Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo is as familiar to the reading public today as it was when it was published in France in 1844. Much of the familiarity is in all likelihood due to the several film adaptations of the complex story, but also due to the timeless tropes and archetypes within the story that speak deeply to the human condition. A man is unjustly imprisoned and loses years of his life to mind numbing incarceration. On the verge of suicide he meets a fellow inmate, a kind and elderly priest, who is also unjustly imprisoned. The priest becomes the man’s mentor and teaches him many things. The priest dies and the young man, now fourteen years older, sows himself into the dead man’s shroud and is tossed into the sea, from where he’s rescued by smugglers, only to begin the second half of his life’s journey. This tale of death and resurrection, as old as Calvary and the empty tomb, sets the stage for one man’s return to the land of living, flush with wealth and title, empowered to do as he will with those who’d caused him such devastating harm. The themes of vengeance and forgiveness then struggle for primacy.  In the nineteenth century it is said that books, the primary source of entertainment for a literate public, were purchased “by the pound,” which is to say audiences appreciated longer and more complex plots. Dumas, in The Count of Monte Cristo, as well as in The Three Musketeers, his two most popular novels, did not disappoint. (Summary by Michael Hogan)

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