# Number 34 and Number 27 explained — The Count of Monte Cristo > Chapter companion for The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. ## What happens Edmond Dantès, after years of solitary confinement, passes through stages of hope, doubt, prayer, and rage. He exhausts all human appeals and turns to God, but despair deepens. He then begins digging through his cell wall using a broken jug and later the handle of a soup saucepan. After days of labor, he encounters a beam and hears a voice from the other side—another prisoner. They exchange names and histories, revealing that the other prisoner has been imprisoned since 1811. Dantès learns of Napoleon's abdication and resolves to continue digging toward his neighbor. ## Themes in this chapter ### Fate and Providence Dantès prays to God and reflects on divine justice, but his prayers seem unanswered until the chance discovery of the iron handle and the voice from the wall suggest a providential turn. ### Identity and Transformation Dantès' psychological journey from hopeful innocence to despair and then to determined action marks a profound transformation in his character. ### Revenge and Justice Dantès' rage and fixation on the letter from Villefort foreshadow his eventual quest for vengeance against those who wronged him. ## Character check-ins ### Edmond Dantès Endures psychological torture, prays, then turns to rage and physical labor; begins digging through his cell wall using a broken jug and later the handle of a saucepan. ### Abbé Faria The mysterious prisoner in cell 27 who speaks to Dantès from the other side of the wall; reveals he has been imprisoned since 1811. ### Gérard de Villefort Referenced indirectly through Dantès' memory of the letter Villefort showed him, which fuels his rage and sense of betrayal. ## Key lines > Dantès passed through all the stages of torture natural to prisoners in suspense. He was sustained at first by that pride of conscious innocence which is the sequence to hope; then he began to doubt his own innocence, which justified in some measure the governor’s belief in his mental alienation; and then, relaxing his sentiment of pride, he addressed his supplications, not to God, but to man. Dantès experienced the typical emotional torment of a prisoner in limbo: initially buoyed by the pride of innocence and hope, he later began to question his own innocence, lending credence to the governor's suspicion of his insanity. Eventually, he abandoned pride and turned his pleas from God to human beings. _Illustrates Dantès' psychological descent from hope to self-doubt and finally to desperate appeals to his jailers._ > He prayed, and prayed aloud, no longer terrified at the sound of his own voice, for he fell into a sort of ecstasy. He laid every action of his life before the Almighty, proposed tasks to accomplish, and at the end of every prayer introduced the entreaty oftener addressed to man than to God: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.” He prayed out loud without fear, entering a state of ecstasy, confessing his life to God and setting goals, always ending with the plea for forgiveness as in the Lord's Prayer. _Shows Dantès' turn to religious devotion and his focus on forgiveness, even as he remains imprisoned._ > Rage supplanted religious fervor. Dantès uttered blasphemies that made his jailer recoil with horror, dashed himself furiously against the walls of his prison, wreaked his anger upon everything, and chiefly upon himself, so that the least thing—a grain of sand, a straw, or a breath of air that annoyed him, led to paroxysms of fury. Anger replaced his religious zeal; Dantès cursed so violently that the jailer was shocked, threw himself against the walls, and became enraged at the smallest irritations. _Highlights the shift from prayer to violent rage as Dantès' despair deepens._ > Dantès raised his eyes to heaven and clasped his hands beneath the coverlet. He felt more gratitude for the possession of this piece of iron than he had ever felt for anything. Dantès looked up to heaven and clasped his hands under the blanket, feeling more thankful for the iron handle than for anything else in his life. _Emphasizes the immense value of the simple tool that enables his escape attempt._ > “Who talks of God and despair at the same time?” said a voice that seemed to come from beneath the earth, and, deadened by the distance, sounded hollow and sepulchral in the young man’s ears. A voice, muffled and ghostly as if from underground, asked who would speak of both God and despair together. _The first contact with the mysterious prisoner, marking a turning point in Dantès' isolation._ ## Links - HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_count_of_monte_cristo_se/chapters/xv-number-34-and-number-27 - Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_count_of_monte_cristo_se - All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_count_of_monte_cristo_se/chapters