The Count of Monte Cristo: Foreshadowing 6 key examples

In Chapter 2, Caderousse and Dantès discuss Dantès's promotion to captain of the Pharaon. In a moment of foreshadowing, Caderousse heavily implies that Mercédès is largely attracted to Dantès because of his new position.

‘Oh, yes,’ Caderousse continued, ‘and some with good prospects, too. But, of course, you are going to be a captain, so she’ll be sure not to refuse you.’

‘By which you mean,’ Dantès said, smiling, but barely concealing his anxiety, ‘that if I were not a captain …’

‘Ah! Ah!’ said Caderousse.

‘Come, now,’ the young man said. ‘I have a better opinion than you of women in general, and Mercédès in particular, and I am persuaded that, whether I were a captain or not, she would remain faithful to me.’

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In Chapter 5, as Dumas begins to set the plot of his novel in motion, the reader comes to the dawning realization that the world might be out to get Dantès. In keeping with the frequent use of storm and water imagery to intensify the narrative, Dumas raises the suspense of Dantès's betrothal dinner by using a storm simile to focus on Fernand's obvious hostility towards Dantès and foreshadow the coming plot against the young captain. While Dantès himself remains quite oblivious to the threat, the reader cannot help but see it unfold before them in a heap of dramatic irony:

Fernand was shuffling on his chair, starting at the slightest noise and, from time to time, wiping large beads of sweat from his forehead, which seemed to have fallen there like the first drops of rain before a storm.

‘By heaven, neighbour,’ said Dantès, ‘[...] It’s true, Mercédès is not yet my wife, but [...] in an hour and a half, she will be!’

There was a gasp of surprise from everyone, except Old Dantès, who exhibited his fine set of teeth in a broad laugh. Mercédès smiled [...]. Fernand made a convulsive lunge towards the handle of his dagger.

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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.

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In Chapter 12, Noirtier and Villefort discuss the tensions between Royalist and Bonapartist factions in France and the recent death of a general, seemingly at the hands of Noirtier's Bonapartist associates, that the King of France himself identified as a murder. In a moment of foreshadowing, Noirtier reflects on the role of murder in politics:

The king! I thought him enough of a philosopher to realize that there is no such thing as murder in politics. You know as well as I do, my dear boy, that in politics there are no people, only ideas; no feelings, only interests. In politics, you don’t kill a man, you remove an obstacle, that’s all.

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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:

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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In Chapter 17, the abbé takes it upon himself to educate Dantès in the ways of the world. Over the course of this tutelage, however, the abbé reveals that he has grown uncomfortable with the way that Dantès fixates on revenge—in a moment of foreshadowing, the Abbé confesses this concern:

His expression had returned to normal and his features were composed, but with a strength and firmness, as it were, that implied a settled resolve. The abbé looked closely at him.

‘I regret having helped you in your investigation and said what I did to you,’ he remarked.

‘Why is that?’ Dantès asked.

‘Because I have insinuated a feeling into your heart that was not previously there: the desire for revenge.’

Dantès smiled and said: ‘Let us change the subject.’

The abbé gave him a further brief look and sadly shook his head...

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