The idea in one minute
This page compares two famous French stories. In Les Miserables, a bishop shows mercy to a thief, and it changes his whole life. In The Count of Monte Cristo, a betrayed man spends his life on revenge. You will learn what both stories, and the three faiths, teach about mercy and revenge.
The question: When someone has wronged you badly, what actually sets you free: getting even, or being forgiven and forgiving?
A man just out of prison is given supper and a bed by a bishop. In the night he steals the bishop's silver and runs. The police drag him back the next morning. The bishop looks at him, says the silver was a gift, and adds two silver candlesticks he 'forgot' to take. That one act turns Jean Valjean's whole life around.
Twenty years earlier, in another French novel, a young sailor called Edmond Dantès is betrayed by his friends and locked in a sea fortress for fourteen years. He escapes, finds a fortune and comes back as the Count of Monte Cristo, with a plan to repay every one of them. Both stories are about a man who was wronged. Only one of them is about a man who was forgiven.
In the makers' own words
“Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good.”
The Bishop of Digne, in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, 1862 · Les Misérables, Volume 1, Book 2, Chapter 12 (Hapgood translation, Project Gutenberg #135)
“It is your soul that I buy from you; I withdraw it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God.”
The Bishop of Digne, in Les Misérables, 1862 · Les Misérables, Volume 1, Book 2, Chapter 12 (Project Gutenberg #135)
“I have been Heaven's substitute to recompense the good”
Edmond Dantès, in Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo, 1844–46 · The Count of Monte Cristo, Chapter 30 (Project Gutenberg #1184)
“God grant I may not have done too much already.”
Edmond Dantès, near the end of his revenge, 1844–46 · The Count of Monte Cristo, Chapter 111 (Project Gutenberg #1184)
“all human wisdom is summed up in these two words,—'Wait and hope.'”
Edmond Dantès, in his last letter, 1844–46 · The Count of Monte Cristo, final chapter (Project Gutenberg #1184)
Two prisoners, two roads
Hugo and Dumas were writing in the same France, a generation apart, and both chose the same starting point: a man the system has crushed. Valjean served nineteen years for stealing bread and trying to escape. Dantès did fourteen for a crime he never committed. Both come out angry, and both have every reason to be.
What changes Valjean is not a sermon. It is a gift he has not earned. The bishop does not ask him to apologise first. He simply refuses to let the theft be the last word, and then tells Valjean what the gift is for: 'It is your soul that I buy from you.' Hugo spends the rest of a very long novel showing what that purchase looks like: a factory owner who protects his workers, a man who takes in an orphan, a fugitive who spares the policeman hunting him.
Dantès takes the other road. He does not lack faith; he talks about God constantly. The danger is that he decides he is God's instrument. Early on he says he has been 'Heaven's substitute' to reward the good, and that now he will punish the wicked. For hundreds of pages the plan works perfectly. Then it reaches an innocent child, and the Count stops. 'God grant I may not have done too much already,' he says. The man who set out to play Providence ends by asking for mercy himself.
What the films keep, and what they change
Tom Hooper's 2012 film of the stage musical keeps the bishop's scene almost exactly, and sets it to music. Colm Wilkinson, who played Valjean in the original London and Broadway productions, plays the bishop, which gives the moment a sense of one Valjean handing the part to the next. The film then follows Hugo's thread: every act of mercy Valjean shows later is the candlesticks being passed on.
The 2024 French film of Monte Cristo, with Pierre Niney as Dantès, is faster and more of a thriller. It still keeps Dumas's moral turn: the cost of revenge lands on people who did nothing, and the Count has to face what he has become. Dumas's novel ends with the famous line from Dantès's last letter: 'all human wisdom is summed up in these two words, Wait and hope.' A man who spent his life taking matters into his own hands ends by telling the young to leave the future to God.
What researchers have found about revenge
We often imagine revenge will feel good. Psychologists have tested this. In a set of experiments published in 2008, Kevin Carlsmith, Timothy Wilson and Daniel Gilbert let volunteers punish a player who had cheated a group in an investment game. The people who punished expected to feel better. In fact they felt worse than people who had no chance to punish, partly because they kept thinking about the cheat afterwards. Those who could not take revenge moved on more quickly.
This does not mean wrongs should be ignored. Hugo's novel is full of real injustice, and Dumas's villains really are guilty. Courts, fair punishment and repair all matter. The question both writers ask is narrower and more personal: who carries the debt? Valjean lets someone else's mercy carry his, and becomes free to give. Dantès carries everyone's debts on his own back, and nearly breaks.
Three Names that belong together
The Qur'an describes God by many Names, and three of them sit right on top of these two novels. At-Tawwāb is the One who turns, again and again, towards people who turn back to Him. Al-ʿAfuww is the Pardoner, whose pardon does not just cancel a debt but wipes the record clean. Al-Muntaqim, often translated 'the Avenger', is better rendered 'the Requiter': the One who will set every wrong right.
Muslim teachers always put al-Muntaqim next to the Names of mercy, never alone. The point is close to Dumas's own lesson: justice is real, but it belongs to God, who sees everything and will not overreach. Human beings are told to seek justice, and also that pardoning is better. Dantès learns this the hard way. The Bishop of Digne knew it from the start.
The Names this touches
The contrast
The films imagine a man who makes himself Heaven's substitute and nearly loses his soul doing it; the Names describe the One who requites with perfect justice, and still turns first towards anyone who turns back.
At-Tawwāb: The One who turns towards us first, so that we can turn back (9:118).
Al-ʿAfuww: The Pardoner, who does not just cancel the debt but wipes the page clean.
Al-Muntaqim: The Requiter: justice is real, and it is His, never ours to seize.
What each faith says
Judaism
“Who is a God like unto Thee, that pardoneth the iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? He retaineth not His anger for ever, because He delighteth in mercy.”
Micah 7:18 · JPS 1917
In Judaism the turning-back is called teshuvah, and the prophets describe God as quick to receive it. On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the Book of Jonah is read: a whole city that turns and is spared. The Torah also tells people plainly not to take revenge or keep a grudge, in the same verse that says 'love thy neighbour as thyself' (Leviticus 19:18). Vengeance is God's business: 'Vengeance is Mine, and recompense' (Deuteronomy 32:35).
The rabbis add something both novels would recognise. The Mishnah (Yoma 8:9) teaches that Yom Kippur atones for wrongs between a person and God, but wrongs between people are not atoned until the person you hurt has been put right. Mercy from God and repair between people go together.
Jews act this out at the New Year. On the afternoon of Rosh Hashanah many go to a river, a pond or the sea for Tashlich, “you shall cast”. They throw crumbs into the water and read Micah: “Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19).
Christianity
“Don't seek revenge yourselves, beloved, but give place to God's wrath. For it is written, "Vengeance belongs to me; I will repay, says the Lord."”
Romans 12:19 · WEB
Hugo's bishop is a Catholic priest acting out the Gospel, and Christians will recognise the pattern at once: grace comes first, before the person has done anything to deserve it. Jesus told the parable of the son who wastes his inheritance and comes home expecting to be a servant. The father sees him 'while he was still far off' and runs to him (Luke 15:20).
The New Testament also speaks straight to Monte Cristo. Paul writes: 'Don't seek revenge yourselves... Vengeance belongs to me; I will repay, says the Lord', and then, 'Don't be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good' (Romans 12:19, 21). When Peter asks how often he must forgive, Jesus answers 'until seventy times seven' (Matthew 18:22).
Christians practise it in confession. Catholic and Orthodox Christians confess to a priest and hear the words of absolution; Anglican and Methodist services begin with a shared prayer of confession and the assurance of forgiveness. Like the bishop’s candlesticks, the forgiveness is spoken aloud before the new life has been lived.
Islam
“Say: O My slaves who have been prodigal to their own hurt! Despair not of the mercy of Allah, Who forgiveth all sins. Lo! He is the Forgiving, the Merciful.”
Qur'an 39:53 · Pickthall (1930)
The Qur'an allows a wronged person to seek fair redress, and then immediately points higher: 'The guerdon of an ill-deed is an ill the like thereof. But whosoever pardoneth and amendeth, his wage is the affair of Allah. Lo! He loveth not wrong-doers.' (42:40, Pickthall). It also speaks to people who have done wrong and think it is too late: 'Say: O My slaves who have been prodigal to their own hurt! Despair not of the mercy of Allah, Who forgiveth all sins. Lo! He is the Forgiving, the Merciful.' (39:53, Pickthall).
The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ (peace be upon him) said that God is more pleased when a servant turns back to Him than a traveller who finds his lost camel in the desert (Bukhari 6309). He also said that no one forgives another except that God raises their honour (Muslim 2588), and that 'the strong is the one who controls himself while in anger' (Bukhari 6114). That is a fair summary of what the Count of Monte Cristo spent twenty years learning.
Same and different
All three faiths teach that God receives the one who turns back, that vengeance belongs to God and not to us, and that wrongs between people must be put right. They differ on how forgiveness reaches us. Muslims speak of direct repentance to God, with no intermediary, and of God’s Names of mercy that come before His Names of justice. Jews speak of teshuvah, repair and God’s covenant mercy, and insist the person you hurt must be put right first. Christians speak of grace given through Christ’s death and resurrection.
Go deeper
- Les Misérables (Hapgood translation), full text · book
- The Count of Monte Cristo, full text · book
- Qur'an 42:40 with translations · scripture
- Micah 7:18 (JPS 1917) · scripture
- Romans 12 (World English Bible) · scripture
- Carlsmith, Wilson and Gilbert, 'The paradoxical consequences of revenge' (2008) · paper
Sources (8)
- Bishop's words to Valjean: Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862), Hapgood translation, Project Gutenberg #135
- 'Heaven's substitute', 'done too much', 'Wait and hope': Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo, Project Gutenberg #1184
- Punishers felt worse than non-punishers: Carlsmith, Wilson and Gilbert, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 95(6), 2008
- Les Misérables (2012) director, cast and Colm Wilkinson as the bishop: Wikipedia, Les Misérables (2012 film)
- The Count of Monte-Cristo (2024): directors, Pathé, Pierre Niney: Wikipedia, The Count of Monte Cristo (2024 film)
- BBFC certificates: BBFC: Les Misérables (2012); The Count of Monte-Cristo (2024)
- Hadith: lost camel; forgiveness raises honour; the strong controls anger: Bukhari 6309; Muslim 2588; Bukhari 6114 (via sunnah.com numbering)
- Mishnah on Yom Kippur and wrongs between people: Mishnah Yoma 8:9
