The Count of Monte Cristo: Dramatic Irony 7 key examples

Dumas foreshadows the precariousness of Dantès's situation with the simile linking the drops of sweat on Fernand's brow to the first drop of rain in a storm—just as the first moments of rain anticipate a downpour, Fernand's demeanor anticipates a great ordeal for Dantès. Danglers, meanwhile, relies on Fernand's frenetic behavior and evident jealousy over Dantès's coming wedding as a cover so that he can set in motion the true plot against Dantès. The reader is left to wonder at the storm of conspiracies converging around Dantès while the man himself is too besotted to notice much of anything at all. 

The potent imagery of stormy weather becomes a frequent motif throughout The Count of Monte Cristo, which Dumas invokes in order to connect the events of the novel to the larger, uncontrollable, and unpredictable workings of the world at large—storms, since ancient times, are manifestations of divine wrath and willpower, as gods seemingly call them down from the heavens onto unsuspecting mortals below. 

Dantès has no reason to suspect the cruelty of Villefort's machinations against him, and yet the reader has every reason to doubt this supposed act of benevolence, benefitting from the perspective of Dumas's omniscient narrator and privy to Villefort's personal political allegiances and anxieties after the dinner scene portrayed in Chapter 6. The extent of Dantès's gratitude to Villefort—whom he calls "goodness itself"—further builds the dramatic irony of this scene. 

Dantès's many interactions with the law and the danger of a corrupt judicial system form the core of the Count of Monte Cristo. The interactions between Villefort and Dantès in Chapter 7, which lead directly to Dantès's imprisonment so that Villefort may ensure the security of his own career, form the foundation of Dantès's eventual quest for justice as the Count. 

The mysterious identity of the Count is a central source of dramatic irony in The Count of Monte Cristo, because the reader is well aware of the Count's background and true identity. The interactions between the other characters of the novel as they struggle to figure out—with increasing exasperation—who exactly the Count is and what exactly he wants are some of the most entertaining moments in the novel. Moments such as this are also the central source of the satisfaction of the Count's revenge narrative: he is operating with almost all the information for much of the novel, and his conspirators, enemies, and former lovers all struggle (and largely fail) to keep up with his machinations. 

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. 

By illustrating that all the guests appear to have thrown caution to the wind, Dumas prepares the reader to be ready for any amount of drama that he might throw their way. Whereas the guests themselves are drawn to the party by the allure of the mysterious count, only the reader knows the Count's true identity and his ruthless intention to seek his revenge—as the guests remain bewildered, the suspense only grows for the reader.

Dumas relies heavily on dramatic irony in The Count of Monte Cristo, since the reader knows—or at least suspects—the identity and motivations of even the most duplicitous characters before the characters themselves are entirely aware.  

Once again, Dumas uses weather in a literary device to illustrate the force of human struggle: the Count's fictional lover was "swept away" like a "whirlwind." The simile holds true to the emotion behind the Count's falsified backstory—he was, in fact, swept away from Mercédès when he was imprisoned—but does not reveal the Count's identity. For the reader, this moment carries particular suspense. It would appear that Mercédès and the Count both know exactly who the other is, and the Count is not especially careful in sharing a backstory with a one-to-one correlation to his real relationship to Mercédès, but neither character has let anything on. For now, they stick to their assumed identities and carry on the charade. 

Dumas uses questions of identity as a propulsive narrative device in The Count of Monte Cristo, drawing out the ambiguity of each character's true identity for as long as possible. By letting the reader stay just a bit more informed than the characters in the story, Dumas can mine the effects of dramatic irony and heighten the reader's feeling of suspense as these long-lost lovers almost reunite. After all, The Count of Monte Cristo is also a love story—and the Count's relationship with Mercédès is a central source of motivation for his rampage of revenge.

The Baroness assumes that Villefort is referring to his treatment of Benedetto as one of his great failures, given that Villefort tried to have him killed. She does not know anything about Villefort's other major crime, to keep Dantès imprisoned all those years ago. This is a classic case of miscommunication, of a sort that Dumas employs frequently in the Count of Monte Cristo to stoke dramatic irony and engage the reader—who knows enough to understand that Villefort is referring to "discovering a blemish" in Dantès and manipulating that fact in order to keep him in exile. While the Count holds all the cards for most of the novel, the reader is never far behind.