Vice Destroys Itself: Villains in ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’

Jim Caviezel starts as the fabulously wealthy Count of Monte Cristo in the 2002 film adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’s novel, “The Count of Monte Cristo.” MovieStillDb

Ever since it was first serialized between 1844 and 1846, “The Count of Monte Cristo” has captivated readers with the raw drama and essential simplicity of its plot.

It’s a story about a young man, Edmond Dantès, who’s about to fully come into his own, marry the woman he loves, and take care of his destitute father in his old age. Right on the crest of this everyman’s happiness, four evil men bring about what they believe to be his doom. Locked in solitary confinement without hope of appeal, Edmond, after 14 years, manages to escape. Soon, he becomes the owner of an incredible fortune and ascends dramatically in rank. But his fortune means one thing to him: the chance to avenge himself on his enemies if he plans and waits long enough.

Even those who haven’t read the book or watched a film adaptation are familiar with this outline. It is more than a story; despite it plot of revenge, it’s ultimately cathartic and reassuring that a person can not only rescue himself from evil, but crush it as well.

This depiction of Edmond Dantès is by Pierre Gustave Eugene Staal, from an 1888 edition of "The Count of Monte Cristo." Public Domain

Vice Finds Its Own Punishment

Supporting this revenge story is great theme: Virtue may not always be its own reward, but vice is always its own punishment.

The particular ways in which the antagonists target Dantès are levers that pull them to their ultimate destruction. The author, Alexandre Dumas, makes clear that even without the direct action by the Count (Dantès), each antagonist creates his own kind of hell with the evil he performs. Cowardice brings despair, jealousy leads to the loss of integrity, and clever malice is revealed to be inept stupidity.

Take, for example, the least guilty of the conspirators, Caderousse. His crime is lacking the courage to speak up in Edmond Dantès’s defense. Yet his life story is a warning that acting cowardly is the most dangerous act of all. His refusal to stand up for truth when it’s easy makes it harder to do so later. His life becomes a series of flights from uncomfortable situations. He marries a woman who cows him, an example of how cowardice creates dysfunctional commitments. He fails to stand up to her when she suggests a murderous plan, a plot that ends with him betraying her, fleeing, and becoming a vagabond and an outlaw. Reduced to blackmailing and theft, he dies, appropriately, stabbed in the back.

Although there’s a temptation to be more lenient towards those who fail to do good than towards those who work actual evil, Caderousse’s situation offers a startling wake-up call. Sins of omission like cowardice sap one’s inner strength just as much as sins of commission. The man who shies away from doing a good act put before him will eventually do more and more evil.

After Caderousse, Fernand Mondego, Dantès’s rival in love, may seem the most excusable. He bears the document of denunciation of Dantès to the authorities, but it’s clearly a crime of passion. It’s his love for Mercédès, not hatred, that motivates the crime.

Here, too, Dumas skillfully and relentlessly depicts the logic of sin. To commit evil acts for love does nothing but destroy love. “Hell is not to love anymore,” as another great French writer, Georges Bernanos, said through one of his protagonists in “The Diary of a Country Priest.” It’s an ends-justify-the-means method of thinking that rots away all inner nobility. While the English poet Richard Lovelace told his beloved, “I could not love thee (Dear) so much, Lov'd I not Honour more,” Fernand lives to rue the day that he did not do the same.

A Slippery Slope

Introduced as a man of honor, Fernand gradually makes one moral compromise after another, betraying first his country, then his word, and finally, a friend. While Dantès facilitates the public revelation of these betrayals, he’s merely toppling what has become a house of cards. Fernand’s fragile, moth-eaten character has betrayed his integrity. Notably, he’s the only villain who commits suicide; having killed his own integrity, he feels he has nothing left but to do the same with his life.

The third villain, the French magistrate who unjustly condemns Dantès to life imprisonment, presents the reader with a different path: how expediency can come at the cost of justice. At first disposed to use his power rightly and free Dantès, Gérard de Villefort is startled into evil: He discovers that Dantès’s being declared innocent could reveal a family secret that will ruin his career. After a brief struggle with his conscience, Villefort gives in to injustice.

Villefort’s story becomes the most pitiful in the book. Sacrificing justice for his social advancement, he condemns himself to a life of further cover-ups. His dearest plans begin to unravel thanks to others around him who also sacrifice truth for other goals. His deceit seems to be contagious. Just as he rationalizes his decision to condemn Edmond Dantès as a necessary step toward protecting his family and name, a close family member justifies murder for what she considers a noble goal.

The final stroke of his downfall is a dramatic courtroom scene in which he discovers that he is prosecuting his own son. In his final appearance in the book, driven insane with grief and remorse, he’s found digging holes, looking for a child’s casket. It’s a symbolic attempt to reveal all that he has hidden during his life—all the things that have now worked his self-destruction.

Poster for "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Louis Français. Public Domain

Worst of the Worst

While all of these men represent the baseness that evil drives one to, the last villain is the most vile: Danglars, Dantès’ shipmate. He brainstorms the plan to betray his fellow crewman, and consistently shows that he’s only concerned with himself. He’s a spectacular example of cunning or “false prudence.” His actions aren’t prudent at all but complete foolishness, since evil always hurts the one who commits it.

A slave of money, Danglars’s downfall is accomplished by money. Dantès accelerates this downfall by preying on Danglars’s selfishness and greed, but Danglars is his own worst enemy. His ravenous greed is a kind of stupidity. While Dantès creates occasions to trap him, a prudent person would avoid financial speculations based on hearsay, evaluating a potential son-in-law on his supposed fortune instead of on his moral worth, and foolhardiness in a foreign land.

This stupidity is seen in his family life. There’s no love lost between him and his wife or between him and his daughter. He views them purely as the means to an end. Like those of his accomplices, his fate is uniquely fitting. While he, unlike the others, survives with his wits intact, he faces the petty and deformed being that he has become, stripped of possessions and comfort that were his only goals in life.

Each and every villain in “The Count of Monte Cristo” illustrates the wise saying from the book of Proverbs: “The foolishness of a man perverteth his own way.” In Danglars’s case, selfishness is punished by facing the self he has become. With de Villefort, his injustice to a stranger hounds him into madness. Fernand is betrayed by his own treachery, and Caderousse’s cowardice colludes in his own destruction. These are all examples of subdued warning that undergirds “The Count of Monte Cristo.” It’s a novel that shows that morality is inherent to life itself. 

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