Debt and Gratitude Theme Analysis

Dumas plays on two senses of  the word “debt” in the novel: the first is money owed, and the second is a debt of gratitude, or a sense that one’s behavior follows from, or is informed by, the good graces of another. Financial debts in the novel offer opportunities for great gains in wealth, and also for ruin of one’s reputation—but they are, in either case, debts that are easy to comprehend and straightforward to repay. Emotional debts, on the other hand, prove far more difficult in the novel, for, as the Count realizes, much has changed in his and others’ lives in the twenty years since he was a young man. This means he cannot always repay directly the people to whom he was once emotionally indebted, and must go about creating new family structures of care and concern in which emotional debt—debts of gratitude—can be formed and nurtured.

Debt and financial speculation are important aspects of the novel’s many subplots: the Count develops his income by placing it in various banking concerns, including the shadowy firm of Thomson and French; Danglars invests heavily in foreign interests and finds that, owing to the Count’s machinations, his fortunes dwindle and debts rise; and Caderousse finds himself financially ruined owing to various debts, which, as an innkeeper, he cannot repay. These debts form the economic under-layer of the novel. Debt, in this financial sense, is an indication of middle-class interests at the time—with the “middle class” signifying those who do not make money from land or inheritance, but rather create wealth from financial speculation, from gambling on the French and European stock and bond markets. This speculation, when it is successful, can allow middle class families like the Danglars to “purchase” a title, as Danglars “creates” himself Baron by buying this name from the French government. And financial speculation, when it goes poorly, can be ruinous for the middle class, because they do not, generally speaking, have the same land-stocks nobles do, which would allow their wealth to be passed down to future generations with more stability.

More powerful than these financial interests, however, are the emotional debts characters experience. The Count feels he is indebted to Old Morrel, who gave him his start as a sailor, and so the Count believes he should do all he can, when he leaves prison, to help Old Morrel, who finds himself saddled with outstanding financial debts. The Count pays off these debts as a way of making clear the perceived emotional debt he feels to Old Morrel. Yet the Count does not believe that this repayment can take the place of, or entirely make up for, the emotional debt he feels toward the man. Similarly, Haydee and Ali, saved from death by the Count overseas, are so personally indebted to him as to consider themselves his “slaves.” Haydee, especially, feels that, because the Count enabled her to find a stable home after the death of her father, she owes her life to him, and this feeling, which begins as an economic arrangement of “purchase,” turns into an emotional debt that becomes the springboard for romantic love between the two. And the Count, on his return to the Chateau D’If ten years after his release, understands that the Abbe Faria has given him, in a sense, two things, one far more valuable than the other: the map to the fortune at Monte Cristo, and the tools necessary to become an accomplished and learned man of the world. Although the Count uses this fortune to exact his revenge, and then bequeaths it to young Morrel and Valentine, he comes to realize how important Faria’s teaching was for him—how this created an emotional debt the Count must somehow repay in life.

If Dumas demonstrates that emotional debts are more lasting than financial debts, he also shows that emotional debts are more difficult to repay. After all, the Count really can remove Old Morrel from financial difficulties by paying his debts; he really can give a diamond to Caderousse to help him settle with his creditors (only to realize, later, that Caderousse is a treacherous man, unworthy of this repayment). But emotional debts cannot be repaid in this way because people and circumstances change. The Count cannot return the care and worry his father has expended on his behalf, because his father has died during Dantes’ imprisonment. The Count cannot repay the emotional debt of romantic love Mercedes felt for him, because Mercedes did in fact marry, and have a son with, Fernand. The Count cannot keep Old Morrel from dying, nor can he bring back the Ali Pasha, Haydee’s father. These emotional disturbances cannot be set straight the same way that one’s financial accounts can.

But the Count realizes that there is a solution to this problem of emotional debt. If he cannot repay it exactly as it used to stand because circumstances have changed, he can find a way to pay forward the care and aid he has received, to those around him. Thus he gives his fortune to young Morrel and to Valentine to create a new emotional bond, and to hearken back to all that Old Morrel once did for him. He can also educate young Morrel and Valentine, teaching them all he has learned of the world and its cultures, in emotional repayment of all that the Abbe Faria taught him. And he can establish a new, loving life with Haydee, even though he cannot bring her father back from the dead.

Thus, financial debts in the novel can be repaid, as in the case of Old Morrel, or they can be lasting and damaging, as when Danglars loses his entire fortune to financial speculation. In the case of Danglars, the financial debt incurred is a proxy for an unpayable emotional debt—for Danglars’ treachery was so horrid, according to the structure of justice in the novel, that he would eventually be forced to answer for it. But debts of gratitude, emotional debts, are positive, constructive, and affirming—they create bonds of connectedness between characters and across generations. One need not “repay” an emotional debt, because it establishes a link between figures, and a ground on which love and happiness can be constructed. Thus there is no need for the Count to “settle up” his emotional debts with the Abbe Faria, or with Mercedes, or with his own father. Instead, he can create new, affirming relationships of emotional exchange with Haydee, young Morrel, and Valentine, the members of his chosen family.