Rizal’s Noli and the Count of Monte Cristo

While watching Edmund Dantes on the movie The Count of Monte Cristo, I can remember Simoun who was Crisostomo Ibarra’s disguise in Dr. Jose Rizal’s novel, the El Filibusterismo. I just found out that The Count of Monte Cristo was one of Rizal’s favorites. He surely had a good time reading Alexander Duma’s obra maestro that it even had a lot of similarities in his second novel which was the El Filibusterismo.

In the film, the main character was Edmund Dantes who was an illiterate yet innate intellectual man. He was about to get a great future being the captain of the ship they were aboard with and he won’t be waiting for two years to marry his exquisite fiancée, Mercedes. But due to Danglar, Villefort and Fernand’s betrayal, the promising future of Dantes instantly went gone when he was imprisoned in Chateau d’If. I can find some resemblance with this character of Dantes in Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere in the presence also of the main character in the novel who was Crisostomo Ibarra. Ibarra would also have grand opportunities like marrying Maria Clara, building the school which he always wanted and even forgiving the enemies of his father yet all of these went gone when the friars denounced him. But just one of the characters’ differences is that Ibarra was educated and rich while Dantes was illiterate and poor though he gained wisdom with the help of the priest in Chateau d’If later in the movie.

Dantes escaped from prison when he laid in a rolled mat as if he was the dead priest while Ibarra escaped through the help of Elias. It was like they were helped by their friends it is just that Dantes was helped indirectly by the death of the priest. Both characters were presumed by their lovers as dead because it was what their surrounding people told them. Maria Clara was engaged to Linares while Mercedes married Fernand. In this part of the story, Rizal and Duma twisted the tale in a different way. In Noli Me Tangere, Maria Clara was to be married to a new character yet she insisted and decided to be a nun because if not granted she will commit suicide. In The Count of Monte Cristo, Mercedes married the best friend-turned-to-be-enemy of Dantes who was Fernand because she was pregnant with Dantes’ son and Fernand without knowing this until later in the movie.

Lastly and I should say the most noticeable resemblance of the two novels is that both protagonists disguised for their revenge and possessing more knowledge, wealth, and resourcefulness upon their return. After their vengeance to those who turned their lives into agonies, they both realized that deciding revenge is a dish best eaten cold.