The Count of Monte Christo Meets Batman
The Count of Monte Cristo is a nineteenth century novel, first serialised to a huge and enthusiastic readership, before being published in book form in 1846. And while the name Alexandre Dumas is on the front cover, Dumas was actually less author, more boss of the sort of studio writing room you might see in Hollywood television and film production today.
The book produced in an unexpectedly modern manner, also has a modern feel. Once I read past the opening chapters, I couldn’t help seeing parallels with, of all things, the Batman franchise.
A promising young sailor called Edmond Dantes is wrongly imprisoned after being implicated in an anti-government plot by two men jealous of his professional and personal success. A corrupt judicial official realises the charge is baseless, but for personal reasons allows Edmond to go to prison anyway. During long years of incarceration, Dantes meets a brilliant fellow prisoner, who provides both an education and the promise of a hidden fortune. Although the friend dies in prison, Dantes himself eventually escapes, travels to the island of Monte Cristo, where in a cavern, he finds the fabled riches he was promised. Dantes swears vengeance on those who wronged him, using the resources now at his disposal. It was at this point that I started thinking of Batman – a brooding, powerful, fabulously wealthy man, operating incognito from a secret underground lair, determined to bring justice to Gotham City.
Batman inhabits a world that tends to lack moral certainties. He fights crime as an individual, dealing out arbitrary justice, acknowledging no authority but his own, a dark and threatening vigilante of the night. Edmond Dantes in his new guise as the Count of Monte Cristo is similar. Wronged by the justice system, he does not acknowledge the law’s authority, setting himself up as judge, jury and potential executioner all in one. Like Batman, the Count, despite the apparent righteousness of his cause, is another vigilante of the night, his skin left permanently pale by all those years in a dungeon.
Nineteenth century France, like Gotham, is not a stable moral universe. Just as Dantes comes to realise that the awful ordeal of prison was the making of him, he discovers that trying to punish people for past crimes, or reward them for past services, is complicated by some recipients benefiting from punishment, or suffering from reward. A poor man given a diamond is left vulnerable to suspicious gendarmes, or jealous acquaintances. A rich family losing its wealth sees some family members gaining a new freedom outside the former gilded cage. There is one section where a lot of poisonings take place, and interestingly these scenes serve to demonstrate that a poison is not intrinsically a destructive thing, when the only difference between a poison and a medicine is the dose. As someone who works in a pharmacy I could appreciate that sort of medicinal philosophising.
Edmond Dantes goes on a very long journey in taking his revenge. He might initially have been critical of God for not doing a good enough job with dealing out justice, apparently letting evil triumph and virtue suffer. However, like most jobs, it turns out to be a bit more tricky when you have a go yourself.
The Count of Monte Cristo is a huge, epic, gothic adventure, with a gift for its reader. It won’t make you a billionaire, or solve all your problems. However, it does provide a fascinating insight into the ambivalent nature of reward and loss.
