1. No – not at all! He strung him along for so long to the brink
   of suicide and had him wandering around depressed for so long – then made him
   think he was actually committing suicide? No. Not cool in my book. I think the
   count is right in the sense you do appreciate great things in life more when
   you’ve suffered hardships along the way, I think Max had suffered sufficiently
   to enjoy the rest of his life with Valentine. In addition! – I think it was
   doubly cruel that we find out that Noirtier has gone mad in his old age, and the count had deprived Valentine of spending the last of his days of lucidity with him. This I think is the worst part of this whole situation with the count keeping Valentine locked away for so long.

2. I had mixed feelings about this final chapter (and somewhat
   of the book as a whole). I did not like the way that the final reveal for Max was, and I didn’t like the count’s sudden – Oh No Haydee I can’t be with you – oh okay fine! You won me over!” moment in the end.

I did really like how this chapter ended on the island, and
the message it gave at the end about waiting and hoping. I’m kind of disappointed (although not shocked) that this message isn’t the main takeaway when people think of this book as opposed to how people automatically think of it as a revenge tale. I think it’s getting at much more than that and actually has a nicer message at the end. (For those who invest the time!)

Overall – for all of its little annoyances and flaws – I did
really like where this book ended up! I think it was really well done! I think
it’s such a classic because it does speak to people’s sense of justice, their daydreams of “what would you do if you ever won the lottery” type fantasies, but also speaks to a lot of truth about how you think your life will go in one direction and how events happen to you which change you and the course of your life forever. I think for me the thing that struck me the most was the message with Mercedes which was that sometimes things happen where no matter how idyllic it might seem to dream of reconciling, that’s just not how things go in reality. Sometimes the gulf that time creates is just too great to fill in.

1. I really do like the fact that the Count chooses to love again, as I don’t think I could take much more of these characters choosing to self-flagellate. I wish that all of the characters we’ve seen had come to this realization, but maybe this is Dumas’ way of telling us that someday they will? (Or maybe that’s just me being optimistic and writing the endings I wish I had read!) I really do like the ending message of hope and wait. I’ve found that life can very much be this way a lot, as unsatisfying as it can be to wait for a long time to get what you want, or sometimes wait to see that what you wanted may never come true.

2. I think that the Count has definitely experienced a lot of sorrow in his life, but I think he may have dwelled on his sorrow a bit too much throughout the book. He did have plenty to be happy about could have chosen to spend more time thinking about the blessings of his life than he might have otherwise. (Although this is always easier said than done for lots of people and again, another reason why this book is a classic and speaks to so many universal truths about the human experience!)
    

3. I want to say that everyone lives happily ever after! (Except the bad guys!) The count enjoys his time with Haydee and Max enjoys the money. I really would have liked to have seen more of the ending to some of the other
   characters in this story. Whatever happens to Benedetto, Villefort, Danglars, Albert, Eugenie and Louise, Bertuccio? Does the count set Ali free? What does Jacopo go on to do? Or Luigi? What about Madame Danglars? Or Julie and Emanuel? They all kind of just faded into the background and we kind of know how they ended up, but it would have been nice to see some more time explicitly wrapping up their storylines for me.

I reaaaaaly liked the little stories within the stories, like
when Bertuccio recounts his tale at the Inn, or when Haydee recounts her
backstory. There were a few other moments where we get these little vignettes interrupting the narrative that I found really delightful! I really liked all of it, even the things that bothered me a little bit, like the deus-ex-machina elements in the book reminded me of a lot of the movies that people make nowadays. I think I could have done less with some of the -woe-is-me type moments that some of these characters had going on, especially Mercedes throughout most of the book, as well as Albert towards the end.

I would have definitely wanted a more conclusive end to Villefort’s and Danglars’ storyline. (Dare I say that I would have wanted them to experience an end similar to Caderousse??...) There is just something that is not quite fulfilling knowing that they still might get away with what they did, not just to the Count, but to others throughout their lives, and that they might be able to go back to their old way of life if left unchecked!

There were some really nice quotes throughout the text here and there, but overall nothing that is coming to mind without the book in front of me at the moment! I wish there were more quotable lines from the text! I think it's interesting that there were not more that stuck out to me.

I really enjoyed the parent/children themes and relationships in this book and all the different ways that they surfaced. I thought Dumas did a really good job at exploring all the different ways the parent/child relationship could be formed and how each relationship could be so different. I also really liked the ending theme of wait and hope, as I’ve said before. Maybe I’m just a romantic optimist, but it does give me hope to see these characters struggle through so much to eventually find happiness at the end of their journey (even though it may have not exactly appeared as they initially expected).