Prison is terrible. We all know this, but most of us probably haven’t experienced it. When Dantes is arrested (after being wrongly accused, I may add), he is thrown in the Chateau d’If, with no evidence of a fair trial. Life in the Chateau is horrid. The floors were dirt. You hardly get enough food to survive. You only get a little sunlight, and that’s if you’re lucky. It’s nearly pure isolation, and what little human contact you have is with the guards, many of whom are cruel. Alexandre Dumas knew about prison life well, and he used this to write a sickening portrayal of what prisoners go through while locked up. A portrayal which, surprisingly, is not too far off from what prisoners go through today. While they have made the jump from dirt floors to stone floors, most of the conditions are the same as it was in the 1800s. This creates a shockingly relatable situation. We know how prisoners turn out, so we can make …show more content…
Dantes thought he had tons of friends. Though he knew Danglars was bitter towards him, he didn’t think him an enemy. Caderousse had been a long time family friend. He was a little bit greedy, but Dantes didn’t think him to be terrible. Edmond never even thought that Fernand would betray him. He knew Mercedes saw him as a brother/cousin and thought he thought of her in the same way. Even when talking to Villefort, a man he just met, he thought he had made a friend. Villefort liked Dantes’s personality, and he was going to let him off the hook. When Villefort burned the letter, essentially condemning Dantes to prison, it felt like a punch in the gut. He didn’t know why Villefort burned it, he just did. He didn’t even know he was betrayed by Danglars, Caderousse, and Fernand until the Abbe Faria deduced it. It’s uncertain if Dantes knew and just refused to believe it, or if he was simply oblivious and didn’t think of it. Either way, this betrayal would only fuel him with rage and vengeance, which it clearly does, looking at the rest of the