Comparing The Count Of Monte Cristo And Viva La Vida

Both “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “Viva la Vida” are centered around the worlds most ageless and strongest “drugs”. Power. As humans, once we taste power, all we can do is yearn for more. It is simple human nature. This desire for more power is strongly laced through Alexandre Dumas’, The Count of Monte Cristo and Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida.” Coldplay, an alternative pop/rock band, wrote “Viva La Vida” in 2008. Coldplay,wrote the song which describes a king who has an immense amount of power. The powerful king gains more power by conquering other kingdoms. Rather than being a great king that cared for his people, he only focused on the present; boasting about his accomplishments and making selfish decisions. Eventually, he abuses his power

and falls from his place of glory, to become a lowly servant to the place he once ruled with might. Alexandre Dumas’, The Count of Monte Cristo, is a story about a common man named Edmund Dantes who has everything his heart desires, a girl and a stable career. He is framed by one of his crewmates and a person who loves his fiance, of conspiring with Napoleon and being a bonapartist. He is sent to a persecutor to determine if he is guilty. The persecutor, a man named Villefort, sees he is innocent, but at the last minute, discovers that his father is involved in the scheme that Dantes was shoved into. Protecting his name and hopes to one day become very powerful and gain favor with the king, Villefort puts Edmund in prison knowing full well that he is without guilt. Edmund meets a man in the prison who tells him about immense riches on the Isle of Monte Cristo and conspires with him to escape. Eventually though, Dantes’ friend dies, and Dantes escapes through his body bag and finds the treasure on the Isle of Monte Cristo. He then adopts a new name, the Count of Monte Cristo, a reference to where he gained his fortune. The rest of the book shows Dantes carrying out a vendetta on those who wronged him; destroying their lives. Villefort's life is ruined when the Count gives his wife poison. She slowly kills off his family members for her own reasons and destroys his household, carrying on the theme of punishment for those who desire power. This desire for power and favor with the king ultimately led to Villefort’s demise. In “The Count of Monte Cristo and “Viva la Vida” both the author and song writer use figurative language and plot to illustrate the idea that the desire for power can lead to consequences.
The theme of thirst for power bringing on punishment is portrayed in both the “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “Viva la Vida” through diction.

In “The Count of Monte Cristo,” Villefort is carefully described as, “... ambitious. He would sacrifice anything to his ambition, even his own father.” (Dumas 36) This description from the king of France portrays that Monsieur Villefort is a man who will do anything for power. This comes back to hurt him in the end, when all the “sacrifice” for the ambition comes to the surface and he is exposed for all the wrong he had done in the name of power. The diction chosen by the king, “sacrifice anything” shows that Villefort is willing to gain his power by any means necessary, even by disowning his own father and lying about Edmund to further his power. In “Viva la Vida,” the song describes the way the king ruled as, “... Never an honest word, And that was when I ruled the world.” (Coldplay 21-22) This quote uses diction, saying the king was dishonest and never told the truth with the quote, “never an honest word.” This quote portrays that the king used lies and deception to gain more power and rule more and more. These lies, like most lies, came out in the end and he was stripped of the power he lied and did evil for. In conclusion, both Dumas’ and the songwriter use diction to show the lies and deception Villefort and the king from “Viva la Vida” use to quench their desire for power, however, the literary works always show where the

desire for power comes back to get the characters in the end.
Figurative language, in this case personification, plays a large role in the theme of desire for power and its consequences in The Count of Monte Cristo and “Viva la Vida.” In The Count of Monte Cristo, after Villefort was exposed for all the evil he had done to stay in power, he felt as if, “The whole weight of his ruined life had just fallen on [his] head.

He was crushed by the weight, but was not yet aware of the consequences.” (Dumas 480) This was the moment when all of the evil things Villefort had done, including the attempted murder an infant came back to haunt him, and his evil thirst for power was exposed to all of Parisian society. This scene used personification, saying that the metaphorical “weight” of his ruined life fell on his head and was actually weighing him down, to portray the theme running deep in the book of punishing those who desire power. In the song “Viva la Vida,” the songwriter, in the voice of the king, says, “It was the wicked and wild wind, blew down the doors to let me in. Shattered windows and the sound of drums, people couldn't believe what I'd become.” (Coldplay 23-28) This stanza in the song, using personification, shows that the king had bad, or wicked, intentions while gaining his power. He got power hungry and started to become evil to satisfy his need for more power. Eventually, as the song says, people noticed his evil intentions and actions and he was punished and completely stripped of his power, forced to “sweep the streets [he]

used to own.”
Desire for power can lead great men to do commit horrible crime, even in our society today, both The Count of Monte Cristo and Viva la Vida touch on this theme that is subject to human nature. Power, used incorrectly, is an evil thing, and can corrupt any man given time. The desire and hunger for power is what leads great men into evil and brings on consequences for those who have it.