In The Count of Monte Cristo, there is a precise moment in which Dantes comes face to face to a reality he never before met. “‘I regret now,’ said he, ‘having helped you in your late inquiries, or having given you the information I did.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because I’ve instilled in your heart a feeling that wasn’t there before: vengeance.’” (58). These lines are a conversation between Abbe Faria and Edmond Dantes during the beginning of his captivity. Before Faria had broken down and really gotten to the route of Dantes’s unfair imprisonment, he’d been entirely naive to the very essence of evil. Therefore, Faria had begun Dantes justification to his future actions: God directed his ambitions to demolish his enemies lives. As his unmerciful vengeance edges on, he finds himself at a halt after the visit of a lost love. Mercedes, now known to be Madame de Morcerf, comes to the Count of Monte Cristo, once known to be Edmond Dantes, to convince him to spare her son’s life during a duel that was to take place the very next day. In her desperate pleading to persuade Dantes, he argues, “You’re asking me to disobey God, who brought me back from a living death in order to punish them,” (377). This quote carries on the thought that the count must follow God’s path to repay God for getting him out of such a dark, damp hole he had once been …show more content…
Before his run in with Abbe Frarir, Dantes had become blind to those around him because he had been so happy just before. During the few days before he’d be wed to Mercedes, nether of them noticed the fall of misfortune creeping just beside them, waiting to pounce. “...they were so happy that they saw nothing but themselves and the beautiful blue sky which seemed to be blessing them,” (18). Happiness, in this case, blinded them from seeing such jealousy radiating off of those so close to them. The day Dantes escaped the claustrophobic walls of his cell, he truly took the form of the Count of Monte Cristo. His mentality switched from that of a naive sailor to a wealthy gentleman on a journey laid for him by that of God. “Farewell to kindness, humanity, and gratitude. Farewell to all sentiments that gladden the heart, I subsided myself for Providence in rewarding the good; may the God of vengeance now yield me His place to punish the wicked!” (131). Since Dantes was very much ignorant to the commotion he’d caused in the lives of Fernand and Danglars, he was impacted with so many emotions of vengeance, he chose to forget the happiness and respectful manners he once had for everyone, therefore losing who he once was.