Book Report: The Da Vinci Code, By Dan Brown

SYNOPSIS

The Da Vinci Code really hits the ground running: The tense opening scene involves the shooting of a museum curator and his final conversation with the mysterious assailant. Their interactions leave the reader with nothing but questions, many of which are not answered until much later.

The book follows two protagonists: Sophie Neveu (a police cryptologist and the curator's granddaughter) and Robert Langdon (a historical symbologist), who stay a half-step ahead of the French police while trying to solve the mysterious clues left behind by the dying curator (Jacques Sauniere). Their journey takes them to famous landmarks and works of art, as well as to one amazing revelation after another.

We find out fairly early that Sauniere, the chief curator of the Louvre in Paris, is also the head of a secret society, known as the Priory of Sion. This society worships the divine feminine, and they are the keepers of a great secret regarding the Holy Grail. The assailant who fatally shot Sauniere is an Opus Dei monk who is acting on behalf of a mysterious man known only as the "Teacher." The Teacher is trying to destroy the Priory, and gain access to the great secret they have been guarding for almost two thousand years.

All throughout their flight from the police and their pursuit of the truth, Langdon lectures Sophie, trying to bring her up to speed on the history behind the Priory of Sion. He explains that several prominent men (and women) have served as Grand Master of the Priory, including Leonardo Da Vinci and Sir Isaac Newton.

He tells her that the Catholic Church decided to change the story of Jesus around 300 AD, redefining him as a divine being, not a man. They covered up the truth about Mary Magdalene, not wanting the world to know that she was actually of the House of Benjamin, the wife of Jesus, and that she was pregnant with his child at the time of the Crucifixion. Mary fled Jerusalem, and she and her descendants became a powerful royal family in France. The Priory's military wing, known as the Knights Templar, protected the family and the secret up to the present day. The Holy Grail, it seems, is not a real cup, but a metaphor for the womb of the divine feminine. The Grail is the secret truth about Jesus, Mary, and their descendants.

Langdon and Neveu race from one puzzle to the next, nearly getting killed or caught by the police several times, until they finally reach the surprising end to their "quest."

EVALUATION

Dan Brown's bestseller feels like two books in one. On one hand, it is a tense, action thriller featuring completely fictional characters, who go about solving fictional puzzles and finding more fictional clues. They do all of this in and around the fairly realistically represented landmarks of Paris, but the players and their activities are completely made up.

On the other hand, Brown's characters tell each other (or, more truthfully, they tell the reader) an intriguing story spanning two thousand years, which is based on non-fictional accounts (although the facts are certainly in dispute).

This is a very interesting way for Brown to get the ideas he finds compelling (found mostly in the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail) disseminated to a wider audience. It is as if two different parts of my mind were reading the novel-- one that wanted to know what was going to happen next to the characters, and another which was intrigued by the Grail story and wondered if it were true.

When I first began reading the book, I talked it over with a friend who had just finished it. I wondered aloud how much of the story was true. After I did some research, I found that much more was at least believed to be true than I could have imagined. I, like Sophie Neveu, was quite surprised that I had never heard these stories before.

CONNECTIONS

We read about and discussed in class how the myths of religions are often changed to either speak to a new generation, or to maintain positions of power. The Da Vinci Code proposes that the early Church did the latter when it redefined Jesus as a divine being. With Jesus now a deity, pagans recently integrated into Catholicism could no longer challenge his teachings, and the Church established itself as the only path for redemption for the followers of Christ.

We also covered the use of metaphor in myth. One of the central concepts of The Da Vinci Code is that the Holy Grail is not a literal cup from which Jesus drank, but rather, a metaphor. The "Chalice that held the blood of Christ" is a metaphorical reference to Mary Magdalene's womb, carrying the child (or bloodline) of Jesus.

CONCLUSION

I really enjoyed this book. It satisfied my need for adventure, and opened up a whole new avenue which I hope to explore. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes a good mystery or a good thriller, and I would also recommend it to anyone interested in the history of Christianity.