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Irony
Definition of Metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor can be stated explicitly, as... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other... read full definition
Chapter 12 – Father and Son
Explanation and Analysis—The Politics of Death:
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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Chapter 15 – Number 34 and Number 17
Explanation and Analysis—The Power of the Storm:
In Chapter 15, Dantès reflects on his former life that he enjoyed before being stripped of his humanity and heartlessly imprisoned by Villefort's machinations against him. He uses a potent combination of personification, simile, and metaphor as he ruminates on his seafaring days as a young sailor:
Unlock with LitCharts A+‘Sometimes,’ he thought at such moments, ‘in my distant voyages, when I was still a man—and when that man, free and powerful, gave orders to others that they carried out—I used to see the sky open, the sea tremble and groan, a storm brewing in some part of the sky and thrashing the horizon with its wings like a giant eagle; then I would feel that my vessel was nothing but a useless refuge, itself shaking and shuddering, as light as a feather in the hand of a giant.'
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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 58 – Monsieur Noirtier de Villefort
Explanation and Analysis—Noirtier's Inner Light:
In Chapter 58, Dumas invites the reader into a conversation with Noirtier, the old Monsieur de Villefort himself—an apparently ancient man who has lost the power of speech and movement but nonetheless retains his presence of mind. Dumas introduces Noirtier with a slew of literary devices, including hyperbole, metaphor, simile, and the imagery of light and darkness:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Motionless as a corpse, he greeted his children with bright, intelligent eyes .... Sight and hearing were the only two senses which, like two sparks, still lit up this human matter, already three-quarters remoulded for the tomb. Moreover, only one of these two senses could reveal to the outside world the inner life which animated this statue, and the look which disclosed that inner life was like one of those distant lights which shine at night, to tell a traveller in the desert that another being watches in the silence and the darkness.
Chapter 89 – Night
Explanation and Analysis—In the Beginning, Was Me!:
In Chapter 89, Mercédès finally declares the Count to be Edmond Dantès, her betrothed from all those years ago. In a flourish of hyperbole, the Count can finally reveal the extent of his quest for revenge:
Unlock with LitCharts A+What would you say if you knew the extent of the sacrifice I am making for you? Suppose that the Lord God, after creating the world, after fertilizing the void, had stopped one-third of the way through His creation to spare an angel the tears that our crimes would one day bring to His immortal eyes. Suppose that [...] God had extinguished the sun and with His foot dashed the world into eternal night [...]
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Chapter 103 – Maximilien
Explanation and Analysis—The Angel Valentine:
After Valentine's presumed death, various characters mourn her passing. In Chapter 103, Villefort shares news of her death with Maximilien, who is devastated and reveals his love for her. As Villefort learns of Maximilien's affections, he uses a metaphor to compare Valentine to an angel:
Unlock with LitCharts A+You see, the angel for whom you longed has left this earth. She no longer needs the adoration of men— she, who, at this moment, is adoring the Lord. So say your farewells, Monsieur, to these sad remains that she has left behind among us.
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Chapter 105 – The Pere Lachaise Cemetery
Explanation and Analysis—The Rhetoric of Eulogy:
In Chapter 105, the funeral for Valentine takes place at the Père Lachaise cemetery. In Dumas's account, a series of rhetorically masterful but emotionally empty eulogies follow that lavish Valentine with praise for supposedly upholding justice on behalf of the criminals her father, Villefort, would prosecute. The eulogies make heavy use of irony and metaphor:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Some had been found who were ingenious enough to have discovered that the young woman had more than once implored M. de Villefort on behalf of guilty men over whose head the sword of justice was suspended.
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Chapter 107 – The Lions’ Pit
Explanation and Analysis—Storm Mentality:
In Chapter 107, Dumas takes the reader to the prison known as the Lion's Pit—where Andrea has found himself incarcerated, despite his insistence on his royal pedigree. Dumas uses metaphor to convey the effect that Andrea's boasting has on his fellow prisoners:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The thieves looked at one another, muttering under their breath; and a storm, raised by the warder’s provocation even more than by Andrea’s words, began to rumble around the aristocratic prisoner. The warder, sure of doing a quos ego when the waves began to rise too high, let the storm brew a little to play a trick on the man who had been importuning him and to give himself a little light relief in a tedious day’s work. The thieves had already come close to Andrea, and some were shouting: ‘The slipper! The slipper!’
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Chapter 112 – Departure
Explanation and Analysis—The Urban Sea:
In Chapter 112, the Count prepares—at last—to leave Paris. Before doing so, he takes one last look at the majesty of the city, spread out below him from his vantage point on a hill in the commune of Villejuif just outside the city proper. Dumas uses a metaphor of the ocean to depict the lights of Paris in the dark of night:
Unlock with LitCharts A+They were at the top of the Montée de Villejuif, on the plateau from which Paris is a dark sea shimmering with millions of lights like phosphorescent waves; and waves they are, more thunderous, more passionate, more shifting, more furious and more greedy than those of the stormy ocean, waves which never experience the tranquillity of a vast sea, but constantly pound together, ever foaming and engulfing everything!
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