I Can Always Count on Monte Cristo by Joseph

I Can Always Count on Monte Cristo by Joseph - February 2015 Scholarship Essay

Characters from stories seldom evoke the kind of reaction that has me actually making an effort to root for them. Like I actually know them and can pick up a conversation with them whenever I want. I mean, I won’t go so far as to say I’ll blow off my sister’s soccer game to instead cheer on a figment of somebody’s imagination. But I will say, embarrassingly enough, I caught myself a few times audibly wishing for good fortune to come Edmond Dantes’ way.

I didn’t actually say “You can do it, Edmond,” and anybody who wrote that – substituting “Edmond” for the appropriate protagonist – is lying. But I did say “Come on” a couple of times, as if to somehow wake up Dumas and have him fill Dante’s pockets with gold and a boat (which, funny enough, he kind of did).
I read the Penguin Classics’ 1400-paged unabridged version of “The Count of Monte Cristo,” and I did so in about 4 days. Granted I was on vacation, but looking at it in ppm (pages per minute for those unaccustomed with the unit of measurement I just made up), I have never read a book faster.

I’d be lying if I told you that it was the story itself that kept my attention for the 700 flicks of my wrist. I thoroughly enjoyed how the book itself was written, and could not recommend it enough.

But the real reason why I think every high school student should read it before graduating is because, for the rest of their life, textbooks will seem as if they’re auditioning to be on a Weight Watchers’ commercial.