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Definition of Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which authors hint at plot developments that don't actually occur until later in the story. Foreshadowing can be achieved directly or indirectly, by making... read full definition
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which authors hint at plot developments that don't actually occur until later in the story. Foreshadowing can be achieved... read full definition
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which authors hint at plot developments that don't actually occur until later in the... read full definition
Chapter 2 – Father and Son
Explanation and Analysis—Fickle Fealty:
In Chapter 2, Caderousse and Dantès discuss Dantès's promotion to captain of the Pharaon. In a moment of foreshadowing, Caderousse heavily implies that Mercédès is largely attracted to Dantès because of his new position.
‘Oh, yes,’ Caderousse continued, ‘and some with good prospects, too. But, of course, you are going to be a captain, so she’ll be sure not to refuse you.’
‘By which you mean,’ Dantès said, smiling, but barely concealing his anxiety, ‘that if I were not a captain …’
‘Ah! Ah!’ said Caderousse.
‘Come, now,’ the young man said. ‘I have a better opinion than you of women in general, and Mercédès in particular, and I am persuaded that, whether I were a captain or not, she would remain faithful to me.’
Caderousse doesn't get much right in The Count of Monte Cristo—in fact, he is one of the most loathsome characters in the story—but here, he predicts Mercédès's disloyalty to Dantès. After all, once Dantès is imprisoned and stripped of any admirable status, Mercédès will move on.
Dantès, for his part, retains his faith in Mercédès over the course of his exile. His anxiety in this scene anticipates the depth of his regret when he eventually finds her to have moved on and married Fernand—and the lengths to which he will eventually go to seek revenge on Fernand for this betrayal. Love and devotion are central themes in The Count of Monte Cristo, and Dantès's path toward redemption follows his efforts to love again after this heartbreak.
Related Themes:
Chapter 5 – The Betrothal
Explanation and Analysis—Dantès's Betrothal:
In Chapter 5, as Dumas begins to set the plot of his novel in motion, the reader comes to the dawning realization that the world might be out to get Dantès. In keeping with the frequent use of storm and water imagery to intensify the narrative, Dumas raises the suspense of Dantès's betrothal dinner by using a storm simile to focus on Fernand's obvious hostility towards Dantès and foreshadow the coming plot against the young captain. While Dantès himself remains quite oblivious to the threat, the reader cannot help but see it unfold before them in a heap of dramatic irony:
Fernand was shuffling on his chair, starting at the slightest noise and, from time to time, wiping large beads of sweat from his forehead, which seemed to have fallen there like the first drops of rain before a storm.
‘By heaven, neighbour,’ said Dantès, ‘[...] It’s true, Mercédès is not yet my wife, but [...] in an hour and a half, she will be!’
There was a gasp of surprise from everyone, except Old Dantès, who exhibited his fine set of teeth in a broad laugh. Mercédès smiled [...]. Fernand made a convulsive lunge towards the handle of his dagger.
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.
Related Themes:
Chapter 6 – The Deputy Crown Prosecutor
Explanation and Analysis—Villefort's Betrothal:
In Chapter 6, Dumas traces the scene at the betrothal dinner for Villefort. The "cream of Marseille's society" is in attendance, and Dumas' account of the guests and their conversation becomes a meditation on contemporary French politics:
There were former magistrates who had resigned their appointments under the usurper, veteran officers who had left our army to serve under Condé, and young men brought up by families which were still uncertain about their security, despite the four or five substitutes that had been hired for them, out of hatred for the man whom five years of exile were to make a martyr, and fifteen years of Restoration, a god.
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.
Chapter 12 – Father and Son
Explanation and Analysis—The Politics of Death:
In Chapter 12, Noirtier and Villefort discuss the tensions between Royalist and Bonapartist factions in France and the recent death of a general, seemingly at the hands of Noirtier's Bonapartist associates, that the King of France himself identified as a murder. In a moment of foreshadowing, Noirtier reflects on the role of murder in politics:
The king! I thought him enough of a philosopher to realize that there is no such thing as murder in politics. You know as well as I do, my dear boy, that in politics there are no people, only ideas; no feelings, only interests. In politics, you don’t kill a man, you remove an obstacle, that’s all.
Ruthlessness, it would appear, runs in the family. By using metaphor to compare humans to mere obstacles—obstacles to be "removed"—in political struggle, Noirtier shows his son exactly what he thinks about the value of human life. This exchange foreshadows Villefort's eventual treatment of Dantès: by casting him aside as a prisoner and conspiring to ruin his life in order to protect his family's political reputation, it would seem that Villefort takes his father's words to heart.
The nature of justice and the effects of proper and improper applications of justice lie at the center of The Count of Monte Cristo. As a member of France's judiciary, Villefort's willingness to suspend any notion of justice in favor of personal gain is a particularly stark violation of his honor, and his cruelty towards Dantès leads directly to the creation of the Count of Monte Cristo as an arbiter of the new, revenge-fueled kind of justice that becomes the Count's hallmark and Villefort's undoing.
Related Themes:
Chapter 15 – Number 34 and Number 17
Explanation and Analysis—A Failure of Imagination:
In Chapter 15, Dumas relates the extent of Dantès's predicament as he sits in prison in terms of that which Dantès does not know: uneducated as he is, Dantès has no means to entertain himself with knowledge of literature or memory of historical anecdotes. Dumas articulates this plight with a series of literary devices, including visual imagery, metaphor, and an allusion to the vividness of oil painting:
Dantès was a simple, uneducated man; to him, the past was covered by a murky veil that can be raised only by knowledge. In the solitude of his dungeon and the desert of his thoughts, he could not reconstruct ages past, revive extinct races or rebuild those antique cities that imagination augments and poeticizes so that they pass before one’s eyes, gigantic and lit by fiery skies, as in Martin’s Babylonian scenes. All he had were: his own past, which was so short; his present – so sombre; and his future – so uncertain: nineteen years of light to contemplate, in what might be eternal darkness!
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.
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Chapter 17 – The Abbe’s Cell
Explanation and Analysis—Regretting Revenge:
In Chapter 17, the abbé takes it upon himself to educate Dantès in the ways of the world. Over the course of this tutelage, however, the abbé reveals that he has grown uncomfortable with the way that Dantès fixates on revenge—in a moment of foreshadowing, the Abbé confesses this concern:
His expression had returned to normal and his features were composed, but with a strength and firmness, as it were, that implied a settled resolve. The abbé looked closely at him.
‘I regret having helped you in your investigation and said what I did to you,’ he remarked.
‘Why is that?’ Dantès asked.
‘Because I have insinuated a feeling into your heart that was not previously there: the desire for revenge.’
Dantès smiled and said: ‘Let us change the subject.’
The abbé gave him a further brief look and sadly shook his head...
Although Dantès refuses to discuss it further, the abbé is absolutely right—Dantès has a growing, increasingly insatiable desire to seek vengeance on everyone who has wronged him in his previous life before his imprisonment. The abbé's reaction to Dantès's impulse for revenge foreshadows the extent to which this impulse will consume his life for years, up until the very closing moments of the novel. Unwittingly, the abbé has empowered Dantès to take matters into his own hands.
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