Contents
Chapter 20.
Overview
After Abbé Faria’s death, Edmond Dantès resolves to escape by taking Faria’s place in the burial sack. He endures the evening inspection and is carried from the cell. The prison’s “cemetery” proves to be the sea: the bearers tie a heavy shot to his feet and throw him overboard, leaving his survival uncertain.
Summary
Edmond Dantès mourns Abbé Faria, briefly flirting with suicide before rejecting it in favor of life, vengeance, and freedom. A desperate plan strikes him: since only the dead leave the dungeon, he will replace Faria’s body in the burial sack and be carried out as a corpse.
Dantès moves Faria’s body to his own bed, arranges it to resemble his sleeping form, returns to Faria’s cell, strips to avoid suspicion under the canvas, slips into the sack, and sews it shut from the inside. He braces for discovery during the evening meal but remains undetected, surviving the first peril.
Grave-diggers arrive, lift the sack, and carry Dantès through the corridors and into the night. He hears coarse jokes and the sea battering the rocks. The men fasten a cord with a heavy metallic weight to his feet, then bear him to a high point, timing their throw to avoid rocks after a prior mishap.
On a count of three, they hurl Dantès into the darkness. He plunges into the freezing water, dragged down by a thirty-six–pound shot. The chapter closes with the revelation that the sea is the cemetery of the Château d’If, and Dantès’s fate remains unresolved beneath the waves.
Who Appears
- Edmond DantèsPrisoner who devises and executes a daring escape by replacing Faria in the burial sack.
- Abbé FariaDead mentor whose body Dantès disguises and replaces to enable the escape attempt.
- undefinedCarry the sack, tie a heavy shot to the feet, and throw it into the sea.
- undefinedBrings meals; his routine silence lets Dantès avoid detection during the ruse.
- undefinedOrders the body’s removal; referenced as enforcing proper disposal at sea.