Quotes In The Count Of Monte Cristo

The Count of Monte Cristo is a novel in which Alexandre Dumas tells the story of Edmond Dantes, how he was wronged and his eventual plans for revenge. Although there are many characters in the novel, the main characters which Dumas presents all are preoccupied by their own personal pressing issues.When one is blindly consumed by a single thought, it will inevitably lead to nefarious moral decisions. By focusing so intensely, they achieve full realization of a single thought ( revenge) because these people are no longer concerned with the consequences, or ethics of their actions. This is shown in the Count of Monte Cristo with the characters of Danglars and Morcerf, with their jealousy of Dantes, and Villefort, who are extremely ambitious.
Morcerf is jealous because both he and Edmond are in love with Mercedes and she has chosen to marry Edmond over Morcerf (Fernand). Danglars, however, is jealous and angry towards Edmond because when the captain of the ship dies Morrell promotes Edmond to the position of captain instead of Danglars. Thus, Danglars feels he has been robbed of his rightful position. Together, along with Caderousse, these two men who are angry with Edmond, devise a plan to ruin him. Their plan starts with sending an anonymous letter to the public prosecutor about a letter that Edmond is unknowingly carrying to a Bonapartist. They decide to do this even though they are both well aware that Edmond is only doing so on the dying wish of his captain, and not actually because of any malicious intent. By not only allowing, but creating the circumstances which send Edmond to jail, they have shown clear lack of ethics, because they know that their friend should be free but they believe that any negative outcome of Edmond’s life because of their doing is of no
This creates in Dantes his ultimate goal that of revenge and retribution. At the beginning of the novel Dantes is a passive and loyal character that gets himself into trouble when he agrees to deliver a letter for a man’s dying wish. “I’m not proud, but I’m happy, and I think happiness makes a man even blinder than pride.” (16) He does not take the time to consider how delivering the letter will affect his future demonstrating that he is not consumed by his thoughts of revenge at the beginning of the novel. Towards the end of the novel however, a different perspective of Dantes is revealed, he admits that happiness and sadness are all relative to one another, therefore to experience great happiness you must first experience the most profound unhappiness. Dantes puts himself in a position that is god-like to exercise complete control over those people that have wronged him. Abbe Faria is disappointed that he has instilled this feeling of revenge in his heart because it has changed the way Dantes acts as a person; he no longer possessed his morals. Whereas at the beginning of the novel Dantes was full of thoughts on what is right and what is wrong, “I’d rather not know who they are or I’d be forced to hate them.” (26) Dantes says this after he is questioned about people that may hate him because of his ease at success. Dantes goes so far to neglect his previous display