Question 1

Is The Count of Monte Cristo too long?

Accepted Answer

The Count of Monte Cristo is approximately 1,200 pages in unabridged editions — one of the longest novels in the French tradition. Unlike some long novels, it is very fast-paced: Dumas was writing as a serial novelist (the novel was published in installments in Le Journal des Débats), and he had a professional obligation to keep readers engaged with each episode. There are almost no dull stretches; the novel moves continuously from one complication to the next. Readers who approach it expecting something like War and Peace or Middlemarch (meditative, slow, psychological) may be surprised by how much it reads like a thriller.

Question 2

How does Dantès escape from Château d'If?

Accepted Answer

Dantès is saved from madness in the Château d'If by the arrival of Abbé Faria, an Italian priest and scholar who is also imprisoned. Faria has been digging a tunnel to escape and breaks into Dantès' cell by mistake; the two become friends, and Faria teaches Dantès everything he knows — languages, history, science, philosophy — transforming him from an uneducated sailor into an extraordinarily cultivated man. When Faria dies, Dantès sews himself into Faria's burial sack, is thrown into the sea (the Château d'If disposed of prisoners by throwing their sewn bodies from the sea wall), cuts his way out, and swims to a nearby rock.

Question 3

Does Dantès take his revenge on everyone?

Accepted Answer

Dantès takes his revenge on all three men who betrayed him, but with different methods and different degrees of directness — he is the architect of their destruction but rarely the direct instrument of it, preferring to set mechanisms in motion that use the victims' own flaws to destroy them. Fernand Mondego (who wanted Mercédès and so denounced Dantès as a Bonapartist) is destroyed when his crimes during the Greek War of Independence are exposed. Danglars (who wanted the captaincy Dantès was about to receive) is financially ruined. Villefort (the public prosecutor who had Dantès imprisoned to suppress evidence of his own father's Bonapartism) is destroyed when his past crimes and his son's crimes come to light. The novel does not conclude that the revenge is sufficient or restorative — Dantès's final words suggest he is still uncertain.

Question 4

What is the treasure of Monte Cristo?

Accepted Answer

The treasure is described to Dantès by Abbé Faria — it is the vast fortune of the Spada family, hidden by Cardinal Spada on the island of Monte Cristo and described in a document that Faria has spent years decoding. When Dantès escapes, he goes to Monte Cristo and finds the treasure exactly where Faria said it would be: gold, silver, diamonds, and rubies. The treasure is real in the novel — Dumas does not explain it away or make it smaller than promised. It is simply there, and it is essentially infinite, and it is what makes everything that follows possible.

The Count of Monte Cristo Reading Order

Complete Monte Cristo Book List