French Fridays: Le Comte de Monte-Cristo/The Count of Monte-Cristo

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       I am writing this review again, after having reviewed it several months ago, but not here:

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Wow.

This is one of the very few books I would feel it necessary to own, rather than giving my copy to the library. I listened to the LibriVox edition, read mostly by a lady I believe to be Quebecoise, so her accent took some getting used to (I’m accustomed to the continental French accent), but I found it useful to be able to listen while cleaning, cooking, eating, and powdering my nose. Class differences are dramatic, in this book, as are the many references to slavery, but none of it takes us away from the central theme of the just vengeance of the unjustly wronged.

dumas_by_nadar2c_1855

Dumas was a genius, if I had to judge by this book. What surprised me was learning that he was the grandson of a Hatian slave and her enslaver.  France always claims him as French, but he also belongs to Black History.

 

Some of the best parts of this long and at times rather complex and satisfying book, for me, include the method the family comes up with for communicating with an entirely paralyzed person, well before technology made it easier (note that the ability to read is still necessary…), and a bit of news driving stock speculation, but with a rather surprising end result.

Excellent book, in summary, and here are my reading updates, , as I prefer not to repeat observations I’ve already made.

 

October 16, 2020 – Started Reading
 
October 16, 2020 –

 

page 80
 

4.69% “”Danglars était un de ces hommes de calcul qui naissent avec une plume derrière l’oreille et un encrier à la place du coeur; tout était pour lui dans ce monde soustraction ou multiplication, et un chiffre lui paraissait bien plus précieux qu’un homme, “

Wow!
Fin de chapître 9…”

 
October 16, 2020 –

 

 

12.0% “Genius!
La chambre de l’abbé : il a fait des outils de presque rien !
Chapter 16? The madman’s room: he made tools from almost nothing!”

 
October 17, 2020 –

 

 

19.0% “Une morte évité au dernier moment !
A death avoided at the last minute!”

 
October 18, 2020 –

 

 

20.0%“Guillotiner des prisonniers, c’était la fête ?”

 
October 19, 2020 –

 

 

29.0%“Another secret identity of a man saving the life of the son of the woman he loves who married his enemy…”

 
October 20, 2020 –

 

 

40.0% “”L’homme propose, et l’argent dispose !”
Bien lu !
“Man proposes and money disposes!”
Well read!”

 
October 20, 2020 –

 

 

41.0%“Romeo and juliet across two different generations!! And, delicious dramatic irony…”

 
October 20, 2020 –

 

 

43.0%“Fin de Ch. 52: on vas se tuer qui ?”

 
October 21, 2020 –

 

 

50.0% “Le Testament : je sais que ce livre est déjà la lecture obligatoire dans les lieux francophones, mais ce chapitre doives aussi être Aux États-Unis.
The Will: I know that this book is required reading for French speakers, but this chapter should also be required reading in the United States.”

 
October 21, 2020 – Shelved as: omniscientpov
 
October 22, 2020 –

 

 

51.0%“Chapitre L’accusation : circumstantial evidence!!”

 
October 22, 2020 –

 

 

59.0%“a moment: Edmond’s speech is like that of Ivanova, as she goes into battle against the Shadow-enhanced fleet in “No Surrender, No Retreat””

 
October 23, 2020 –

 

 

62.0%“End of chapter 102: but why not warn the kids??”

 
October 23, 2020 –

 

 

64.0%“Am I wrong, is she really dead?”

 
October 23, 2020 –

 

 

75.0%“Noo!! Now the good are suffering from the fall of the bad: Morrel and Mercedes with her son! ☹️☹️☹️”

 
October 23, 2020 –

 

 

75.0%“Fin de chapitre 106: ok, so it’ll be taken care of…”

 
October 23, 2020 –

 

 

95.0%“”The Rock has become a tourist attraction?””

 
October 23, 2020 – Finished Reading

<br />Please read, enjoy, and read again, preferably in French.
<br/><br/>
<a href=”https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/19806749-shira”>View all my reviews</a>

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Shira

Action Prompts:

1.) Someone please remind me to link this post in to the B5 review of the episode mentioned above, when we finish with Season 4…

2.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses those thoughts.

***************** 

Click here to read, if you like:

Hakan: Muhafiz/The Protector, Lupin, & Money Heist Reviews

Holistic High School Lessons,

 
 

Shira

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Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

About ShiraDestProjectDoBetter

Shira Destinie Jones is founder of #ProjectDoBetter, a long term plan proposal for community building, and a published poet, academic author, and advocate for improving our #PublicDomainInfrastructure. Her other book, Stayed on Freedom's Call, on Black-Jewish Cooperation in DC, is freely available via the Internet Archive. She has organized community events such as film discussions, multi-ethnic song events, and cooperative presentations, and is a native of Washington, DC. She promotes peaceful planning, NVC and the Holocene Calendar, and is also a writer. More information at https://shiradest.wordpress.com/

39 thoughts on “French Fridays: Le Comte de Monte-Cristo/The Count of Monte-Cristo”

  1. I also like the book, but I don’t agree with everything our hero says. I mean, what choice did Mercedes have? She thought he was dead, and at that time women were very much pressed to get married. So I can see neither her nor her children as bad, as they had no part in the terrible crime, especially not the children. At the end he himself is taken aback by the terrible consequences of his revenge.

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      1. It would have been nice for Dumas to reflect some “black” tradition in his writings, but I think he was fully French in thinking and expression.
        Frankly, I don’t like to use the term “black”, because “black” people belong to many, many nations and tribes, as the “whites” do, and the tribes are actually very different.

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        1. You are technically correct.
          But:

          In the United States, due to the Middle Passage and to the One Drop Rule, the vast majority of people of African descent have no way of finding the tribe from which their ancestors were originally taken. Hence the work of Black unity and Black History, in this particular country.

          In Peace,
          M.

          Liked by 4 people

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          1. That is right. The African Americans are also a kind of “tribe”, with its own values, traditions, folklore and wisdom.

            There is an undeniable evolution in history, things seem to be fairer nowadays, or at least milder, but I think the evil is still here in all its might, and it just changes its shapes.

            I wish you all the best.

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        2. Here in the US, we grew up with the word Black as an attempt to reclaim the denotation of ugliness that my grandparents, and even parents, generations grew up with: those of us with light skin were deemed more valuable than those with darker skin, and this was used to create divisions among us. For that reason, those of us who grew up calling ourselves ‘Black’ were told by older relatives that we were ‘colored’ and we replied by refusing to continue that skin color ideology. Since I was greeted, upon starting school in Virginia, with “Nigger” by a scary-looking classmate of mine, I have always been reminded that even those of us with light skin, as we say, cannot escape the stigma of being Black, and thus those who look like us, as Omar Sy, and both Dumas’, père and fils, could not escape that same stigma. We are all treated as Black first, and thus we have worked, since the 1960s and the “Black is Beautiful” movement, to build our unity and give back to the community, and then to the rest of the world.
          I wish you all the best,

          S. Destinie

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      2. “Dumas’s FATHER, Thomas-Alexandre Davy de La Pailleterie—born out of wedlock to the marquis de La Pailleterie and Marie Cessette Dumas, a black slave of Santo Domingo—was a common soldier under the ancien régime who assumed the name Dumas in 1786.”

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        1. The general, aka the father of Dumas, père, then, was the son of the slave, and thus Dumas, père, author of C.Monte. was in fact, as you say, the grandson of the enslaved woman, making Dumas, fils, her great grandson.
          Ok.
          Thank you for clarifying that.

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            1. Thank you, and sorry for the delayed replies. I’m so tired, but I cannot stop working for fear that no one will take up this project (Project Do Better) before I die.

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    4. The mother of Alexandre Dumas père was Marie-Louise Labouret, a Frenchwoman.

      As for his grandmother,

      “Marie-Cessette Dumas (1714–1786) was an enslaved woman in the French colony of Saint Domingue. She was the mother of General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, the grandmother of novelist Alexandre Dumas, and the great-grandmother of playwright Alexandre Dumas, fils” (Wikipedia)

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    1. I’ve been so tired lately that much has gone out incomplete these last few weeks. I really need to find a way to find a person to help me with these posts, so that I can get back to editing Do Better, now that more feedback is coming in.

      oh, and yes,, it is all three: this post is about story that incorporates history, and for native English speakers, is also about the importance of learning other languages, but all three build empathy, I believe.

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