Wednesday, July 15, 2009

The Count of Monte Cristo Essay

Rachael Kerr
AP English 11
July 15, 2009
Summer Reading- The Count of Monte Cristo
Prompt 3-Man as God
God is our omniscient, omnipotent judge. It is believed that He shall enact good onto the righteous, and punish the wicked. But can all that power be held by anyone else? More specifically: can human beings do God’s job? When human beings get angry with God; sometimes it is about punishment not deserved, others, it is about punishment not served, they become angry. When punishment is not felt by those who a man feels it should, that man can become frustrated and take matters into his own hands. That man is Edmond Dantes, and that text is The Count of Monte Cristo. Dantes enacts revenge a surplus of times, in several different roles, each trying to imitate the Providence of God. In The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas articulates his belief that man cannot play God in a multitude of ways, like Dantes’ failure, and warning made to him by other characters such as Abbe Faria.
The Count of Monte Cristo is written and read in a way that it is acknowledged as an intellectual quandary. While reading, a reader muses upon the question “Can a man assume God’s role?” This creates a great debate for there is plenty of information for a refuting side, and a supporting side. A reader that believes God can be played by a man would the examples of Dantes’ Providence. Dantes rewards people that showed kindness, respect, and honor, therefore being ‘good’, like Morrel and his family, and punished those who were greedy, selfish, and wicked, thus deemed ‘bad’, like Fernand and Danglars. On the other hand, a reader that believes a man cannot play God would use examples of Dantes’ failures. For example, when Dantes reveals Valentine’s murder as Madame Villefort, Monsieur Villefort becomes enraged. He finds his wife and tells her to kill herself using the poison she used on Valentine. When she does, she also uses it on her son, stating in her death letter “A good mother never leaves her son!”(Dumas, 565). This innocent child’s death could only be foreseen thus avoided, by the true God. This shows that a man cannot play God because of his lack of foresight.
This argument of whether or not man can act as God is very clearly reflected on by its author, Alexandre Dumas, by using quite a few events to show how man cannot play God. If Dumas wanted to make it seem as though humans could be God, he would have made Edmond’s plan go off with no ill-effects. However, he made it that the most innocent by-stander, Edward Villefort, was killed by Dantes’ lack of omniscience. By making the victim a child, Dumas furthers the point of innocence. Thus because of the child’s age, Edward could not have been born while Dantes was still free, thereby providing him with a very good reason of why he deserves no punishment.
Another way Dumas present this idea is through actual character dialogue. When Abbe Faria reveals to Dantes that he was framed to go to jail, Faria watches a change take place in Dantes. Realizing what he has done, Faria expresses to Dantes: “I almost regret having helped you in your researches and having told you what I did…Because I have instilled into your heart a feeling that previously held no place there-vengeance” (97). By using Abbe Faria, who was a man of God, Dumas shows that playing God may sound like a brilliant idea to anyone naïve enough to believe they could control that kind of power, but to an experience person, it is obviously dangerous. In addition, even the man who became God realized what he did was wrong. In his farewell letter to Maximilian, Dantès writes “pray for a man [himself] who…believed for one moment he was the equal of God, but who now acknowledges in all Christian humility that in God alone is supreme power and infinite wisdom” (590). By making the man who attempted to become God fail and realize why he failed, Dumas hammers home the point that man cannot be God.
By using the hints given by Dumas, a reader can infer that human beings cannot be God. No one person with a life of their own can handle the amount of power God has without misusing it, and this is for a multitude of reasons. One is because we live a life of our own; we all have biased versions of our lives. We see that we can do no wrong, and that every being that does wrong to us deserves punishment. Our ‘just deserts’ would have no positive effects for anyone but ourselves for our own selfish reasons. In contrast, God knows whether or not people deserve punishment because he has no connection to them or their situation. Additionally, God is omnipotent, therefore He can see what will affect who in what way, and whether or not those involved deserve what will happen. Whereas human beings have limited foresight of their actions and cannot be sure whose lives they will affect. Finally, a man playing God would have to lose all feeling to become God. Dantes came extremely close to this, due to his time in solitude. He had lost all connection with the outside world, thus becoming emotionally numb. However, the feeling that still lingered, vengeful, bitter hate, was stronger than most other feelings, and clouded his judgment; “His gloom gave way to wrath. He began to roar out blasphemies which even made his gaoler recoil with horror” (79). While it may seem almost inexistent, this one feeling is what would prove to be Dantes’ downfall.
We see this inability to be God in the novel, when Dantes gets so excited with his complicated revenge plan, that he forgets the one thing that used to mean the most to him, Mercédès. She had done nothing against Dantes; she did not conspire against him, and when he was arrested, she prayed to God for Dantes’ safety. In the end, she was not rewarded; Dantes did not come back to marry her, but to punish her husband. She and her son, Albert, left her husband, but then Albert left Mercedes to a life of poverty and sorrow to join the military. It is shown Dantes no longer cares for Mercedes when he says to her: “Mercedes is dead, madame. I know no one now of that name” (469). He clearly recognizes the woman before him as his previous bride-to-be, but by calling her dead to him, he expresses his lack of compassion towards her. Another reason man cannot play God is because a man playing the role of Providence would exact his revenge, and then forget to reward those who deserve such.
Man cannot play God; The Count of Monte Cristo clearly proves this point. By taking it upon oneself to be God, one would have to have no feelings to cloud judgment, there could be no connection to those one was to judge, and one would need to posses divine foresight to assure that no one innocent would be affected. Dantes was lacking in all of these needs, which is why he failed at playing God. The mistake of killing an innocent child makes him no better than the people he is punishing. Up until the death of Edward in the book, it seemed like Dantes was righteous, and almost God-like, but after, even Dantes begins to question himself; “Realizing that he[Dantes] had passed beyond the bounds of vengeance, he felt he could no longer say: ‘God is for me and with me’”(567). This book, because of it many examples of man prevailing and failing to be God could be used as an intellectual quandary, but ultimately, the author wanted to reflect that man could not be God. In The Count of Monte Cristo “all human wisdom is contained in these words: Wait and hope!”(590).