The Count of Monte Cristo: Allusions 12 key examples

As is fitting for such a historically-minded novel, The Count of Monte Cristo is full of allusions to the actual historical events that take place in the time in which the tale is set. In this instance, Dumas reminds the reader that the historical context for the novel is the exile of Napoleon, who is "made a martyr" by his exile and ultimately promoted to an almost divine status in the eyes of the French people. In emphasizing the unintended consequences of Napoleon's exile, which fed directly into this "resurrection" as a divinely-ordained ruler, Dumas draws a parallel between Napoleon's experience and the Count's own imprisonment and return—which Dumas treats in similarly divine terms throughout the novel. In this way, the scene subtly foreshadows the forthcoming "restoration" of Dantès as the Count of Monte Cristo, who will return from his prison to wreak havoc on those who did him wrong.

Dumas uses metaphor to compare the act of remembering the past and anticipating the future to attempting to look through a haze or a veil—the object of sight is obscured through the opacity of time. He also invokes the English artist John Martin, a Romantic painter who would have been a contemporary of Dumas, to demonstrate the power of a well-educated imagination: had Dantès known more, he might be able to conjure scenes in his head like those of Martin's massive paintings of biblical events.

By demonstrating Dantès's lack of education and refinement, Dumas foreshadows the forthcoming crash-course in cultural and military knowledge and aristocratic behavior that he will receive from the Abbe—the very education that will enable him to transform into the Count of Monte Cristo. Dantès will leave the prison capable not only of imagining a wild future for himself but also with the power to make that future into reality.

In The Tempest, Ariel is a noble spirit and Caliban a half-human/half-monster. Villefort means to juxtapose these two characters to emphasize why apoplexy is a fate in some cases worse than death itself—a challenge to the Count's own stance, as he has just stated that only death will be able to stop his mission. Dumas uses this chapter to further illustrate the differences between the characters of the Count and Villefort, much like Shakespeare himself would have done with Ariel and Caliban, and this passage displays once again Villefort's haughty tone and ability to weave together elite references to make his point. In The Count of Monte Cristo, allusions are often reflections on the characters who make them. 

At first, Bertuccio thinks Villefort must be a ghost—and Dumas takes this opportunity to allude to Macbeth's shock at seeing the ghost of Banquo in Shakespeare's Macbeth. The Count, of course, plays dumb regarding the whole thing and feigns bemusement that Bertuccio would think Villefort was dead. The Count begins to set his plot in motion: by bringing a group of conspirators with conflicting ambitions and deadly intentions together, the Count can stoke the tensions and intrigues of the group for his own benefit. 

In Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio describes Queen Mab in passing as a prankster fairy who visits people in their sleep. In Midsummer Night's Dream, meanwhile, Titania is the queen of the fairies who Puck curses to fall in love with a donkey-headed man named Nick Bottom. While Dumas makes frequent allusions to Shakespeare and other works of literature in The Count of Monte Cristo as a means to grant greater weight to his own narrative and invite a reader's greater engagement with his story, the invocations of these fairy characters has potentially greater significance: in the Count's absence, Mercédès has married Mondego despite remaining in love with Dantès—an inversion of Titania's story, in which she falls in love with Nick Bottom despite being married to Oberon. Albert's comparisons of his mother and these two fairy queens invokes the lengthy literary tradition of romantic conflict of which The Count of Monte Cristo is a part.

Color and light imagery suffuses this passage, as the reader imagines for themselves the decor arranged before Villefort. To make his description even more specific, Dumas has included specific allusions to literature-influenced artworks: an engraving of Homer carrying his guide, presumably after the painting of the same name by 19th century French painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau, and Belisarius—a Byzantine General—begging for alms, after the painting by 18th century French painter Jacques-Louis David.

Dumas knows the familiar references to which his audience will be able to relate, and he fills the narrative of The Count of Monte Cristo with them. Here, the invocation of two famous paintings in the middle of a highly descriptive sequence helps the reader better visualize Wilmore's residence.

In quoting Hamlet, Villefort sets up a moment of situational irony—he seeks solace in Hamlet's simile that foul deeds can deceptively reappear, despite the fact that the Count presents a very real threat. The irony is doubled in that Hamlet's character correlates to the Count in The Count of Monte Cristo, and Villefort therefore seeks comfort in the words of his mortal enemy. 

Later, in Chapter 76, the Count himself quotes Hamlet to Baroness Danglars as they reflect on the sudden deaths of a number of Villefort family members:

‘But you know very well: after losing Monsieur de Saint-Méran three or four days after his departure, they have just lost the marchioness three or four days after her arrival.’

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‘So they have. I did hear that. But, as Claudius says to Hamlet, such is the law of nature: they lost their fathers, and mourned them; they will die before their sons, who will mourn them in turn.’

‘But that’s not all.’

‘How do you mean, it’s not all?’

At the Count's invocation, this allusion feels downright sinister: death is a matter of course, as the murderous Claudius says to Hamlet after killing his father—a "law of nature." Although the Count is perhaps most similar to Hamlet, given their shared desire for revenge, this sequence sees him citing the main antagonist of the play as a justification for his designs that have led to the deaths of a number of characters. Although the Count is undoubtedly the hero of the novel, exchanges like this reveal the darker side of his adventure and complicate the reader's perception of his supposedly noble thirst for revenge.

Although The Count of Monte Cristo would go on to become a classic in its own right, Hamlet is one of the most iconic revenge narratives in the history of literature. By connecting the Count's story to Hamlet's, Dumas taps into his readers' likely familiarity with Shakespeare in order to strengthen the legitimacy and intensity of his own take on a revenge story.

In quoting Hamlet, Villefort sets up a moment of situational irony—he seeks solace in Hamlet's simile that foul deeds can deceptively reappear, despite the fact that the Count presents a very real threat. The irony is doubled in that Hamlet's character correlates to the Count in The Count of Monte Cristo, and Villefort therefore seeks comfort in the words of his mortal enemy. 

Later, in Chapter 76, the Count himself quotes Hamlet to Baroness Danglars as they reflect on the sudden deaths of a number of Villefort family members:

‘But you know very well: after losing Monsieur de Saint-Méran three or four days after his departure, they have just lost the marchioness three or four days after her arrival.’

Cite this Quote

‘So they have. I did hear that. But, as Claudius says to Hamlet, such is the law of nature: they lost their fathers, and mourned them; they will die before their sons, who will mourn them in turn.’

‘But that’s not all.’

‘How do you mean, it’s not all?’

At the Count's invocation, this allusion feels downright sinister: death is a matter of course, as the murderous Claudius says to Hamlet after killing his father—a "law of nature." Although the Count is perhaps most similar to Hamlet, given their shared desire for revenge, this sequence sees him citing the main antagonist of the play as a justification for his designs that have led to the deaths of a number of characters. Although the Count is undoubtedly the hero of the novel, exchanges like this reveal the darker side of his adventure and complicate the reader's perception of his supposedly noble thirst for revenge.

Although The Count of Monte Cristo would go on to become a classic in its own right, Hamlet is one of the most iconic revenge narratives in the history of literature. By connecting the Count's story to Hamlet's, Dumas taps into his readers' likely familiarity with Shakespeare in order to strengthen the legitimacy and intensity of his own take on a revenge story.

Dumas compares the titular hill—monte—of Monte Cristo to the biblical hill upon which the Romans crucified Jesus in the passion narratives of the New Testament. By drawing a parallel between the "source" of the Count's assumed aristocratic status with the site of Jesus's sacrifice, Dumas makes an explicit comparison between the Count and Jesus himself. There are more than a few such comparisons in The Count of Monte Cristo, as Dantès's exile, imprisonment, and subsequent ascension to power and fortune under the identity of the Count echo Jesus's death and resurrection. The Count himself would no doubt appreciate this comparison, as he perceives his path to revenge as biblical in scale and effectively predetermined: the Count sees himself, at least at first, as someone destined to deliver a divine retribution to those who have wronged him.

The Atreides, or the descendants of the Greek king Atreus, are a spectacularly unfortunate family in Greek myth and literature—and in particular within the work of Homer and Sophocles—with an infamous amount of tragedy and death through their generations. Dumas uses an allusion to this myth to show how the Count thinks about fate and the possibility of predestination: the Atreides were not doomed from the individual actions of the family members themselves so much as they were doomed by the wrath of the Greek gods. Seeking justification for his attempts to destroy the Villeforts, the Count dismisses their fate as out of his hands—he sees himself as merely ushering them to their pre-determined demise.

Dumas begins with an invocation of two stories from classical mythology. The first reference is to the legendary ascent of the Titans, Ancient Greek gods who ascended into the heavens themselves in order to overthrow Uranus and rule the universe. The second reference is to the infamous rebuke of the gods made by Ajax the Lesser, who "brandished his fist" at the gods rather than appeal to them for help after a shipwreck and was killed for this transgression by Poseidon. 

Dumas's appeal to ancient divine conflict is a means to hyperbolically convey Villefort's grief—his despair is extreme to the point of rivaling those of the gods and heroes of old. So extreme, in fact, as to have a physical impact on Villefort—the "weight of sorrows" bends his head down as he rises to leave the scene.

Dumas frequently alludes to classical literature and myth in The Count of Monte Cristo, and such references serve to intensify the spectacle of his narrative and appeal to the reader's awareness of the thousands of years of art and literature that have depicted these stories again and again. At the very least, for a culturally aware contemporary reader, these allusions would invoke the vivid scenes of classical conflict and horror painted by artists in the 19th century contemporary to Dumas himself—and thereby provide a visual accompaniment to his narrative.

The Count feels himself to have been, at the height of his quest for justice, like a violent fireball descending toward the cities of the plain. Besides showing the self-destructive nature of the Count's quest that he only begins to appreciate by the end of the novel, this is a likely allusion to the themes of fire and vengeance that pervade the story of the Trojan war as told in Homer's Iliad—in particular recalling Book 21 of the poem, when Hephaestus scorches the legendary plain of the Trojan battlefield with his divine fire and aids the Greek war effort to destroy the city of Troy.

Throughout The Count of Monte Cristo, Dumas makes a concerted effort to raise the gravitas of his plot through dramatic literary devices and frequent invocations of the narratives of classical epic and European literature alike. The Count's subtle allusion to Homer's poetry and comparison of himself to an embodiment of violent, divine wrath vividly associates the drama of Dumas's historical world with the fantastical imagery of Greek myth and reminds the reader—at the very same moment as the Count is coming to this realization himself—that he's too caught up in his own story for his own good. 

Even though the food seems relatively awful—black bread, rancid cheese, and raw onions are hardly a hearty meal—Danglars nonetheless comes around on eating it due to his fast-growing appetite. In his mind, he transforms the raw onions into a palatable version of actual, fine cuisine as he might have requested from his own chef. No matter how high the station of a character in The Count of Monte Cristo, they are not safe from a fall from grace. Danglars's ability to justify eating the rotting food is a visceral reminder of just how far he has fallen.

Dumas himself wrote a cookbook of sorts and he alludes to this work—and his evidently extensive knowledge of cooking practices—in this scene. In the cookbook, which Dumas called his Dictionary of Cuisine, he even writes about the sauces Robert! Throughout The Count of Monte Cristo, Dumas makes an effort to connect his story to his own life and the world at large. Allusions like this could build his connection with his reader and create a more engaging and relatable reading experience.