Edmond Dantes, a handsome, promising young sailor, skillfully docks the three-masted French ship, the pharaon, in Marseilles after its captain died en route home. As a reward, Dantes is promised a captainship, but before he can claim his new post and be married to his fiancee, Mercedes, a conspiracy of four jealous and unsavory men arrange for him to be seized and secretly imprisoned in solitary confinement in the infamous Chateau d'If, a prison from which no one has ever escaped.
The four men who are responsible are, Fernando Mondego, who is jealous of Mercedes' love for Dantes; Danglars, the purser of the Pharaon, who covets Dantes promised captainship; Caderousse, an umprincipled neighbor; and Villefort, a prosecutor who knows that Dantes is a carrying a letter addressed to Villeforts father; the old man is a Bonapartist who would probobly be imprisoned by the present royalist regi9me were it not for his son's, Villefort's, influence. Villefort fears, however, that this letter might damage his own position, and so he makes sure, he thinks, that no one ever hears about either Dantes or the letter again.
For many years, Dantes barley exists in his tiny, isolated cell; he almost loses his mind and his will to live until one day he hears a fellow prisoner burrowing nearby. He too begins digging, and soon he meets an old Abbe who knows the whereabouts of an immense fortune, one that used to belong to an immensely wealthy Italian family.
Dantes and the Abbe continue digging for several years, and form the abbe, dantes learns history, literature, science and languages, but hwen at last they are almost free, the Abbe dies. Dantes hides his body, then sews himslef inside the abbes burial sack. The gueards arrive, carry the sack outside, and heave the body faro ut to sea.
Dantes manages to escape and is picked up by a shipful of smugglers, whom he joins until he can locate the island where the treasure is hidden. When he finally discovers it, he is staggered by the immensity of its wealth. And when he merges into society again, he is the very rich and very handsome Count of Monte Cristo.
Monte Cristo has two goals - to reward those who were kind to him and his aging father, and to punish those responsible for his imprisonment. For the latter, he plans slow and painful punishment. To have spent fourteen years barely subsisting in a dungeon demands cruel and prolonged punishment.
As Monte Cristo, Dnates ingeniously manages to be introduced to the cream of Parisian society, among whom he goes unrecognized. But Monte Cristo, in contrast, recognizes all of his enemies - all now wealthy and influential men.
Fernand has married Mercedes and is now known as Count de Morcerf. Monte Cristo releases information to the press that proves Morcerf is a traitor, and Morcerf is ruined socially. Then Monte Cristo destroys Morcerfs relationship w/ his family, whom he adores. When they leave him, he is so distraught that he shoots himself.
To revenge himself on Danglars, who loves money more than anything else, Monte Cristo ruins him financially.
To revenge himself on Caderousse, Monte Cristo easily traps Caderousse because of his insatiable greed, then watches as one of Caderousses cohorts murders him.
To revenge himself on Villefort, Monte Cristo slowly reveals to Villefort that he knows about a love affair that Villefort had long ago with the present Madame Danglars. He also reveals to him, by hints, that he knows about an illegitimate child he fathered, a child whom Villefort believed that he buried alive. The child lived however, and is now engaged to Danglars' daughter, who is the illegitimate young man's half sister.
Ironically, Villefort's wife proves to be even more villainous than her husband, for she poisons the parents of Villeforts first wife; then she belives that she has successfully poisoned her husbands daughter by his first marriage. With those people dead, her own son is in line for an enormous inheritance. Villefort, however, discovers his wife's plottings and threatens her, and so she poisons herself and their son.
At this point, Dantes is half-fearful that his revenge has been too thorough, but because he is able to unite two young people who are very much in love and unite them on the island of Monte Cristo, he sails away, happy and satisfied, never to be seen again.
Synopsis taken from "Cliff's Notes" on"The Count of Monte Cristo"