Think Aloud- The Count of Monte Cristo

Imagery/Sensory Details-  When I was reading about the setting of the carnival in Rome, Italy that the Count attended I thought of the huge crowds at the state fair and the smell of all the greasy food and sweat.  Another sensory detail that I thought of was when the Count, disguised as his dead friend, is thrown into the sea.  When I read this I could almost feel the slap as he hit the freezing cold water.

Text Connections-  Text to text: In the book Silas Marner, Marner is wrongly accused of stealing money from the church and banished.  This is like The Count of Monte Cristo because Dantes is wrongly accused of being a Bonapartist and sent to jail.
Text to world:  In The Count of Monte Cristo, Dantes is sent to jail.  Because of his long stay at jail, Dantes is a dynamic character.  When he escapes he doesn't know where all of the people he once knew are or what has happened to them.  This is similar to the lost boys of Sudan.  After the lost boys escaped from the government troops, they didn't know what had happened to their family's.


Points of Confusion-  One thing that I didn't understand was why Morrel felt like he had to kill himself when he couldn't pay his bills.  Morrel feels that killing himself would be more honorable than being in debt.  I don't agree with this.  In my opinion committing suicide is the more frowned upon idea.
I was also confused on the motivation behind Caderousse killing his wife.  I understand that he killed the jeweler so he could have both the diamond and the money from selling the diamond but I thought that killing his wife was for no reason.


Points of Understanding-  One thing that I understood about the first part of The Count of Monte Cristo is why Fernand and Danglars frame Dantes (though I don't respect it).  Fernand is envious of Dantes because Mercedes loves Dantes more than Fernand.  Danglars is envious of Dantes because Dantes was going to be made the captain of the Pharaon.  This envy caused conflict which lead them to get rid of Dantes as a sort of resolution.
A second thing that I understood was why Dantes wants to get revenge on the people that betrayed him. I think that most people in Dantes situation would want to get revenge as symbolism to overcoming and defeating the wrong that was inflicted on them.  It kind of creates a situational irony for the characters in the book because they think that Dantes is dead but now he is returning as the Count to get them.


Predictions-  One theme that I will remember from this book is to be careful who you trust.  Dantes trusts his "friends" and Villefort who end up betraying him.  Another thing that I will take away from The Count of Monte Cristo is that it is important to keep all the evidence in your case.  Villefort burns Dantes' letter that only Villefort and the reader know is addressed to his father, which is an example of dramatic irony.  If he hadn't done this the truth would have been known and he and Dantes may have had different fates.