"Only someone who has suffered the deepest misfortune is capable of experiencing the heights of felicity" (Dumas 1077). The greatest joys, the heights of felicity, do not come out of revenge. Revenge is a natural impulse to injustice where one can be obsessively consumed. It returns lonely, painful suffering. One must keep hope alive when things become more dreadful than a disastrous nightmare. Hope to a better end. To justice – that fate will punish those well-deserving and reward those well deserved. The heights of felicity do not blossom out of revenge – but they can come from forgiveness and salvation. Alexandre Dumas wrote about a man, whose life is shattered, bent on revenge in The Count of Monte Cristo; Martin Campbell directed a movie about lost love and vengeance in The Mask of Zorro; and Hope wrote a poem called Aware of a Sunnier Side about an alternative to revenge. These three works illustrate the meaning of happiness.
             Ultimate bliss from ultimate despair. People must see how bad things can get to really appreciate how precious their happiness is. The world is filled with ungrateful selfish people. The populace is blind to their true blessings and gold fortunes of family, love, and friends. People continue to live on in the same manner, unable to recognize their own bliss. Dumas illustrates this, arguing to appreciate happiness one must know profound sadness. Dantès suffers fourteen long years and in those years he exiles from his heart man's most precious emotions of love, happiness, and honesty. It is only in the end when he is about to take his own life does he appreciate his blessings. Haydée confesses her love to Dantès. "I love you as one loves a father, a brother, a husband! I love you as one loves life, and loves God, for you are to me the most beautiful, the best and greatest of created beings!" (Dumas 1074). Dantès suffers so much that he is blind to Haydée's love. She will take her own life i...