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Literary Devices
Definition of Allusion
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to other literary works, famous individuals, historical events, or philosophical ideas... read full definition
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to other literary works, famous individuals... read full definition
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to... read full definition
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.
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:
Unlock with LitCharts A+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!
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Chapter 48 – Ideology
Explanation and Analysis—A Fate Worse than Death:
In Chapter 48, Villefort and the Count engage in a philosophical discussion about the nature of justice. As Villefort explains that there are things worse than death—such as apoplexy, resulting from a stroke, "that lightning bolt which strikes you down without destroying you"—he makes an allusion to Shakespeare's Tempest:
Unlock with LitCharts A+You are still yourself, but you are no longer yourself: from a near-angel like Ariel you have become a dull mass which, like Caliban, is close to the beasts. As I said, in human language, this is quite simply called an apoplexy or stroke. Count, I beg you to come finish this conversation at my house one day when you feel like meeting an opponent able to understand you, and eager to refute what you say, and I shall show you my father, Monsieur Noirtier de Villefort...
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Chapter 62 – Ghosts
Explanation and Analysis—The Ghost of Murders Past:
In Chapter 62, the Count leads his dinner guests toward disaster as he begins to manipulate the deceit of his former acquaintances against them. In a moment of particular dramatic irony, Bertuccio comes face to face with Villefort—whom Bertuccio thought he had murdered.
Unlock with LitCharts A+Without replying, Bertuccio pointed to Villefort, with a gesture like Macbeth pointing to Banquo. ‘Oh! … Oh!’ he murmured at length. ‘Do you see him?’
‘Whom? What?’
‘Him.’
‘Him! The crown prosecutor, Monsieur de Villefort? Of course I can see him.’
‘You mean, I didn’t kill him?’
‘Come, come! I think you are losing your wits, my good Bertuccio,’ said the count.
Chapter 68 – A Summer Ball
Explanation and Analysis—Queen Mab or Titania:
In Chapter 68, Albert discusses his mother, Mercédès, with the Count. As Albert gushes about his fondness for his mother, he makes an allusion to Shakespeare's plays:
Unlock with LitCharts A+You know how I feel about my mother, Count: she is an angel, still beautiful, still witty, finer than ever. I have just come back from Le Tréport. Now, for any other son, just imagine: travelling with his mother would be an act of kindness or an unavoidable burden. Yet I have just spent four days with mine in Le Tréport and I can tell you they were more satisfying, more relaxing and more poetical than if I had been with Queen Mab or Titania.
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Chapter 69 – Information
Explanation and Analysis—Hotel Decoration 101:
In Chapter 69, Villefort waits to interview Lord Wilmore to get more information on the mysterious Count of Monte Cristo. As he waits for Wilmore to arrive, Dumas treats the reader to a vivid description of Wilmore's residence aided by visual imagery and allusions to literature:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The visitor waited in the drawing-room; there was nothing remarkable about this room, which was like any other in furnished lodgings: a mantelpiece with two modern Sèvres vases, a clock with Cupid drawing his bow and a mirror, in two sections; engravings on each side of the mirror, one showing Homer carrying his guide, the other Belisarius begging alms; wallpaper, grey on grey; a sofa upholstered in red, and printed in black—this was Lord Wilmore’s drawing-room. It was lit by two lamps with shades of frosted glass that gave only a feeble light, as if deliberately designed not to strain the tired eyes of the prefect’s emissary.
Chapter 72 – Madame de Saint-Meran
Explanation and Analysis—The Danish Prince:
Throughout The Count of Monte Cristo are a number of allusions to Shakespeare's Hamlet. Dumas uses references to the tragedy to set up a parallel between Prince Hamlet's legendary quest for revenge and Dantès's own quest throughout the novel.
In Chapter 72, when Villefort reviews his lists of enemies, he frets that one of them may have emerged from his past to seek revenge:
Unlock with LitCharts A+When he had gone through all the names in his memory, re-read them, studied them and commented on each list, he shook his head. ‘No,’ he muttered. ‘None of those enemies would have waited and toiled patiently until now to come and crush me with this secret. Foul deeds will rise, as Hamlet says, and sometimes fly through the air like a will-o’-the-wisp, but these are flames that light us a moment to deceive.
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Chapter 76 – The Progress of the Younger Cavalcanti
Explanation and Analysis—The Danish Prince:
Throughout The Count of Monte Cristo are a number of allusions to Shakespeare's Hamlet. Dumas uses references to the tragedy to set up a parallel between Prince Hamlet's legendary quest for revenge and Dantès's own quest throughout the novel.
In Chapter 72, when Villefort reviews his lists of enemies, he frets that one of them may have emerged from his past to seek revenge:
Unlock with LitCharts A+When he had gone through all the names in his memory, re-read them, studied them and commented on each list, he shook his head. ‘No,’ he muttered. ‘None of those enemies would have waited and toiled patiently until now to come and crush me with this secret. Foul deeds will rise, as Hamlet says, and sometimes fly through the air like a will-o’-the-wisp, but these are flames that light us a moment to deceive.
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Chapter 85 – The Journey
Explanation and Analysis—The Christ in C(h)risto:
In Chapter 85, Albert agrees to travel with the Count to Normandy. As he lays eyes on the Count's ship, which bears the Count's supposed coat of arms, Dumas makes an explicit allusion to the Passion of Jesus:
Unlock with LitCharts A+A little corvette was bobbing in a fairly large cove; it had a narrow hull and tall mast with a flag flying from the lateen yard and bearing Monte Cristo’s coat of arms: a mountain on a field azure with a cross gules at the chief, which could also have been an allusion to his name (evoking Calvary, which Our Saviour’s passion has made a mountain more precious than gold, and the infamous cross which his divine blood made holy) as much as to any personal memory of suffering and regeneration buried in the mysterious night of the man’s past.
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Chapter 94 – A Confession
Explanation and Analysis—Family of Atreides:
In Chapter 94, the Count tries to navigate how to continue destroying the Villefort family without simultaneously harming Maximilien and Valentine. As he tries to explain to Maximilien the fate that awaits the Villeforts—a family Maximilien would join if he were to marry Valentine—he resorts to an allusion to the Atreides family:
Unlock with LitCharts A+‘So?’ said the count, astonished at this insistence, which he could not understand, and looking closely at Maximilien. ‘Let it start again. It’s a family of Atreides. God has condemned them and they will suffer their fate. They will disappear like the houses of cards that children set up, which fall one by one when their builders blow on them—and would do so even if there were two hundred of them. Three months ago it was Monsieur de Saint-Méran; two months ago, Madame de Saint-Méran; the other day it was Barrois, and today it will be old Noirtier or young Valentine.’
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Chapter 111 – Expiation
Explanation and Analysis—The History of Grief:
In Chapter 111, Villefort arrives home to find a horrifying scene—his wife has killed their son and herself. Rising to the dramatic grandeur of the moment, Dumas caches his description of this scene in a network of allusion and hyperbole in order to make it as affecting as possible:
Unlock with LitCharts A+A moment before, he had been sustained by fury, that huge resource for a strong man; and by despair, the supreme virtue of grief, which drove the Titans to climb the heavens and Ajax to brandish his fist at the gods.
Villefort bent his head under the weight of sorrows, rose up on his knees, shook his hair, which was damp with sweat and standing on end with horror, and this man, who had never had pity on anyone, went to seek out the old man, his father, just so that in his weakness he might have someone to whom to tell his misfortune and someone with whom to weep.
Chapter 112 – Departure
Explanation and Analysis—The Count's Holy Vocation:
In the closing chapters of The Count of Monte Cristo, the Count attempts to wrap up the many, many loose ends he has accumulated over his decades-long quest for revenge. There's no question that the Count thinks quite highly of his grand plan against those who wronged him in his previous life as Dantès, all those years ago. In Chapter 112, as he reveals the depth of his ambitions to Mercédès, he uses a dramatic simile to convey this sense of grandeur:
Unlock with LitCharts A+From then on, that fortune seemed to me a holy vocation; from then on, there was not one further thought in me for that life, the sweetness of which you, poor woman, have sometimes partaken. Not an hour of calm, not a single hour. I felt myself driven like a cloud of flame through the sky to destroy the cities of the plain.
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Chapter 115 – Luigi Vampa’s Bill of Fare
Explanation and Analysis—Prison Cuisine:
In Chapter 115, as Danglars sits imprisoned by Vampa and his crew, he watches them eat a miserable meal that becomes more and more appetizing as he realizes his own hunger. Dumas conveys Danglars's thoughts on the food through the use of vivid visual and taste imagery:
Unlock with LitCharts A+...it may be that the crudest of victuals can address a tangible invitation in quite eloquent terms to a hungry stomach. Suddenly Danglars felt that at this moment his was a bottomless pit: the man seemed less ugly, the bread less black and the cheese less rancid. Finally, those raw onions, the repulsive foodstuff of savages, began to evoke certain sauces Robert, certain dishes of boiled beef and onions which his cook had adapted to more refined palates when Danglars would tell him: ‘Monsieur Deniseau, give us a spot of plain home cooking today.’
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