LitLetter 223: Journey, continued...to Sweet (?) Revenge
Classic dramas with insights into Vengeance
Prologue
Is revenge an understudied emotion? Does it form the underpinning theme of as many novels as, say, love? Probably not, but revenge has led to the writing of many major classics. A simple Google – the Top Ten list of revenge pieces of writing includes Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte), Hamlet (William Shakespeare), Atonement (Ian McEwan), Murder on the Orient Express (Agatha Christie), Different Class (Joanne Harris), and The Little Sister (Raymond Chandler). Some heavy weights there, indeed.
The word vengeance, by the way, is treated as synonymous to revenge by most entries on Google that I surveyed. And then I found (on wikidiff.com) a difference – revenge is retaliation performed by the person wronged, vengeance is retaliation by a third party. This interpretation is borne out by Romans 12: 19-21:
Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
The Lord our God demands the right and responsibility of vengeance, carried out by him after death, not in the worldly realm. In a way, God started the notion of revenge. The first murder on earth was a revenge killing, that of Abel by his brother, Cain. The brothers made sacrifices to God, but God favoured Abel's sacrifice over Cain's. Cain then murdered Abel, whereupon God punished Cain by condemning him to a life of wandering.
And this is so how it happens. Someone slights me, and I have a choice – ignore, or react. Albert Einstein said: ‘Weak people revenge, strong people forgive, intelligent people ignore’. And right there, in that one sentence, we have the heart of behaviour – you can react in like mode, or you can choose not to. Jesus is our exemplar for choosing not to; he had the feelings, he simply did not act on them.
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
This has all come upon me as I have finished my first ever reading of The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. This novel is usually first in any list of revenge/vengeance pieces of writing; it certainly was in The Guardian’s most recent list of Top Ten revenge pieces of writing published in April 2021.
The impact of this classic novel – by the same author who gave us The Three Musketeers – was delayed in my case, a delay brought about, I believe, by the pace of the story, its inherent momentum owing to the frightful events it recounts. Frightful is carefully chosen; I could also say dreadful, awful, in both cases well-chosen descriptions in their original senses of ‘full of fright, full of dread, full of awe’. In this way, it is a monstrous book. The Count of Monte Cristo tears into his vengeance like the General Maximus in Ridley Scott’s film, Gladiator: ‘And I shall have my vengeance, in this world, or the next’. Hardly a shred of compassion besmirches the Count’s focus of vengeance.
From a mild beginning where we are about to experience a wedding celebration in the heart of Marseille, we quickly are confounded by a triple onslaught against innocence. Three men – Mondego, Danglars and De Villefort - with quite separate intents, conspire against the pleasant young ship’s captain, Edmond Dantes, the man about to marry his sweetheart, Mercedes. Romantic jealousy combined with grand political misfortune (Bonaparte has a day earlier left the Isle of Elba to spark his catastrophic return to France, Dantes the unwitting agent of Napoleon by his possession of Napoleon’s letter to supporters) cause poor Dantes to be consigned rapidly and for ever into Hell, a dungeon at the Chateau d’If, a notorious island prison within sight off the coast of Marseille.
Years pass, fourteen to be exact, by which time Dantes is long forgotten, believed to be dead, abandoned even by his sweetheart who marries one of the enforcers, Mondego. However deep in the bowels of Chateau d’If, Dantes is alive, making the friendship of a fellow prisoner, the Abbe Faria. This latter gentleman is also unfairly incarcerated. A man of great intellect and character, it is he who keeps Dantes alive (not his sense of vengeance, I should add, Dantes looks after that himself). Alive means a fantastic education programme, a clear analysis of the roles of the three culprits of Dantes’s misfortune, a description of the location of long-since buried treasure (from the de Medicis in Florence), and hope that the incarceration will end at some time. It does, yet only after fourteen years when the Abbe dies; Dantes daringly substitutes himself for the Abbe in the winding-sheet (today’s body bag) in which the corpse has been wrapped. And is then thrown off a cliff into the waters below.
You can sense the excitement – this is truly described as an adventure novel! Dantes with much endeavour accesses the treasure – and then disappears from the script! It becomes clear only later in the novel that another ten years have passed before the action is resumed – in Paris! In these intervening years Dantes has sharpened his purpose, established his vast reserves of wealth, and now puts into action his awful, dreadful, frightful revenge.
For there is no mercy. A relentless onslaught – both physical and psychological – ensues against the persons who consigned him to Hell. These persons have developed, naturally, into leading lights of the society of Paris. The Count of Monte Cristo (CMC, for ease) inveigles his way into their lives, the lives of their families and friends, largely unrecognised and certainly never denounced as Edmond Dantes. The CMC’s actions are not overtly dastardly. He holds himself as a mysterious gentleman who has spent many years in the Orient, and is very generous with his wealth. And he is aided by the fact that the triple set of villains have all hidden skeletons in the closet, from the past twenty-four years, nothing to do with their original misdemeanour.
Gently at first, then with gathering pace, the CMC makes a push here, a pull there, an investment scheme with disastrous consequences, a spurious telegraph message, a fateful supper gathering – and suddenly the three most prestigious families in Paris are perceived to be in terrible default of their livelihoods, possessions, indeed of their very lives. A default which they actively participate in, with a wanton sense of self-destruction, unsuspecting to the end, merely disregarding the evidence and maintaining their folly.
Here is an interesting quote on revenge by Jonas Jonasson, a Swedish author:
‘Revenge is like politics, one thing always leads to another until bad has become worse, and worse has become worst’.
This is exactly what happens in this great novel. And the worst almost beggars belief – the death toll is Macbethian, and the tragedy on a parallel with that dreadful play.
In the end, the denouement of Dantes has little impact, so terribly are the results of his vengeful actions brought to pass. There are some kind people, the children of the shipowner whom Dantes worked for originally and whom he has made a promise to support. He bequeaths his unimaginable wealth to these worthy folk before disappearing into the sunset – literally as he sails westward into the Mediterranean.
You can have sympathy probably with my earlier comment as to delayed impact. Doubtless, the novel is exciting, fast-paced, and speaks to one’s inherent sense of a wronged man inflicting revenge on deserved miscreants. So one is carried along, for a while. Then starts to think. Words and phrases like cruel, merciless, beyond due quantum come to mind. And I think it is this aspect of redemption that can occur often in novels of revenge, and in the CMC it does not. Categorically not.
And who am I to say that it should? Only a bystander, a commentator. As always in these affairs, ‘there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy’ (Hamlet, Act 1, scene 5, William Shakespeare), and my job is simply to put it out there, only commenting occasionally. What follows here is a comment of sorts, by me. The second half of this article concerns itself with a vengeful act that is not redeemed.
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The Merchant of Venice is simply marvellous drama. Shakespeare has no fear in addressing anti-semitism, and has formed a drama on this topic within a comedy of manners. The drama, certainly in my mind, prevails against the disguises and promises over rings, and such like. Two great Shakespearean speeches are the backbone of the drama.
In a strangely topical setting (Shylock, the Jew, is an alien to Venice and has no rights save commercial ones), the merchant Antonio borrows three thousand ducats from Shylock to finance his friend Bassanio’s wooing of Portia, a princess from the neighbouring town of Belmont. There is history between the two men; Antonio has uttered antisemitic statements, and caused Shylock to undercharge on interest rates. Shylock at first refuses to get involved, then does and the loan is made conditional on a pound of flesh from Antonio’s body. Things are suddenly serious.
Shylock holds firm to his intent, made even more enraged by the elopement of his daughter, Jessica, with a Christian, Lorenzo, and her subsequent conversion to Christianity. Furious now, he is taunted by minor characters. What would he do with a pound of flesh, anyway?
Merchant of Venice Act 3 scene 1 Shylock
To bait fish withal. If it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies, and what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
This is a terrible list of infractions and awful behaviours on Antonio’s part. And Shylock is – justifiably? – set on his course, even more so as Antonio’s ships are reported to have founded, and the debt is likely to be summoned.
The quality of our dispositions to revenge seems to vary on a parameter that has little or no alignment with character. How do you feel about Shylock’s intent? Is it merited? He certainly has a case to be answered. Is there something in us that takes over when a vengeful situation occurs, and some opinion is necessary? In my youth I can remember saying to myself ‘Fair’s fair, if he brought it upon himself, it is deserved’. I think when we first read The Merchant of Venice at school, I thought: ‘Oh goody, this pompous merchant Antonio will receive his come-uppance. I wonder how it will end?’ And I may have been disappointed when in the end Shylock is so ‘beaten up’ by the Duke of Venice, and Portia, and the other Venetian grandees. It seemed to me unfair.
Anyway, I no longer feel that way, preferring now a more gracious approach, based on compassion, and I suppose mercy. Like this:
Merchant of Venice Act 4 scene 1 Portia
The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'T is mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea;
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence 'gainst the merchant there.
I have just read a review of the film version of The Merchant of Venice of 2004 starring Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons. The author is convinced it is a comedy of errors with a dastardly subplot. And any contemporary nuances are merely moderns being politically correct. I am not so sure.
Does the final word belong to Shakespeare for his brilliance in contrasting simultaneously a setting of lovers’ tiffs and their mannered equivocations with a vengeful drama that stirs the blood?
Afterword
Are compassion, revenge, anger, love, happiness only inbuilt triggers in human beings that they seek to control on any model down from Jesus? We all are inclined to revenge at some point, in some manner; the thing is, can we control it? The great dramas of The Count of Monte Cristo and of The Merchant of Venice may therefore be just that: dramas. Entertainment for those of us who – hopefully – can control our triggers, and also perhaps cautionary tales about how awful it can become if we do not.