Chapter 1

42 Anime and the Art of Adaptation
his progeny—and his private ethical system receive a severe blow. This coincides
with the realization that the lives of totally innocent creatures are at risk
of being arbitrarily sacrificed by a blind quest for revenge—providentially
warranted as one may claim this to be. Doubting the legitimacy of his agenda,
though still holding on to the sentiment that he has never acted solely out of
self-interest, the Count must eventually accept that he is in need of forgiveness
no less acutely than his oppressors are in need of punishment.
The themes of justice and revenge run in parallel to an ongoing preoccupation
with the tension between love and hatred. Upon embarking on his
pursuit of retribution, Monte Cristo deliberately cuts himself off from any
opportunity for emotional involvement with his fellow humans, bidding
farewell to gratitude and spontaneous kindness and thus remaining tenaciously
detached from even the most sentimentally engaging situation. Yet, it is clear
that his emotions have not been totally eliminated by experience and grief,
for he is still capable of acting compassionately in extremis. This is memorably
borne out by the scene where he grants Mercédès’ request to spare the life of
her son Albert in a duel. This moment also confirms the protagonist’s newly
discovered preparedness to question the tenability of his supposedly providential
role, and accept that the younger generations may not deserve to be
treated as objects of revenge insofar as they do not automatically inherit their
ancestors’ sins—as patently demonstrated by Albert’s goodness despite his
being the son of the abominable Fernand, now self-renamed as the Count de
Morcerf.
Dumas’ aesthetic is replete with Romantic leanings that eclectically manifest
themselves in a variety of guises. Stylistically and structurally, The Count
of Monte Cristo explicitly proclaims its standing as a romance-imbued historical
novel and, as such, revels in the sustained interweaving of action, historical
adventure and matters of the heart. The text is faithful to the conventions of
the Romantic novel in utilizing a literally larger-than-life hero of unparalleled
courage, bravery, intelligence and robust (though not always unproblematically
admirable) moral mettle. Right from the start, Dumas’ protagonist is portrayed
as a man of great integrity and resolve, and his ethical credentials are thereby
firmly established. His adversaries are also invested with codified personality
traits—primarily, jealousy and deviousness—and do not alter much as the
story progresses. It is indeed in action, rather than in psychological development,
that the Romantic novel typically locates its center of interest.
From a thematic point of view, one of the original narrative’s most distinctively
Romantic aspects consists of its emphasis on the Faustian myth of
the superior individual with diabolical affiliations. This finds expression in
numerous Romantic poets and, most strikingly or even sensationally, in their
enthusiastic responses to John Milton’s Satan. William Blake, for example,