The Arbitrary ChuckJerry

I just finished reading "The Count of Monte Cristo", by Alexandre Dumas. It's regarded as the quintessential novel about betrayal and revenge and has been the inspiration for lots of movies and plays and what not.

I decided to blog about it mainly because the book was kindof disappointing. The main plot outline is that this guy, Edmond Dantes, is a sailor who everybody loves and the owner of his ship wants to make him the captain and he's about to get married to this great girl. These three guys are jealous of him so they frame him for being a supporter of Napoleon and he gets trhown in jail. While he's in jail he meets this guy who teaches him all sorts of crap and gives him a treasure map. Edmond escapes from the jail, gets the treasure, and then plots his revenge against the guys who framed him. The rest of the book is about how he gets his revenge.

The first part of the book is really engaging. The whole part of him getting framed and being in jail and meeting the guy and finding the treasure is page turning stuff. After that, though, the book really lags. The revenge is not particularly fulfilling and the ending doesn't really have anything to do with anything. I was pretty let down by the whole second half of the story.

From what I understand the recent movie that was made eliminates a good portion of that second part of the book and is probably worth seeing as a result. If the revenge part is just an afterthought or the third act of the movie with the framing and the jail part being the first two, then it's probably a good movie. I must say, though, that if this novel is the quintessence of revenge stories, then we gotta find a new one.