The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas père, 1844)

 

A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong. 

 --Edgar Allan Poe, "The Cask of Amontillado" 

Revenge is one of those things that shows up a lot in literature.  Character is wronged, character doesn't feel justice can be served without retribution, character exacts revenge.  It's a common plot, and what determines how worthy of a story it is comes down to the execution.  Thankfully, Alexandre Dumas père did an excellent job of building an incredible revenge plot in The Count of Monte Cristo, enough so that despite the sizable tome (Penguin's edition, without counting the introduction and cultural notes, is 1243 pages long), you would be hard-pressed to find a list of the best revenge novels that doesn't include it.

So, what is it that makes this particular classic stand out so effectively?  I would argue that its secret may be the level of mastery on display in the vengeance exacted by Edmond Dantés upon the men responsible for his life being ruined.  The Count of Monte Cristo is largely taken up with the description of an elaborately-planned plot, designed to force those men past a despair event horizon so that they might know what it's like to have their lives destroyed so utterly... and even beyond that, it's important to him that in the end, those who are destroyed by him are aware of who has brought about their downfalls.

Edmond Dantés is introduced to us as an innocent sailor, caught up in machinations that he is completely ignorant of.  He's on the verge of being made captain of the trading ship he serves on, and he's about to propose to the woman he loves.  However, he has been entrusted with a letter, which he intends to deliver as an honoring of the dead captain's final wishes, unaware that the captain was a devoted Bonapartist and that the message involves the impending return of Napoleon to France.  Unfortunately for Dantés, an attempt by one of his shipmates and a romantic rival to knock him down a peg combines with the intended recipient of that letter being the father of a crown prosecutor, and the end result is the hapless sailor being locked away in a dungeon, with his friends and loved ones unable to find out what has happened to him.

Dantés reaches his despair event horizon roughly four years into his imprisonment; on the verge of killing himself to end the monotonous suffering, he only stops when he hears the telltale sounds of a neighboring prisoner on the verge of tunneling into his cell.  This brings him into a long friendship with Abbé Faria, a well-learned priest who is thought to be mad because of his insistence on knowing the location of a hidden treasure of immense value.  Faria was trying to dig a tunnel out of the prison, but misjudged, instead finding another chamber in the dungeon.

Over the following ten years, teaches Dantés foreign languages, science, mathematics, history... essentially giving him a thorough education in all topics.  They plot an escape together, but this is halted by Faria suffering a stroke, which leaves him half-paralyzed and unable to participate in the escape.  Dantés uses the further tragedy of Faria's death from another stroke to escape from the island prison, switching places with Faria's body and, though surprised to discover that the Chateau d'If has no graveyard (the fate of the bodies of those who die instead being 'tie a cannonball to the feet and throw the body into the deep'), he manages to free himself from the situation and quickly gets himself well away from the island prison, pretending to be a shipwreck survivor and getting himself a position on a passing ship.

At the first chance he gets, Dantés manipulates things to get himself left alone on the volcanic island of Monte Cristo, off the coast of Tuscany.  While there, he searches for, and finds, the vast treasure that Faria told him about, which gives him all the resources he needs to remake himself, and to ensure that his friends, several of whom are in dire straits, are saved from the edge of disaster.  In doing so, he discovers the identities of those who caused the destruction of his old life, and determines that, having done the good he wished to do, it's time to shift toward destroying his enemies.

At this point, we're less than a quarter of the way into the book.  What then ensues over the remaining pages is a long-game revenge, in which Dantés, primarily in the guise of the Count of Monte Cristo but also in at least two other identities through the use of disguises and faked accents, works the kind of exquisite plot that one might expect from a Sherlock Holmes with no scruples, using the past sins of his foes against them, in order to destroy them as thoroughly as possible.  As the story progresses, it becomes clear that two of his targets have enough skeletons in their proverbial closets to utterly destroy them when those skeletons are revealed; the third requires rather more specific efforts, working to siphon off his wealth through market manipulations and carefully-manipulated news reports to bring him to make poor investments.  And in each case, the Count is able to be present at the moment of deepest despair, in order to make sure that they know exactly who was behind their downfalls.

This is a long book.  Part of that is an artifact of the way that Dumas was paid for it; when the work was originally serialized, he was paid by the line.  Of course in a situation like that, one wants to stretch it as far as possible.  But Dumas doesn't use the extra space offered by the length to simply pad things out; while certain parts of the narrative may seem out of place initially, the end result is an intricately woven tapestry of character interactions where very little is extraneous, always instead revealing some important facet of each character's past, personality, or motivations.  A long section in which several characters attend Carnivale in Rome, which initially seems like simply a long digression from the plot, ends up being referred back to later in the novel in a rather delightful way; characters who initially seem like they are simply involved due to random whims by the Count later end up being the linchpins of his plots.

That said, there is much to be said for the translation by Robin Buss.  The Penguin Classics edition of The Count of Monte Cristo is the only English translation available that is completely unabridged and unadulterated, but this doesn't mean that the added material in this edition makes it a harder read; rather, it serves to give a wonderfully-detailed portrait of the locales that the characters are in, and to show the education levels of the characters.  Aspects of character growth that might not be present in an edition that comes from eras where works were modified during translation to remove 'objectionable' content are quite evident here, so that even some of the minor characters are well-developed.

It's not a difficult read, it's just long.  The length may seem daunting, but with relatively short chapters (the average length of a chapter being about 11 pages), there are plenty of places to stop and take a break, and most of the allusions made in the text are noted in the back, in order to make sure that even someone who isn't familiar with 19th century European politics or French drama that might not have ever been translated into any language besides French can have some appreciation for what Dumas is doing.  And the ending is wonderful, with the one major character who the Count least wanted to hurt yet brought closest to the point of no return in his despair having all made right, before the Count makes his disappearance from the stage, going into an unknown future where he might find happiness himself, ending the narrative on a moment of hope and grace.  We don't know where the Count will go or what he will turn his attentions toward, but one can only hope that his open reclaiming of his original name on the final page means that his long turn toward darkness is at an end.

The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Grahame, 1908) (The Penguin Kenneth Grahame, 3/3)

 

And here we come to the third of Kenneth Grahame's major works, the one that he's perhaps best-known for now (and unfortunately the only one that Penguin currently publishes), The Wind in the Willows.  I was rather looking forward to reaching this, actually, I have a lot of vague memories of watching the 1980s television series, and of course Disney's take on the novel.  I know I attempted to read this once as a child, though I kind of bounced off of it.  Reading it now as an adult, I can see what went wrong at the time; I was looking for Mr. Toad's Wacky Adventures, and that's absolutely not what this is (mostly).

This is a decidedly different sort of work entirely from Grahame's two previous works, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is its departure from the realism, albeit wonder-tinged, of The Golden Age and Dream Days.  Instead, we're in a world where certain animals dress and act in the same manner as people do, where the size of those animals in relation to humans seems to be based purely on what the narrative requires at that moment, and where an amphibian in a rather poor disguise can be easily mistaken for a human.

The first place to look for differences is simply in the nature of the work.  During the ten-year gap between Dream Days and this work, Grahame became a father, which significantly changed the shape of his audience.  Rather than writing for an ostensibly adult audience, as his newspaper columns were, The Wind in the Willows began as a series of tales that he was telling to his son.  This doesn't change his diction or his writing voice, but it does make this work rather less introspective.  Instead, it allows a shifting of perspectives between the characters to match the tone of each story.

There are three primary characters here, who are used as 'narrators' (though the whole work is told in the third person), though a fourth is generally considered a main character and has been included as a major character in all of the various adaptations over the years.  The character we spend the most time in the mind of is Mole, a simple but determined fellow who follows through on anything he's set to doing and tends to be easily drawn into other folks' activities.  Mole feels a sudden urge at the start of the book to leave his underground home, digs up to the surface, and is immediately overwhelmed by everything that is Springtime.  We're in a similarly pastoral setting to what was seen in The Golden Age and Dream Days, though without any time spent interacting with the nearby village.  Instead, the world of the animals is the wilds, with meadows, a river, a nearby forest, and beyond, the world of humans, which the animals prefer to steer clear of.  Mole quickly discovers the River, which is mindboggling to him, given that he's never seen anything of the sort.  At the same time, he meets Water Rat, a relaxed sort of fellow with a love of everything that has to do with the river and a taste for poetry.  Mole quickly decides to move in with Water Rat after the two share a picnic; the two will rarely be apart for the rest of the book.

Toad appears as a minor character, just spoken of, in the first chapter; he doesn't become a primary character until the second chapter, where a visit to Toad Hall results in him dragging Mole and Rat into his latest fixation, a horse-drawn caravan which he intends to go traveling the countryside in.  The characters are hesitant to get too involved, because Toad has a tendency to fixate on one thing until it loses some degree of charm for him, before moving on to something else; his exuberance for the idea of life on the road is able to push through his friends' reticence so that they end up going on his journey with him.  This goes well until the two rodents force Toad to actually do some of the work involved in this sort of travels, which quickly sours him on the prospect, aided by the caravan being run off the road and wrecked by a motor-car driving by at speed.  This sets up Toad's overall plotline (and the only actual ongoing plotline for the book), as he becomes obsessed by cars instead, and by the following morning has placed an order for one of his own.

We next meet Badger, a gruff sort of country gentleman of the sort who doesn't particularly care for society but is most welcoming to those in distress, who lives in the middle of the Wild Wood.  Mole and Rat come to his home during a snowstorm that leaves them stranded in the forest, and he gladly lets them in to stay the night and warm up.  He's a kind but stern fellow, whose biggest desire seems to be for there to be a certain degree of civility and stability to the countryside.  He's the sort that nobody particularly wants to cross, as well; Mole and Rat were somewhat threatened by the weasels and stoats who also live in the forest when they were caught after dark, and Badger makes it clear that they'll not see any further issues once it's known that they're his friends; after all, a badger is rather larger than most other mustelids.  At the same time, we learn that the Wild Wood is in a place where humans used to have a village; Badger's home is built in what is apparently a former basement.  This doesn't mean humans are gone, just they're not in that particular spot right now.

The small plotlines that continue in the book are similar small pastoral adventures, with Rat and Mole encountering a forest god (implied to be Pan) in one chapter (though they promptly forget, a gift from the god stated as being a way to ensure that their lives won't be seen as never reaching that peak again), and another having Rat be tempted toward running off to sea, until Mole returns him to his sanity.

The largest plotline, though, is Toad's misadventures as his arrogance and lack of common sense gets him in trouble, repeatedly; this is what the Disney film dealt with, and what the youthful me was expecting.  His fixation with motor-cars refuses to be sated even after he has wrecked six of them, and landed in the hospital three times; when Rat, Mole, and Badger attempt a forced intervention, he flees out the window, runs halfway to the human village nearby, steals a car, gets himself arrested, and winds up thrown into jail.  The subsequent escape (thanks to the warden's daughter who takes some pity on him because he's an animal) involves cross-dressing, sneaking aboard a train under false pretenses, stealing a horse, hijacking the same car again and driving it into a lake, and finally being swept up in the River's currents and delivered to Rat's door, across several chapters.  This leads to the revelation that the weasels, stoats, and ferrets from the Wild Wood have taken over Toad Hall, and finally a nighttime raid by the four friends to retake the manor from the invaders, and Toad finally learning a little bit of humility in the process.

It's obvious just why Toad is so beloved; children are obviously going to be amused by a goofy character who gets into all manner of slapstick scrapes.  But while his plotline may be the lion's share of the novel (six of the novel's twelve chapters deal with the Motor-Car fixation and its results, from beginning to end), the overall feel of the piece is far more in line with the lifestyles of Mole, Rat, and Badger.  These three are content with their lots in life; Mole may get homesick for his burrow, but he knows where it is and can easily stop by, and in fact does, and a more dependable fellow simply can't be found.  Rat may be swayed easily by a bit of storytelling, but the small pleasures of riverside life are more than enough for him if he just spends a bit of time writing.  And Badger stands by his friends, even if he's a bit of a scary old codger at times.  They serve to ground things against the rampaging id that is Toad, and where Toad is apt to give up at a small setback and rarely seems to think beyond a few moments ahead, the three of them together are more than able to offset Toad's shortcomings.

The one thing that is perhaps the most perplexing about this piece as a whole is the question of just what an 'animal' is within this context.  There are a number of characters who are apparently of similar size to one another despite being far differently-sized in nature (particularly Badger alongside everyone else), and Toad in particular interacts with a number of clearly human artifacts, including his motor-cars and the washerwoman's outfit that he 'borrows' in order to escape from jail, and that's leaving aside the question of the manor-house that is Toad Hall, and, well, the success of the washerwoman disguise.  On the other hand, Rat's temptation toward the seas comes from encountering a Sea Rat on the road, who has apparently made a habit of sneaking aboard ships by climbing into rowboats or up ropes, and likes to bunk in the captain's cabin, which implies that he's, well... rat-sized.  Songbirds are kept in cages by both people and animals alike, but Rat is able to have conversations with migratory avians on the subject of why they go south for the Winter rather than sticking around closeby.  Toad's caravan is pulled by a horse, who clearly isn't the same kind of animal as the other folk; the horse he steals during his escape from the law is likewise little more than a pack beast.  And the warden's daughter apparently likes animals as pets, but knows better than to mention that to the captive Toad.

It's a strange dichotomy that is far from clearly-delineated, and serves to give a sort of dream-like quality to the work, that makes it a wonderful chaser for Grahame's other two major works.  It's the only one of the three that really felt like it had a fully-satisfying ending, though; where The Golden Age and Dream Days both ended with a sort of eulogy for childhood, The Wind in the Willows wraps up with the promise that while Toad may be a little less conceited and devoted to his impulses, the four of them are going to continue in their lives with the status quo re-established.  All has been brought back to the way it should be, and the pastoral life remains, a little slice of Arcady within the English countryside, complete with the god who mythologically lived in the Greek region.  It's a version of the world seen in Grahame's earlier works that can go on in adulthood, where there may be some strife between residents but existence is largely harmonious, and where the line between nature and 'civilized' life is blurred to the point of nonexistence.