Time, Death, and Identity in Dumas' Count of Monte Christo

The story is well known, at least in its outlines: on the day when he is supposed to marry his beloved Mercedes, the young sailor Edmond Dantes is arrested on bogus charges and imprisoned in the Chateau d'If on a small island near Marseille. He spends 14 years there before he can escape. He gets hold of an enormous treasure and reincarnates as the Count of Monte Christo to meticulously plan and execute his revenge on those who were responsible for his unjust imprisonment.

It's a great novel that I found hard to put down once I had started with it. As far as adventure stories go, it is far better, that is, far better written, far more compelling, and far more believable, than any of the stuff that floods the book market today. Not that it is particularly realistic. Monte Christo is clearly a character designed to be larger than life, and parts of the plot and the whole atmosphere are strongly and deliberately reminiscent of A Thousand and One Nights. And unlike Victor Hugo, he is not a poet. His use of language is more economical. Neither does he engage in philosophical discussions. He doesn't seem to be interested in the nature of things. He doesn't attempt to understand the world or even human society (as for instance Balzac did). But there's a tragic note in the whole story, an all-pervading sadness that hints at something deeper, some essential feature of this world. Edmond gets his revenge, but seeing his enemies destroyed doesn't give him the satisfaction that he had hoped for. It doesn't restore the order of things, as it should. In a more conventional novel the hero would punish those who wronged him and get back the woman he loves. But although Mercedes is still alive and they could now reunite if they still wished to, they both agree that it's too late for them. Mercedes still loves Edmond, and Edmond still loves Mercedes, but Edmond is dead. He has changed so much that he is now someone else. Monte Christo has grown from Edmond, but he isn't him. He has replaced him. And Mercedes loves Edmond, but not Monte Christo.

Over the years we lose each other, unless we change together, and we may even lose ourselves. We look back to who we were when we were young and hardly recognise ourselves. Time sweeps us away and separates us from ourselves. You cannot step into the same river twice. What's done cannot be undone. The Count of Monte Christo is not so much about revenge as about the irreversibility of events, the impossibility to go back in time and retrieve what has been lost, and the death that we die at every single moment in our lives when the present drifts into the past.

Filial Ingratitude

I've recently started to work on a book on (the virtue of) gratitude. One of the questions I intend to address is whether gratitude can actually be owed to someone, and if so, in what kind of situation exactly.

Take for instance the gratitude that a parent expects from their children. Filial ingratitude is one of the great topics of literature. Think of Shakespeare's King Lear, who gives his kingdom and all his power to his two daughters who swear they love him more than anything else in the world. But, predictably, as soon as they have got what they wanted, the erstwhile king becomes a bothersome old fool to them, neglected, abused, and despised. Lear, of course, bitterly complains about their "monstrous" ingratitude, which is seen as almost as bad as patricide, which in turn is seen as very bad indeed. Shakespeare suggests that what makes Regan and Goneril's ingratitude so abominable is not the fact that they are not properly grateful to Lear in his role as a benefactor (who has given them power and riches), but rather that they are not properly grateful to him as their father. Similarly, in Balzac's Pere Goriot, the title character is a once wealthy man who has literally given his last penny to his rich and spoilt daughters, who then cannot be bothered to visit him when he is dying and has only one wish, to see them one last time. He is buried like a pauper, his daughters nowhere to be seen. So this seems to be another clear case of filial ingratitude. But then again, it is the great sacrifices that Goriot makes for his daughters that prompt the reader to think of their ingratitude as monstrous. Would they appear any less monstrous if Goriot had not been their father? Perhaps, but why exactly? Is there a gratitude that they owe to their father for the simple reason that he is their father?

So the question is, do we owe our parents gratitude because we owe our existence to them? After all, we wouldn't be if not for them. However, even if we value our being alive, we didn't exactly ask anyone to give us life, and it is not clear that our parents have actually benefited us by bringing us into existence. You can benefit someone who exists, but not someone who doesn't exist. But if my existence as such is not something that I owe my parents gratitude for, perhaps I owe them gratitude for feeding me, providing a roof over my head, and not letting me die when I was too little to fend for myself. However, it may be argued that by bringing us into existence they have incurred a moral obligation to look after us until we no longer need them. It is they who owe us, rather than we who owe them (just as we owe our children, rather than they us). It all depends whether we think that children have a right to be fed and taken care off and even (as some philosophers have argued) to be loved. If there is such a right, then they don't owe gratitude to those who do nothing more than what is their moral duty.

So again, is there such a thing as filial ingratitude?