Tag: analysis

The Count of Monte Cristo

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And now, the plot

Or,
Edmond Dantes; If God didn’t want me to do this he’d have killed me by now

It might actually take me a few posts to simplify the plot because The Count Of Monte Cristo is, in actuality, several interweaving stories

Part 1: The book versus films

Whom we must be revenged upon:
Mercedes; Edmond’s betrothed who panic marries his rival
Fernand; Edmond’s love rival for Mercedes who posts the allegations against Edmond which lead to his imprisonment

Most films emphasize this particular revenge and minimize the revenge on Villefort which is arguably the stupidest move. Genuinely. What happens to Villefort is so much more intricate and interesting. By focusing purely on the love story which is not the center of the novel these films do absolutely no justice to how fucked up Edmond Dantes is. A huge bummer.

Commonly in film: Mercedes’ son Albert is kidnapped and miraculously saved by the mysterious Count of Monte Cristo. The count uses Albert to be introduced into society. Mercedes is still in love with Dantes, recognizes him, explains that she needed to marry Fernand because Dantes had gotten her pregnant, after a duel with Fernand, they all run away together, lovers and bastard son. Hooray.

INCORRECT. Chronologically:

The mysterious Count of Monte Cristo buys a slave named Haidee. She is the daughter of a disgraced Vizier and former princess in a Grecian court of Arab descent.
She worships him as her savior and he does not treat her as a slave but as a ward, often bringing her to social events to show off her beauty (allegedly)

Monte Cristo indeed arranges for Albert to be kidnapped, Albert is really cool about it. By the time Albert leaves, all of the smugglers are shaking his hand and they’re all buddies. He calmly is like ‘oh cool, you saved me? You didn’t need to but that’s chill of you. Let’s be best friends’ and Monte Cristo is like yeah sure.

Monte Cristo avoids Mercedes at all costs and is weird about Albert being like ‘man my mom is cool. You wanna meet my mom? I’d fuck my mom if we weren’t related’

Monte Cristo keeps introducing Albert to Haidee saying ‘man, she’s the best. Isn’t she great? Wouldn’t it suck if she had a tragic past related to your dad? Definitely not a past linked to me. Your dad does fucked up shit a lot. Didn’t your dad used to work for a Vizier in Greece when he was a sailor before he became super mega rich for no reason. Anyway, check out my hot daughter. Hope you don’t fall in love with her’

And Albert’s like ‘my mom is cool’. And Monte Cristo is like ‘yeah, yeah she’s great, shut up’.

Eventually it becomes unavoidable and Monte Cristo and Mercedes meet.
Mercedes is still in love with Dantes, is the only one to recognize him, explains that she needed to marry Fernand because she didn’t know what else to do and has lived basically in mourning her whole life having chronic nightmares of Edmond’s reported death. She and Fernand have a loveless relationship that both tolerate. Their son, however, kicks ass and is the only thing Mercedes likes about being alive.
Albert agrees he’s Great. And also check out how cool my mom is. Monte Cristo is like yeah that’s nice, kid.

Eventually through repeatedly introducing Haidee and Albert, Monte Cristo is like ‘hey, tell this kid your tragic backstory but leave out names’. Haidee tells about her father being murdered and she and her mother being sold into slavery and a bunch of horrible shit that happened to her because Fernand sold the family out to be made a rich baron.

Albert and Monte Cristo get in a fight about Fernand after some intermediaries confirm that Fernand was the one who let to Haidee’s enslavement and orphaning. Fernand is like ‘this is really fucked up of my dad, but you shouldn’t say that in public’ and Monte cristo says ‘idgaf, he did it and I will talk about it’
They call for a duel.

Mercedes begs Edmond not to kill her son, Edmond agrees but knows he will have to let Albert kill him to maintain all of his lies, and laments still loving Mercedes as the worst thing about himself. And then he’s kind of like ‘or do I? She seemed cool about me letting her kid kill me. Yeah, fuck her actually’.

Then, at the start of the duel Albert mysteriously says ‘Actually I’m not offended’ and Edmond realizes Mercedes must have confessed everything.

Albert calls out his father about being a piece of shit so hard that Fernand kills himself and Albert and Mercedes leave town to start new lives.

Everyone agrees how cool Albert is. Mercedes ages rapidly, like rapidly, from being all disgraced and what not. Monte Cristo says ‘yeah, that sucks, man. Guess I’m revenged since Fernand is dead’.

Monte Cristo and Haidee realize they’re the only people who get each other, because of all the wanting revenge, and run away together. Monte Cristo is on a boat with Haidee, sailing away like ‘wow. What a messed up time I’ve had.’

Now that alone could be one book. But it’s not! Because we have other people to hate and plot against…

The Count of Monte Cristo

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Part 3

The Chateau de Monte-Cristo is the current home of the Dumas society. It is a Neo Renaissance building decorated in floral, angelic, and music motifs with a sculpture of a historical writer above each ground floor window.
A second building, a Neo Gothic pavilion commissioned as a writing studio by Dumas is comically named Chateau D’If.
The property includes multiple gardens. The Chateaux was designed by Hippolyte Durand and construction took place between 1844-47.
Though it cost him 500,000 Francs, in 1848 Dumas sold the entire property he’d just commissioned for only 31,000 after being brought to near financial ruin.
The property that Monte Cristo bought was so briefly lived in by the writer that other owners could claim more right to it than he could. It has been a private property, a school, after it fell into disrepair the owners attempted to reconvert it into 400 flats in the 1960s before the Chateaux were rescued by the Dumas society.
The Dumas society (Société des Amis d’Alexandre Dumas) was formed in 1971 to preserve the Chateau and Dumas’ legacy by collecting books, manuscripts, autographs, photographs and contributing to cultural activities within the Chateau. It’s currently operated by the society as a museum.


The Chateau de Monte-Cristo
Chateau d’If

The Count of Monte Cristo

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Part 2

Alexandre Dumas was a guy™.
Let me elaborate.
Alex, can I call you Alex? I’m gonna. Alex was born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie in 1802, a French novelist and playwright, who gained seemed to genuinely be living his best life.

His father, Thomas Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie was the son of a French Marquis and Haitian slave woman who rose to the rank of general-in-chief, fighting in multiple of the French Revolutionary Wars and invasions into Egypt, Battle of the Pyramids, and more. From extremely humble beginnings, brought to France by his father for education, Thomas Alexandre was considered a paramount of discipline, structure, struggle and reward.

And Alex would have likely hated that I mentioned his dad first, but I needed him for contrast.

Alexandre Dumas was described by English Playwright Watts Phillips as “the most generous, large-hearted being in the world. He also was the most delightfully amusing and egotistical creature on the face of the earth.”

In 1830 Alexandre participated in revolutionary riots that ousted Charles X and installed Louis-Phillipe, the citizen king. This led to huge restrictions being lifted on censorship that really helped the literary movement of the time to freely portray classism in Europe. Alexandre also faced considerable discrimination for his African heritage which he responded to…sharply. Known for wit and being an incoming train of words, he established himself as the progressive paradigm.

Described as loud, talkative, jovial until he wasn’t, Alex’s salons were something of legend. He was a founding member of the Club des Hashischins, a group of prolific writers including Charles Baudelaire and Victor Hugo, who met monthly at a hotel in Paris to take hashish together.

Alex married actress Ida Ferrier in 1840, they had no children together. Alex did have four claimed illegitimate children and 40 known mistresses as part of a publicly open marriage, iconically the prolific Adah Isaacs Menken who was 33 years younger than him which launched her brief writing career though she sadly died young at 33.

He founded a production studio and art collective and remained on the edges of multiple revolutionary movements throughout Europe and Russia, ex-patting to Russia for two years.

Now, the production company is one I’m fond and not fond of because he was at times accused of plagiarism, particularly around elements of the Count of Monte Cristo. Auguste Maquet who was a known collaborator of Dumas’ accused him of plagiarism after Monte Cristo because elements of Monte Cristo were lifted and expanded on from the novel Georges, also by Dumas but which Maquet had contributed to. Maquet was ultimately granted more money by the courts but couldn’t get a by-line.

His works ultimately mean that he wrote over 100,000 pages and there are still lost works which occasionally turn up, he was a powerhouse of getting work done. And then rewarding himself for it.

Which brings us to the Chateau de Monte Cristo in part 3….

I like this picture of Dumas and Menken for how happy he looks

The Count of Monte Cristo

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Part 1

Come on a journey with me
The journey is Im reading The Count of Monte Cristo on a whim.
It is 1276 pages and I have absolutely zero free time between caregiving, writing, and content what have you.
So we’re making it content.
So, first obstacle;
I have had an extremely difficult time attempting to download a book on tape of this, allowing me to “read” count of monte Cristo while doing other stuff.



I recommend looking up librevox or loyalbooks for public domain recordings!
You can access them on their websites or I like to look for specific recordings that have been uploaded to podcast addict!


I attempted at one time a recording of Ulysses by James Joyce, which may be another journey we go on this year, but it is so impenetrable to read out loud that every recording I found included some laughter or groans, which honestly was so charming.

So anyhow, I got caught up on Chateau D’If. For whatever reason my phone refused to download this 55 hour audio book past chapter 8.

Weird, right?

So, I’ve gotten creative and been switching between audiobook options because almost every platform I’ve found has some issues with Count of Monte Cristo.

And because I most likely have some form of ADHD, I have zoned out and spent a lot of time researching Alexandre Dumas as an individual and let me tell you, he’s a guy.

I mean, he was a guy™.

So next week will be my rant on Alexandre Dumas and I’ve challenged myself that the week after that will be a take down of the Count himself.

We’re having a Dumas month!

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Ah,
The tale of young lovers, divided by a wall, speaking through a niche to one another, taking into confidence those that contrive to have the sweet lady fake her death using a mysterious poison; the lad misunderstanding then attempts his life—I am of course talking about the Count of Monte Cristo.

Prepare to be subjected to several weeks on The Count of Monte Cristo, the book that is actually several books and one diatribe on the belief that Lord Byron was actually a vampire, which I read out of spite.

At 1400 pages it may be the longest book I’ve read.

Last Meals: transcript for Goethe research

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Link to the video essay: https://youtu.be/7m0oJRAywZ4

Transcript and Sources:

My choice of a last meal used to be enchiladas and negro modello, bottle wrapped in a wet paper towel and frozen, based on a dinner I had on a vacation where my partner and I went to random places around the country on an aimless week long road trip.
But that doesn’t feel right anymore. I had been researching the idea of last meals for a short story, a fact I’m going to mention again in this video because I made this out of order, haha, and I think I need an update. Something more me now and less me in my 20s.
That meal doesn’t have the connotations it used to.

When my great grandfather came to the United States he came with a copy of Dante’s Inferno and it wasn’t until I started researching last meals that I realized Faust has the same level of cultural relevance and importance to Germans that Dante has to Italians. I mean, most of our popular ideas of hell come from Dante’s Inferno, not Christian doctrine, and Faust has just as much significance.

A quick tour for those not familiar with Doctor Faustus and the many versions of his tragedy, most popularly I’m going into site Goethe’s Faust; Faust is a protagonist of the German legend based on the historical Johanna Georg Faust.

The general jist is that Faust, an academic and narcissistic man, becomes dissatisfied and depressed, and after an attempt on his own life, he calls on the Devil to make a bargain–hence the term Faustian. Mephistopheles, a demon, appears, and makes a bargain with Faust for knowledge and pleasure in exchange for his soul.

The historical Faust was an alchemist, magician, and scholar of the German Renaissance, born sometime in the mid 1400s, there’s some discrepancy on when. There’s scattered mention of him in first hand sources for the next hundred years, often performing magical acts or giving horoscopes to important officials and royals, only to be banished for being a freaky mystic. He is thought to have died in 1540 or 1541 as the result of an explosion in his alchemical lab. There are many written works in the early 1500s ascribed to Doctor Faust, detailing magical incantation, some of them falsely ascribed to being written during his lifetime.

Goethe’s Faust has a romantic bent and proclaims that Faust gained his metaphysical and esoteric knowledge from the aforementioned deal with the devil. But the story is, in a way, truly about Gretchen.

Gretchen is also based on a historical figure, Susanna Margaretha Brandt, a woman who famously convicted of and executed for infanticide, claiming that she was under demonic possession. She had been drugged and raped, conceiving the child, then got rid of it once it was born. Goethe was familiar with Brandt as several friends and family members were directly involved in her court case and the young Goethe lived in very close proximity to her. He worked her story into the story of Faust, saying that the principal reason she Was led astray was by Faust, selfishly pursuing carnal and secular pleasures, and that while both were temped by Mephistopheles, Gretchen is the character whom repents and is therefore absolved.

The historical Susanna Margaretha Brandt has a famous last meal, which she refused and instead only drank water, giving the meal to the guards.

Out of kindness, the guards then lied to her, saying her head would not be impaled after her execution, but she was beheaded and gibbeted to serve as a deterrent.

In the story by Goethe, this young woman he was familiar with was vindicated and allowed into heaven for turning away the selfish, depressive, and miserable Faust and shunning bargains with him a Mephistopheles when she could have evaded her fate, she chose to face it. For the real Susanna Margaretha Brandt, however, she suffered a brutal death at the hands of men, because of the actions of men.

Access Esoteric Works Attributed to Johann Georg Faust at:

https://books.google.com/books?id=ESpXAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA7#v=onepage&q&f=false

https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_v-tXAAAAYAAJ/page/154/mode/1up?view=theater

Das Kloster (full title Das Kloster. Weltlich und geistlich. Meist aus der ältern deutschen Volks-, Wunder-, Curiositäten-, und vorzugsweise komischen Literatur ) is a collection of magical and occult texts, fairy tales and legends of the German Renaissance compiled by Stuttgart antiquarian Johann Scheible in 12 volumes, 1845-1849. Vols. 3, 5 and 11 are dedicated to the Faust Legend.

Womp womp

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Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

I hadn’t read this since highschool. Hey, hey be honest with me, is it a bad sign my algorithms keep suggesting I read Kafka and Sylvia Plath?

So anyway, I reread it for shits and giggles and I wanted to let you know I neither shat nor giggled.

A lot of the things which happen in the story, I mean…do I have to tell you? He turns into a giant weird bug. He wakes up and is a bug. This could be interpreted as waking up as a young man to your role in society, a nod to religious persecution in some interpretations, or a more often a nod to the dehumanizing results of capitalism. Both are completely valid.

What I feel like people talk about less in the social osmosis are the reactions of the family to Gregor Samsa when he wakes up to this revelation. They all reject him. Some are nice than others, but it’s ultimately his father who leads to his death. And when he dies, they all leave and pretend he was never there, happier to be rid of him. A nod to whistleblowers being stomped out by the earlier generations for being too sensitive to harsh conditions? A nod to people not fitting into society’s norms and expectations being murdered by those closest to them to prevent being ostracized themselves? A nod to ….you get the idea. All of it. It’s all valid interpretations.

For real though, should I be worried this keeps coming up in my reading suggestions?

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

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An analysis,

It’s not often I find something like this; specifically, a book I hadn’t heard of by an author I love. the Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is the only fully completed novel by Edgar Allen Poe, someone I learned to do voicework by narrating. I’ve literally read, cover to cover, multiple compendiums but somehow this story slipped past me. It was only because of House of Usher on Netflix that I had heard of it and because I felt deeply compelled to figure out Mark Hamill’s character (who was my favorite).

The Pym story is odd for Poe because it doesn’t follow his normal tropes. I could probably make a key for Poe: dead wife, remarried; main character with high sensory perception, etc cetera. But the Pym story is a high seas novel in the vein of Treasure Island.

Of course, that doesn’t mean it isn’t surreal. It does have the trope of a man trapped in a confined space which he details, similar to Pit and the Pendulum, in the chapters in which Pym is a stowaway on a vessel then overtaken in a mutiny with no one aware he’s below deck. And there is, of course, the novel’s abrupt end which plays out a bit like M. Valdemar where the whole  narrative could Be taken for a hoax—the Pym narrative claims to only be transcribed by Poe.

No, what’s surreal and out of pocket for Poe about it is how he plays a straight face for most of the novel. Only toward the very end is there any supernatural happening, instead, much of the book could have been written by someone else.

It seems almost like a writing exercise.  Published in 1838, the Pym narrative covers shipwrecks, mutiny, cannibalism, hollow earth theory, and touches on the race for the poles– infamously leading to the deaths of many explorers. It seems to have been an obvious inspiration for The Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne fifty years later.