Okay so i've seen so far that the book is loosely based upon French Historical events in the early 1800's but can anyone give me some direct relations to what events Dumas related count of monte cristo to?
The Count of Monte Cristo is, like most of the author's many other works, strongly rooted in the real and probable. The story is very loosely based on an actual criminal case, culled from an account buried in the back pages of a newspaper. From there, Dumas turned this minor incident into a novel of major proportions, adding a small ocean of complex characters, chases and escapes, duels and deceits, romance and mystery. It is, at its very heart, a love story, the saga of one man's soul held captive across many decades by a woman he would forever wish were his own. It is through that love that Dantès, once poor and desolate and cast into the dark hole of the Chateau d'If in 1815 and left to die, completes a spiritual voyage born in the company of an imprisoned abbé, a fellow inmate, and released by the powerful hold of his beloved Mercedes. The strength of their love allows the Count finally to strip away his hardened shell and reveal the pure and honest inner core of Edmond Dantès.
Dumas used the political turmoil of his age to fuel his massive historical novels. He was a man of wealth, and already France's most successful author by the time he began to write The Count of Monte Cristo for newspaper serialization in 1844. This allowed him both the luxury and the knowledge to skewer the morals and fabric of the upper-crust society in which he found himself a respected member. At the same time, he was not far removed from the young boy who had watched his widowed mother struggle to make ends meet, working at a series of menial jobs and often borrowing to keep her son in the better schools. These memories fueled his fictional stance on the side of the poor, who are pitted against those who have the means and desire to bury their hopes and simple dreams. The historical accuracy of The Count of Monte Cristo, as with all of Dumas's novels and plays, should be viewed through a fine periscope. As with many great novelists, the breath and the purity of the story mattered more to Dumas than did the strict adherence to the political facts and historical details. As he himself put it, "History is the nail on which I hang my novels." Nothing mattered to him more than the telling of the tale.
