The Count of Monte Cristo

Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Edmond Dantès is a 19-year-old, sailing to his home in Marseille. Meanwhile they stop on Elba, an island near Italy, where Napoléon is imprisoned. Dantès spoke to Napoléon himself, who asked the sailor to help deliver a confidential letter to a man in Paris. Edmond was pleased to do it and was of course paid for it. Edmond's good fortune inspires jealousy in those he considers his friends and they accuse him of being a Bonapartist.

Dantès is condemned to a life sentence in the isolated island prison at Château d'If. There he meets another prisoner, Abbé Faria, an Italian priest. Dantès soon begins his own tunnel to reach that of his fellow prisoner, whose escape tunnel has strayed in the wrong direction. The two prisoners eventually connect and quickly become inseparable friends. Abbé is also Edmond’s teacher and educates him well. Meanwhile both men continue to work assiduously on their tunnel, but the elderly and infirm Faria does not survive to see its completion. Knowing that he would soon die, Faria confides in Dantès the location of a great cache of treasure on the Italian islet of Monte Cristo.

After his mentor dies, Dantès uses the opportunity to escape. He moves Faria's body into his own cell and then slips into Faria's body bag. To Dantès surprise, instead of carrying him to the burial ground, as he had expected, the prison guards attach a cannonball to Edmond's feet and throw him into the sea. Remarkably, and with the help of a sailor's training, Dantès frees himself and swims toward a nearby island. When he recovers, he goes to Isle of Monte Cristo and finds the great fortune.

Ten years after his return to Marseilles, Dantès puts into action his plan for revenge. He reinvents himself as the Count of Monte Cristo, a mysterious, fabulously rich aristocrat. Step by step he completes his revenge to friends, who betrayed him, but learns the importance of forgiveness. After he has completed his life task, he marries Haydée, who, at the beginning, was his servant.

To me, Count of Monte Cristo is very important. He showed me that you must never give up and always keep hope for a better future. From the moment, when I read the book and watched the movie, I have always looked at the problem as an “adventure” and as a challenge.