After his escape from the Ch\u00e2teau d\u2019If, where he has wrongly been held prisoner for fourteen years, Edmond Dant\u00e8s seeks shelter on a boat operated by a band of smugglers. When the smugglers land at the island of Monte Cristo, where the Abb\u00e9 Faria had told Dant\u00e8s a great treasure is concealed, Dant\u00e8s reflects condescendingly on the smugglers\u2019 hopes compared to his own:<\/p>\n
\u201cIn two hours\u2019 time,\u201d said he, \u201cthese persons will depart richer by fifty piastres each to go and risk their lives again by endeavouring to gain fifty more such pieces.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Oh, no!\u201d exclaimed <\/em>Edmond<\/em>, \u201cthat 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.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n Thus Dant<\/em>\u00e8<\/em>s, who but three months before had no desire but liberty, had now not liberty enough, and panted for wealth. The case was not in Dant<\/em>\u00e8<\/em>s but in <\/em>Providence<\/em>, who, whilst limiting the power of man, has filled him with boundless desires.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n (The Count of Monte Cristo<\/a> p. 263)<\/p>\n When I initially read the first paragraph quoted above, I thought it a wonderful illustration of how easily we become discontent.\u00a0 Dant\u00e8s has just\u00a0escaped 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.\u00a0 What ingratitude!<\/p>\n But when I read the next paragraph, the author, Alexandre Dumas, seems to suggest\u00a0that this reflects ambition rather than discontent\u2014even to the point of attributing man’s “boundless desires” to Providence.\u00a0 I’m not convinced.\u00a0 The Count of Monte Cristo<\/a> is a wonderful book, but this is one of several places where I question Dumas’s interpretation of his own work.<\/p>\n This is a topic that intrigues me.\u00a0 Moving beyond Dant\u00e8s’ unusual situation to our own lives, how can we balance contentment and ambition?\u00a0 Contentment\u00a0implies satisfaction with the status quo, while the very nature of ambition is to change the status quo for the better.\u00a0 Is it possible to be both content and ambitious?<\/p>\n I welcome discussion on this topic.<\/p>\n Mary Jo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After his escape from the Ch\u00e2teau d\u2019If, where he has wrongly been held prisoner for fourteen years, Edmond Dant\u00e8s seeks shelter on a boat operated by a band of smugglers. When the smugglers land at the island of Monte Cristo, where the Abb\u00e9 Faria had told Dant\u00e8s a great treasure is concealed, Dant\u00e8s reflects condescendingly … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}