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First printed and published in installments in a magazine between 1844 and 1846, “The Count of Monte Cristo,” the literary debut of Alexandre Dumas, immediately achieved extraordinary success, thanks to the originality of the plot and the style proposed by the author.
Dumas’s work is indeed a novel steeped in adventure and paths that, in many aspects, align it with detective fiction. Although it may seem irreconcilable with the characteristics just listed, the real peculiarity of the book lies, however, in the profound and meticulous analysis that Dumas performs on the psychology of his characters and, more generally, on the emotions that taint the human soul. Furthermore, the author illuminates the darker corners of society and the political and cultural situation of the first half of the nineteenth century, providing us with important documentation on the life of the time.
The plot of “The Count of Monte Cristo” is constructed from an interweaving of small stories narrating the deeds of characters who seemingly have nothing to do with each other: these stories, however, as the novel progresses, reconnect with one another, leading to the moment of maximum tension, crowded with numerous twists in which all the knots scattered along the way by Dumas inevitably come home to roost.
The most captivating aspect of the entire story is the ingenuity of the protagonist who, imprisoned in the dungeons of the Château d'If by the power lust of a magistrate and the jealousy of two rivals, after fourteen years escapes, takes possession of an ancient treasure, and forges a new identity.
His cunning will thus allow him to present himself in Parisian high society with the title “Count of Monte Cristo” and to infiltrate the lives of his enemies who have now become wealthy thanks to their misdeeds.
Like a serpent that slithers before preparing to strike, the Count will earn the trust of his antagonists, only to destroy their families from within; however, the revenge will be concealed by the count with such acting skill that his enemies, until the final revelation, would not suspect for a moment that he is the architect of the misfortunes that plague them.
With the same skill with which the protagonist introduces himself into the society of Paris, Dumas immerses us and guides us through the dark psychological labyrinth of a man doomed to lose a sunlit future of happiness, due to the fatality of fate; with unparalleled mastery, and almost without us noticing, the author immerses us indeed into the ocean of the protagonist’s mind.
From the despair of having lost a father and the beloved woman, Dumas drags us along the paths of divine punishment of which Monte Cristo becomes the bearer; from the protagonist’s conscience, which the desire for revenge has overwhelmed, to the crushing awareness of having crossed a line and thus having become worse than his rivals.
And it is at the moment when the sobbing of the enemy clears the fog of hate that oppressed Monte Cristo’s mind, that he will realize that the life lost within the dark walls of the Château d'If will never return, and that not even revenge can restore it.
In that instant of being struck by this awareness, the path traced for him by Dumas takes an unexpected turn: that of forgiveness and the pursuit of redemption.
In doing so, the author dismantles the structure built on the foundations of the nightmare, pushing Monte Cristo to shed the mask worn for vengeance and return to being the old Edmond Dantès, whom imprisonment and hate had killed. He will be able to forget the horror, bury it in the damp soil of the past, and begin a new life, with his gaze finally illuminated by the prospect of a different future.
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