After his escape from the Château d’If, where he has wrongly been held prisoner for fourteen years, Edmond Dantès seeks shelter on a boat operated by a band of smugglers. When the smugglers land at the island of Monte Cristo, where the Abbé Faria had told Dantès a great treasure is concealed, Dantès reflects condescendingly on the smugglers’ hopes compared to his own:
“In two hours’ time,” said he, “these persons will depart richer by fifty piastres each to go and risk their lives again by endeavouring to gain fifty more such pieces. Then they will return with a fortune of six hundred francs and waste this treasure in some city with the pride of sultans and the insolence of nabobs. At this moment Hope makes me despise their riches, which seem to me contemptible. Yet, perchance to-morrow deception will so act on me that I shall, on compulsion, consider such a contemptible possession as the utmost happiness. Oh, no!” exclaimed Edmond, “that will not be. The wise, unerring Faria could not be mistaken in this one thing. Besides it were better to die than to continue to lead this low and wretched life.”
Thus Dantès, who but three months before had no desire but liberty, had now not liberty enough, and panted for wealth. The case was not in Dantès but in Providence, who, whilst limiting the power of man, has filled him with boundless desires.
(The Count of Monte Cristo p. 263)
When I initially read the first paragraph quoted above, I thought it a wonderful illustration of how easily we become discontent. Dantès has just escaped from a fourteen-year captivity, but now that he fears he may not find the treasure Faria told him about, he thinks it would be better to die. What ingratitude!
But when I read the next paragraph, the author, Alexandre Dumas, seems to suggest that this reflects ambition rather than discontent—even to the point of attributing man’s “boundless desires” to Providence. I’m not convinced. The Count of Monte Cristo is a wonderful book, but this is one of several places where I question Dumas’s interpretation of his own work.
This is a topic that intrigues me. Moving beyond Dantès’ unusual situation to our own lives, how can we balance contentment and ambition? Contentment implies satisfaction with the status quo, while the very nature of ambition is to change the status quo for the better. Is it possible to be both content and ambitious?
I welcome discussion on this topic.
Mary Jo