The Abyss Opens (The Count of Monte Cristo, Chapter 15 – Part 3)

Dantès has prayed. He has waited. Now he begins to unravel.

In this devastating installment, Dumas walks us through the next psychic chamber of Edmond Dantès’ descent. Rage replaces faith. Memory burns. The letter from Villefort—once just a betrayal—is now a curse etched into his mind like divine judgment. He lashes out at the walls, at the air, at his own thoughts. From here, the idea of suicide creeps in—not as a desire for death, but as a reprieve from suffering. Dumas, in one of his most poetic passages, compares this temptation to a Dead Sea: calm on the surface, death beneath. This is not melodrama. This is suffering rendered with philosophical clarity.

 

Topics Covered:

•The evolution of rage and blasphemy in isolation

•Dumas’ literary reference to Belshazzar’s feast: “mene, mene, tekel upharsin”

•The philosophical framing of suicide as both horror and false peace

•How language and image deepen Dantès’ despair without reducing it to cliché

 

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