What's It About?

I hope by now you have all realized how incorrectly the movie follows the plot of the book. The world Dumas describes in The Count of Monte Cristo is so extremely different from the one portrayed in film.
So, what is the novel about? What is Dumas trying to get at? What is his purpose in writing?
There are several answers to these questions, and each one of them correct in their scope. For me, the overriding theme was vengeance and justice. What is the difference between these two? Is there a difference? Is one right and the other wrong? And, if this is the case, how does one become socially acceptable over the other?
The concept around vengeance is to enact a reprisal against one who has done wrong to you. Justice, on the other hand, seems to follow a specific line of ensuring the retribution from one who has done wrong. Truly, the difference seems to lie in the hands of whom is enacting the punishment. For vengeance, it is the individual who has been wronged whereas justice is through a society determined process.
Within this definition, it appears that Edmond is strictly performing out of vengeance. But, is he? Can a person be enacting justice without filing formal complaints and leaving it in the hands of the "justice" system? Is there a higher power that determines this ability? To whom is Edmond accountable?

An Introduction to Dumas

Alexandre Dumas had a big appetite for living large and luxurious, and found himself constantly making and spending fortunes as well as creating beautiful historical fiction and other works of literature.
Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie was born in 1802 in Picardi, France, to Thomas-Alexandre Dumas and Marie-Louise Élisabeth Labouret. His grandfather was a marquis who fell in love and had a son (Thomas-Alexandre) with a French-Creole woman in what is now known as Haiti. Falling from grace with Napoleon as he served in the military, Thomas-Alexandre lost his pension and later died, leaving his family destitute. Marie-Louise Elisabeth found herself struggling to provide not only an income for her family, but also an education for the young Alexandre. Not having any interest in education, but having beautiful handwriting, Dumas was able to find work as a notary and eventually found himself in the literary world.
Dumas came on stage with melodramatic plays and historical fiction novels which were first published serially in newspaper journals. His flare for the dramatic and colorful scenes quickly made sales rise and put money in his pockets. His work was assisted through the use and collaboration of other assistants and writers, though each work was reworked in his own hand. His prolific work of 250 books was aided through his varied use of 73 assistants. He was also inspired by historical and current events, especially in the case of The Count of Monte Cristo, which was inspired by the account of a shoemaker similarly imprisoned by jealous men.
The success Dumas was endowed with brought many female admirers and lovers. He sired at least three children out of wedlock, namely a son of the same name who also would become a great writer. To differentiate these two, the titles Alexandre Dumas, père (our writer of The Count of Monte Cristo) and Alexandre Dumas, fils are used. These terms are the French form of "father" and "son" respectively.
Alexandre Dumas built his own Chateau de Monte Cristo which he quickly could not afford and escaped to Brussles to avoid his creditors. He died in December 1870 after suffering a stroke and was buried in Villers-Cotterêts, his birthplace, but was exhumed in 2002 and placed in the Panthéon of Paris. He was writing up to his death, leaving a novel unfinished by a few chapters (The Last Cavalier).

The Harlem Renaissance in Brief

Zora Neale Hurston was one of the acclaimed writers that came to the forefront during the Harlem Renaissance, an interesting point of growth in African American culture.
The New Negro Movement, later titled the Harlem Renaissance, began in the early 1920's and continued into the 1930's. African Americans, after migrating to northern communities, began finding power in numbers with the influence and production of literature, art, and music. The goal of the New Negro Movement was to improve social and political relations in the United States. They desired to demonstrate the equality of humanity in the black culture with that of the white culture. However, there was some dispute over certain ideas of what was desirable to display in art, especially in the form of literature. The intellectual side wanted a more educated and "civilized" portrayal of their culture. Hurston found disfavor from some of her Harlem associates due to her use of the vernacular in her writings.
For more information about the Harlem Renaissance and other faces of the movement, give yourself a tour of Harlem.

Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston's life seemed full of up's and down's. Born in 1891 as the fifth child in a family of eight, she enjoyed the privileges of living in Eatonville, Florida, which was the first integrated all black community in the United States. Here, blacks were able to exist without the prejudices of the age and area. Zora, thusly, portrayed much of her characters and their outlooks from this vantage point.
Although a participant in the Harlem Renaissance, she later found disfavor for her portrayal of black dialects in her writings. As an anthropologist, she remained true to this recording and has preserved some of this language. Reading books such as Their Eyes Were Watching God, you feel the power of utilizing this language instead of changing it to the "proper" English form. The rhythm and flow is uninterrupted through Zora's pen in this manner.
She eventually found herself becoming a resident in St. Lucie County Welfare Home and later died of hypertensive heart disease.

The Official Word

Since this is the "official" blog for The Great Works Book Club, I thought I would clarify the changes/decisions that were voted upon last night.
By popular vote, we will continue to hold meetings at 6:30pm every third THURSDAY of the month. We will reevaluate our meeting time in May. So, if this doesn't work out the best for you, it will only be for a few months before we can change.
The next meeting will be February 18th at 6:30pm at Loretta's house. If you need directions, please email or call me. We will read and discuss Zora Neale Thurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. It's a fairly short book, but get reading now so you have time to think about it and get ready for discussion!!

We have a little debate on the books for the next few months. Please talk to me about your preferences and questions!

Meeting Information

Our next book club meeting is just around the corner!! I hope you have enjoyed this month's selections and have some ideas and opinions to share.
There have been some changes to meeting times and such, but we still need to refine this so everyone has equal opportunity to make it to the meetings. In the meantime, our next meeting will be held at Jennifer's home on THURSDAY, January 21st, starting at 6:30pm (a half-hour earlier than it has been held). For further information, please remember to check the Facebook club page.
Until Thursday!!

Similarities

The future is always looked to with hope and expectation of technology and other advances. However, dystopian literature points out how good things can go drastically wrong (although The Giver isn't typically categorized as such, there are enough similarities to qualify it). There tend to be many similarities that authors put into their novels. The trash receptacles is one example. In both Fahrenheit 451 and The Giver (as well as other novels), there is a wonderful trash receptacle readily available to keep the society clean and orderly. This seems like a great concept and somehow you get the impression that this is the solution for our waste issue (go green!). Aside from the fact that burning actually releases toxins and other pollutants into the atmosphere, there are downfalls to such a simple system. Blindly, the civilians in Fahrenheit 451 promptly destroy materials without thinking, to the point that books have become prohibited. In a similar manner, the father in The Giver simply follows his directive and not only places but pushes the body of the infant into the receptacle. Although I am not promoting littering, it seems to be when the choice is removed, individuals no longer think about what they are doing. Habits are hard to break, but become impossible without thinking about it. The trash receptacle was created in response to littering and to break the bad habit of littering. Yet, the true issue would have been correcting the way people think about trash in the first place.
What other symbols and tools are repeated in the novels? Why? What are the pros and cons of each?