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The Count of Monte Cristo - Lecture Three: The Escape (Chapters XXI-XXXI) (Patreon)

Published:
2023-07-25 19:03:31
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2026-06
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Content

'I have taken the place of Providence to reward the good; now let the avenging God make way for me to punish the wrongdoer!'

Today our journey through Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo continues. We're talking about escape, freedom, reward, punishment, serialisation, identity, and much more.

Timestamps:

  • 0:00 on reward vs punishment
  • 3:00 pain, suffering & ego crisis
  • 6:00 free will & moral accountability
  • 10:00 freedom to choose our response
  • 13:00 psychology of punishment & reward
  • 16:00 tyranny, power & unjust punishment
  • 22:00 Edmond escapes from the Chateau d’If
  • 26:00 being reborn & rising from chaos
  • 28:00 using the past to understand the present
  • 31:00 on the sickness of the century
  • 34:00 Edmond doesn’t recognise himself
  • 40:00 the identities of Edmond Dantés
  • 48:00 the influence of the Arabian Nights
  • 53:00 divine will vs individual will
  • 55:00 who has the right to vengeance?
  • 57:00 judgement, justice & mercy
  • 1:00:00 what are you making of the story?

Recommended Resources:

  • The Arabian Nights: The tales of the 1,001 Nights, from Ali Baba and the forty thieves to the voyages of Sinbad, were an enormous influence on Alexandre Dumas and are a powerful complement to your deep reading.
  • Celebrated Crimes: Before embarking upon The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas produced an incredibly popular series of famous and scandalous historical crimes, stories of murder, poisoning, betrayal, and revenge. 
  • Shakespeare Pairing: Our read-through of the works of Shakespeare has lined up nicely with Dumas' story. If you haven't experienced The Merchant of Venice already, treat yourself to a viewing of this film adaptation starring Al Pacino as Shylock and then enjoy our discussion. 
  • Poetry Supplement: You might find this to be a splendid opportunity to relish some great Romantic poetry. I recommend going to poems by Shelley, Wordsworth, and Byron in this volume.
  • The Prince: Machiavelli's influential treatise on political power is certainly worth returning to as a complementary secondary text for our reading of Alexandre Dumas' exciting story.
  • Bible Pairing: 'Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.' You might find that Romans 12:1-21 hits upon a lot of themes that we will want to think about as we continue on this adventure. 
  • Our Adventure So Far: If you would like a refresher for any of our discussions, then you can return our first lectures here, here, and here.

Reading Assignment:

Our next discussion will cover up to and including chapter thirty-nine of the story, which takes us up to page 456 in the Robin Buss Penguin edition.

Questions to Consider:

1) Can vengeance ever be justified? 

2) What do you think makes a great cliffhanger?

3) What elements made this story such an incredibly popular one? 

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

Anonymous

For me, this continues to be a more enjoyable rereading experience because of Ben’s suggestions for supplemental works, analysis and being part of a great book club.

Suz R

What I have noticed and what makes the book for me up to this point is that Revenge is another character to Dumas in my mind. We can see that Dante’s still has a heart as he protects his old master from ruin and provides for him and his family above and beyond what he has lost. If he was truly “dead” inside then helping his old master and friend would not have been first in his mind at least to my way of thinking. So for me Dante is still in there in a little cell working his way out every now and then so there is some hope that it will end well at the close of the story.

Daisy

I love this set of chapters! Edmond is finally free, and it is exciting to see how he reintegrates himself back to the world. Of course, this is overly complicated due to the fact that he is driven by revenge and that he has wealth at his disposal. It would be a very different revenge story if he did not have this treasure. I admire his endurance of waiting for 9 years until he sets his plan into motion. I wonder if there was ever a time he considered going a different path and if Abbe Farria would've approved. After the abbe, he didn't really have another mentor/father figure to advise him. He carried this burden on his own. I really enjoyed the chapters with the Morrels. To me, they are good people, and I was happy to see them get saved/rewarded after so many misfortunes. Why did Edmond wait another 3 months and get it to the point where Morrel was going to end his life? This is similar to waiting until Ali had his tongue cut before saving him. Does he want them to be at the lowest of lows when he saves them so that they are the more indebted to him?

Nikki H

So good!! I too would really love to see an epic unabridged movie/TV series of TCOMC… if it was done for Lord of the Rings it should certainly be done for this amazing story as well I think.