The Count of Monte Cristo

Monte Cristo

The Duality of Hope and Waiting in the Count of Monte Cristo

Hope can be a force capable of instilling greatness in its beholder. But it can just as easily become a dangerous entity upon which one rests nefarious or sinister designs. This is the duality of hope that permeates The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. The final lines in the text, spoken by the stoic count, advise the hopeful young Maximilian to 'wait and hope.' The sentiment is one which seems a perfect reflection on the chapters which precede it, particularly because this is the very strategy that delivered the Count to his perfectly exacted revenge. However, it can also not be lost upon the reader that the Count has suffered internally for both his hope and the many years that he lay in wait nurturing this hope. As the text shows, the impact of this waiting can imbue hope with a certain darkness or purpose, rendering it a human experience equally capable of bringing happiness and misery.

At the early outset of the novel, this notion of hope carries a distinctly sunny set of implications. When first the reader encounters the young Edmond Dantes, he is on the precipice of great things. He is to be wed to his beloved Mercedes, he believes that he has the respect of his fellow sailors and he ultimately has been given significant reason to believe that he is next in line to be captain of his vessel. These great fortunes all smile upon Dantes, making his hopes for the future appear as both tantalizingly close and fortuitous. Dantes suggests as much in his discussion with M. Morrell, the Pharaon's owner, upon his return to port. When Morrell implies that Dantes is likely to be the next in line to captain the vessel, he responds, "pray mind what you say, for you are touching on the most secret wishes of my heart. Is it really your intention to make me captain of the Pharaon?" (p. 8)

Here, we immediately find Dantes to be a young man with hope, ambition and some good reason to believe that these feelings will be rewarded soon. However, these opportunities fade quickly in the face of the conspiracy directed against him. With Danglars poised on overtaking the promise of Dantes' career, Fernand aimed at stealing Dantes' betrothed and Villefort merely determined to protect his family's reputation, Dantes' is made a pawn. Here, Dumas makes quite clear, it is the set of hopes harbored by the unjust men around him that will doom Dantes to a fourteen year term in the dungeons of the Chateu D'If.

Here, it is plainly evident that it is not the author's sole intent to glorify the notion of hope. He applies this duality of hope to all of his characters, and with many of them, even ties hope to man's darkest desires. Dumas suggests that for villainous figures, too, the specter of hope would often be significant force driving their misdeeds. For Ferdinand, Dumas observes quite explicitly, hope was a principal influence as he schemed for ways to steal Mercedes from the young Dantes. Indeed, with Dantes now beginning his prison sentence and his conspirators still concerned for the discovery of their misdeeds, Fernand's hopeful orientation emerged. According to Dumas, "Fernand's mind was made up: he would shoot Dantes and then kill himself. But Fernand was mistaken; a man of his disposition never kills himself, for he constantly hopes." (p. 100)

Here, we can see that hope may also come with a troubling malevolence, suggesting that those most armed with it have the greatest capacity for destruction.

Even in his panic, Fernand would be preserved by hope. To an extent, the assumption that hope must be protected by a sense of rightness and the inevitability of justice is here undermined. Fernand demonstrates that hope can be an engine fueling acts of wanton and selfish cruelty as well. Ironically, this would also become a significant dimension of the hope harbored by the Dantes himself. While there was a portion of his imprisonment in which the hope of young Dantes helped to sustain him with notions of escape and freedom, he still remained frustratingly uncertain about the factors which placed him in prison to begin with. It was not until the abbe Faria helped Dantes to unwind the details of the conspiracy against him that a transformation of his hope occurred. Here, the optimistic hope that guided the young Dantes to dream of freedom became a far more sinister hope, from which would be forged the Count of Monte Cristo himself.

Dumas cites the exact moment of transformation, engaging the abbe and Dantes in a conversation about the role played by Villefort in his condemnation. When the deception and self-interest that conspired to throw his life away have become apparent, he retreats into this revelation. As Dumas describes, "during these hours of profound meditation, which to him had seemed only minutes, he had formed a fearful resolution, and bound himself to its fulfillment by a solemn oath." (p. 140)

This oath, from which he would ultimately devise his vengeance upon his conspirators, would become the seedling for a new and altogether darker kind of hope. Quite to the point, the abbe immediately senses the transformation in his young companion and expresses regret that a new desire has been instilled in the once innocent Dantes. But quite certainly, this transformation, the reader presumes, would already have been underway as a product of his incarceration. Thus, whether this newly instilled hope manifested as the lightness of optimism or the darkness of vengeance, it could have been no other way. His condemnation and banishment would ultimately destroy the young and optimistic Dantes. From his passing would emerge an equally determined but far more determined and hardened man.