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1-Page Summary of The Count of Monte Cristo
Overall Summary
Edmond Dantes is a young man who has worked hard to get where he is. He’s the captain of a ship that docks in Marseille, France. However, his boss wants him to be promoted even more and this causes tension between them. Also, Edmond’s neighbor becomes jealous when he sees how successful Edmond has become. Even so, it seems like everything is going well for Edmond until an unexpected event changes everything for him.
Dantes is framed for treason, and he loses his fiancée. The deputy crown prosecutor initially sympathizes with him but then finds out that Dantes was carrying a message from Napoleon to the deputy crown prosecutor’s own father. Therefore, the deputy crown prosecutor decides to have Dantes imprisoned in Chateau d’If so that his father will not be suspected of being a Bonapartist sympathizer.
In prison, Dantes is angry and withdrawn. After many years in a dark dungeon with no human contact, he decides to commit suicide by refusing food. At this crucial moment, however, Dantes hears scraping on the other side of his prison wall. He digs furiously in the direction of the sound and notices that his neighbor has also been digging. It turns out that they are both trying to escape from Chateau d’If: wardens have fortified a weak point through which they might have escaped if not for their plot being discovered beforehand.
Dantes is thrown into the sea after the Abbe dies from a stroke. Dantes escapes and finds himself on Monte Cristo, where he discovers a treasure that had been hidden by Italian nobles in the sixteenth century. He uses this fortune to exact his revenge against those who put him in prison (the Villefort family, Danglars, Fernand, and Caderousse). In addition to wanting revenge for what they did to him, Dantes also wonders about his father and Mercedes. However, all of these thoughts pale when compared with how badly he wants vengeance against them.
Dantes finds out that three of the four men who betrayed him are extremely lucky. Danglars is now a wealthy banker in Paris and has gotten married to Hermine, who’s having an affair with Debray. Fernand became rich as a mercenary in war after 1815 and got married to Mercedes, bought a title (count), and had a son named Albert whom he first met in Rome. Villefort was able to become the crown prosecutor of Paris by marrying for the second time after his first wife died; he has two children from both marriages: Valentine from his first marriage and Edouard from his second one. Caderousse managed an inn with his unpleasant wife La Carconte but lost everything because it was very run-down. Dantes assumes many disguises including Count Monte Cristo (an explorer and celebrity of great wealth, erudition, power) Abbe Busoni (a supposed Italian priest) Lord Wilmore (an English banker). The count uses these disguises to get information about those characters whose lives he wants to ruin.
Dantes, who is actually the Abbe Busoni, meets with Caderousse and La Carconte at their inn. He asks them about Dantes’ imprisonment, and when he finds out that they were not involved in his false arrest, he forgives them both. Then Caderousse convinces his wife to get rid of the jeweler who bought their diamond. The couple ends up murdering the jeweler but gets caught for it. Because of this incident, which results in two deaths instead of one (La Carconte’s), Caderousse goes on the run until he’s caught by authorities for double homicide.
The second half of the novel depicts the Count’s arrival in Paris, his insinuation into French high society, and his careful assembly of plans for revenge against those involved with trying to kill him. Among many things he does while in Paris is hire a Corsican named Bertuccio who witnessed an affair between Villefort and Hermine Danglars. The affair produced a child, Benedetto, whom Bertuccio later adopts. As it turns out, Bertuccio was hiding in Caderousse’s inn during the murder of the jeweler; he recounts this story to Dantes (in another coincidence, Benedetto is sentenced to work in the same prison colony as Caderousse).
