Le Comte de Monte-Cristo and the Contemporary Experience
Monte-Cristo provides an excellent means of discussing complex ideas that touch the contemporary experience: freedom, justice, forgiveness, and revenge.
By Dr. Aileen Ruane
An Acclaimed Novel
On September 25, 2025, the Department of Modern Languages and the Institute for Faith & Freedom screened the 2024 French film “Le Comte de Monte-Cristo” (“The Count of Monte-Cristo”) to an audience of over 60 students and faculty members. Several students engaged in a discussion after the film concluded to discuss the film’s themes, such as the perversion of justice through vengeance and the role innocence plays, among others.
The film brings the identically named acclaimed adventure novel to life. Written between 1844 and 1846 by Alexandre Dumas, père, “Monte-Cristo” received rave reviews upon publication and was once the most popular novel in Europe. Today, the book is in print in over one hundred languages and serves as an inspiration for cultural icons ranging from “Ben Hur” to “Batman.”
An Insightful Plot
In addition to the novel’s significance as a great work of the Western literary canon, “Monte-Cristo” provides an excellent means to discuss complex ideas that touch contemporary life: freedom, justice, forgiveness, and revenge. In her introduction to the nearly three-hour film, Dr. Aileen Ruane, Assistant Professor of French, highlighted the ontological gap between popular perceptions of the story as a revenge tragedy and the author’s emphasis on the Christian virtue of forgiveness. This gap is significant in light of Dumas’ complex relationship with racism as a mixed-race individual.
By problematizing revenge, Dumas asks the reader or viewer to examine the proportionality of their response to trials, both big and small. Experiencing betrayal, theft, imprisonment, and physical brutalization, Edmond Dantès, the novel’s protagonist, goes to extreme lengths to exact his revenge on an ever-expanding web of conspirators and villains. However, so do his protégés in the film, Haydée and André. (This detail is a crucial break from the novel’s original plot.) Yet it is Haydée, whose father was betrayed and murdered before her eyes by Fernand de Morcerf, and before being sold into slavery, who reminds Dantès of the role played by forgiveness in the lives of villains and victims and the mysterious power of love. In the film’s final account, Dantès relents in his pursuit of revenge by allowing the son of the former friend who betrayed him, to elope with Haydée, rather than perish in a duel.
A Powerful Film
Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte’s film is, understandably, unable to encapsulate Dumas’ two-volume adventure novel. However, the movie manages to ask important questions about the effects of revenge on a person’s emotional and spiritual self. Toward the end of the film, Mercédès, the former fiancée of Dantès who was an unwitting pawn in the machinations of Dantès’ enemies, begs Dantès to honor the love they once shared by not engaging her son in a duel.
Dantès relents but observes that, because his life now leaves no room for anything but vengeance, he will die as a result. The “justice” of murdering and orchestrating the social and financial downfall of the men who sent him to prison for 14 years as punishment for a crime he did not commit consumes Dantès to the point of no return—the fate about which Dantès’ fellow prisoner, Abbé Faria, had forewarned.
When the dust from his final duel settles, Dantès writes to Mercédès, who has returned to the South of France to retire in a convent. He requests:
[…] never forget that until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words, “Wait and hope.” Your friend, Edmond Dantès, Count of Monte Cristo.
These words, taken from the very end of the novel, summarize the real purpose of Dumas’ text and the relationship between faith and justice. Dumas provides no easy answers but instead portrays the fallen nature of humankind as deeply wounded and susceptible to the cruelty of others. Love, primary among the cardinal virtues, is shown at the conclusion to be what it truly is—a balm, a gift from God.
READ MORE: Preserving Dying Languages – Is It Worth It?
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed are those of the writer alone and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Grove City College, the Institute for Faith and Freedom, or their affiliates.