基督山伯爵英文读书报告

Book Report on The Count of Monte Cristo

学生姓名袁守业

专业英语

班级学号121011102

学院外国语学院

About the author

Alexandre Dumas(1802-1870), distinguished with his son, also known as Alexandre Dumas, père, was a French famous romantic writer. Many of his historical novels of high adventure, including The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years Afters The Vicomte de Bragelonne etc left readers a deep impression. There is no doubt that he is a prolific writer ,including plays and magazine articles, he published works totaled more than 100,000 pages. He is regarded as the king of popular novel. In 2002, his grave was moved to Pantheon where buried the most influential French great man for the world.

About Dumas’birth, I think it’s a bittersweet. His family are French nobleman, but his grandmother was a black slave whose family name is “Dumas”. So Dumas has a quarter of black bloods which made him subject to discrimination in all of his whole life.

After his fame, he became very luxurious. He spent nearly two 200,000 francs building a new gothic Monte Cristo castle where entertaining friends and mistresses, and he also called himself “The Count of Monte Cristo”. Spending money like water makes him gradually get lots of debts. In his old ages, he was very poor and he auctioned off his castle to fulfill debts. His last mistress was a American actress who died in acting accidental, it made Dumas very sad and after buried her, he came to his son’s home, then he said “ I came here to waiting for death ”. Half month later, he died at the age of sixty eight.

About Dumas’ novel, there are two typical features. The first one is that his novels always chose a real historical event as background. Dumas once said: “what is history ? It is the nail that used to hang novels.”So his novels was always called historical adventurous novel. The second is the complex exciting arrangement of the plot which is the soul and the charm of Dumas’ novels.

About the story

The story of The Count of Monte Cristo can be divided into two parts in my opinion.

The first part: The Count of Monte Cristo begins with the arrival of a ship in Marseilles, France, a young sailor named Edmond Dantes came out and he is

promised to be the captain by the owner Morrel because the original captain is death. During the sailing, their captain falls ill. They stopped for help at a nearby island, which happens to be where Napoleon Bonaparte is in hiding. Bonaparte pulls aside Edmond and asks him to deliver an "innocent letter" to an old friend in Marseilles, France. Edmond agrees, as that is the price for the use of Napoleon's physician. But there are two people, M.Danglars, who is jealous of Dantes ’ trust of Morrel, and the another one is the cousin of Dantes’fiancee, Fernand, who loves Dantes’fiancee Mercedes. They set Dantes to prison during the Dantes and Mercedes’ wedding. The procurator, Villefort, who's father is the man Edmond was to deliver the letter to, thrown him into The Chateau D'if. After six years of imprisonment in the Chateau D'if, Dantes is on the verge of suicide when he befriends the The Mad Priest Faria, a fellow prisoner whom he hears trying to tunnel his way to freedom. Over the course of the next eight years, Faria comes to give Dantes an extensive education in language, culture, and science. He also explains to Dantes how Danglars, Fernand, and Villefort would each have had their own reasons for wanting Dantes in prison. Knowing himself to be close to death, Faria tells Dantes the location of a treasure on the island of Monte Cristo. Finally, Dantes escaped and found the treasure. Returning to Marseilles, Dantes learns that his father died of starvation during his imprisonment, but before embarking on his efforts for revenge, he first helps several people who were kind to him before his imprisonment. He helped Morrel’family and send Caderoussea a diamond in return. Then Dantes throw away all warm sentiments from his heart and became The Count of Monte Cristo and dedicate himself to revenge.

The second part: Returning as the rich Count of Monte Cristo, Dantes takes revenge on the three men responsible for his unjust imprisonment: Fernand, now Count Morcerf and Mercedes' husband; Danglers, now a baron and a wealthy banker; and Villefort, now procureur--all of whom now lived in Paris. After a series of schemes, he finally successfully revenged to the three people. Fernand, suicide with extreme fear and despair; Villefort, his wife and son’s death drive him to mad. But in the process of revenging Danglers, some innocent people died unexpectedly which makes The Count of Monte Cristo feels guilty, and also makes him change his mind that leaving Danglers alive.

The Reason Why I Read the Book

In my middle-school time, my Chinese teacher asked me to read some foreign