Money plays a key role in the novel, especially in the stories of the Morrel family and Danglars, and financial need or greed is a motivating factor in many characters’ lives. Banks and bankers, the stock market, and the availability of credit all help shape people’s destinies. In addition, characters apply the language of debt and repayment to other situations, speaking of what they owe people or how they can repay them. 

For example, Maximilien undertakes to repay his family’s debt to their unknown benefactor by saving a life on the anniversary of his intervention, while his sister keeps on display the actual purse containing the paid invoice representing their financial salvation and the diamond for her dowry, blurring the lines between literal and figurative debt (the purse is the same one in which M. Morrel left money for the dying M. Dantès). Attitudes toward the repayment of literal debts also serve as an index of moral fiber. M. Morrel is ready to die by suicide over the failure to pay his creditors, while Danglars thinks nothing of running away to Rome when he has no means to pay his.