life
  • 26:00 returning to Edmond Dantès
  • 29:00 the death and rebirth motif
  • 34:00 trauma & existential crisis
  • 37:00 hell, hope & rising again
  • 39:00 cruelty of solitary confinement
  • 44:00 the importance of counting the days
  • 48:00 hope, aims & sense of progression
  • 52:00 what happens when hope is lost?
  • 53:00 Edmond meets Abbé Faria
  • 54:00 finding freedom within fate
  • 58:00 ‘one-hundred-and-fifty books’
  • 1:01:00 ‘he was a different man…’
  • 1:02:00 graveyard of the Château d'If
  • 1:05:00 enjoying plot-driven fiction
  • 1:06:00 what are you making of the story?

Recommended Resources:

  • Film Appreciation: As we have spoken about the value of looking forward to things, I would love to turn your attention to an upcoming historical drama. Ridley Scott's Napoleon, starring Joaquin Phoenix, is coming out later this year. What do you make of the trailer?
  • Documentary Series: PBS have an excellent four-part documentary series here on Napoleon, which is well worth watching for greater insight into the man and an understanding of the climate of the time.
  • Short Story Pairing: For our next short fiction pairing, you might find it interesting to read Edgar Allen Poe's tale of revenge, 'The Cask of Amontillado', which is available in this collection.
  • Retraining Your Brain: Whilst we have the potential to control our thoughts and emotions, that doesn't mean it's easy. But Cognitive Behavioural Therapy can provide us with tools to make it easier. Jason Satterfield does a great job outlining some of the best mindset techniques here.
  • The Psychology of Evil: The studies of psychologist Philip Zimbardo have done a lot to inform my understanding of heroes, villains, and environmental influence. You might find his Ted Talk here to be illuminating.
  • The Right to Remain Innocent: Whilst we're thinking about unjust imprisonment, it might be a good time to recommend this excellent lecture from Law Professor James Duane on the importance of exercising one's right to remain silent. 
  • Thought Experiment: Abbé Faria says that 'one hundred and fifty books, carefully chosen, give you, if not a complete summary of human knowledge, at least everything that is useful for a man to know. Let's think about what volumes would make it into such a curated library. 

Reading Assignment:

Our next discussion will cover up to and including chapter thirty-one of the story, which takes us up to page 323 in the Robin Buss Penguin edition.

Questions to Consider:

1) What does hope mean to you? And how does one overcome crisis?

2) Is there a difference between popular and great literature?

3) What work would you personally include in Abbé Faria's curation of one-hundred-and-fifty books? 

And please do share with us your favourite passages and ideas from the latest instalments of this riveting story.

Happy reading, everybody!

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Comments

Kristen Egener Chaddah

I happened to stumble upon Jared Henderson’s Top 10 Books of All Time. He seems very much in sync with you, Ben. He describes these as books you want to keep reading over and over again until you die. Here is his list: 10. David Hume’s A Treatise on Human Nature; 9. Neil Stevenson’s Anathem; 8. St. Augustine’s Confessions; 7. A.G. Sertillanger’s The Intellectual Life; 6. Alastair McIntyre’s After Virtue; 5. The Narrative of Frederick Douglass written by the author; 4. Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian*; 3. Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Dispossessed; 2. Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment; 1. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.

Suz R

I am enjoying the pacing and the sense of foreboding that it is building up to. It warmed my heart and made me shed a tear when the Abbe took him under his wing as a son and shared everything with him that he had. I could feel the love and respect grow between the two men and I feel it is one reason why Dante didn’t lose his mind in the dungeon. His body may have been trapped in a cell but his mind and the ability to travel to different places in his kind through speech and imagination made him free. I must admit I had to read past the cliff hanger. For someone who is terrified of swing in water that I can’t stand up in , the thought of being wrapped in burial clothing then having a 32 # cannon ball attached and thrown over the cliff made my heart skip a beat. I had to catch myself as I was holding my break waiting for him to break through the surface of the water. Once he did I think I took as deep a breath as he did 😂🤣😂

Natethreat

While I think literary works are great and a must to have in our list of 150 books, I think there should be some room for at least 2 academic works. I found these 2 books in particular to hold such vast knowledge. These can take you incredibly far and open your eyes to our physical world and universe in such an intimate way. 1) Calculus Early Transcendentals 2e by Briggs, Cochran and Gillett. 2) Physics for Scientists and Engineers 4e by Knight. You may need to brush up on your algebra to get the ball rollin' (I recommend Practical Algebra by Wong, Bukalov and Slavin if so). But, calculus is the language of physics, and physics is the absolute law of the universe. The (physical) calculus book will carry you through almost all of the major branches of calculus (the online version contains 2 chapters on differential Equations). If you want a physical book to shore up the differentials, I recommend Differential Equations by Edwards and Penny. The physics book will carry you through every single major* physics topic, kinematics to quantum mechanics and even more. All at a baseline or fundamental level. By no means do you have to finish the entire calc book to start on this book, once you get your differentiation and integration down you can start on Knight. If we can be indulged for some more academic works in our list for Faria, then I propose adding: 3) Matrix and Power Series Methods by Lee and Scarborough. 4) Classical Mechanics by Taylor. 5) Optics 5e by Hecht. 6) Introduction to Electromagnetism 4e by Griffiths. 7) Quantum Mechanics by McIntyre. 8) Fundamentals of Statistical and Thermal Physics by Reif. 9) Modern Astrophysics by Carroll and Ostlie.* Power series is covered in the first mentioned calc book, but matrices are not. Matrices would have been introduced to you in the Knight book, but if you want more in depth coverage, the Lee and Scarborough book has a short and sweet and no BS section on linear algebra (matrices). I mention this specifically, because matrices and their applications is critical for quantum mechanics. Classical Mechanics is going into more depth in kinematics, and even some relativity that was only introduced in Knights book. Introductory optics was covered in Knight, but Hecht has more applications and covers more nuance that takes place in optics. Also introduced in Knight, electromagnetism is more thoroughly covered in Griffiths. Again, the basics of quantum are introduced in Knight, McIntyre (my optics professor in undergrad) covers all major topics in quantum mechanics. And finally thermo, yep, introduced in Knight, but explained more in-depth with Reif. Lastly, astrophysics, the only topic not well covered in Knight*, is covered in great depth in Carrol & Ostlie. Books 3 - 9 are of course optional but encouraged. Perhaps a healthcare professional, a chemist, and a biologist could chime in with their most important textbooks!

Nikki H

This is so much better than the Three Musketeers IMHO… I am “worried” that when the story switches over to Dumas as the writer, I will not enjoy The Count of Monte Cristo as much as I have so far. The first 20 chapters of this book would definitely be on my list of 150 faves, time will tell if I will keep it on my list when the writer changes!