Sunday, October 17, 2010

The Da Vinci Code- Dan Brown

The Da Vinci Code, written by Dan Brown follows the adventure of two individuals as they try to uncover a secret that has been hidden since the time of Christ. Robert Langdon is a Harvard symbologist. He was on a trip in Paris to give a speech about symbolism. The night he was there, he was supposed to meet a famous curator named Jacques Sauniere at the famous art museum, the Louvre. Langdon never met the curator, because Sauniere had been murdered and he was the prime suspect. Next to his dead body in the museum, Sauniere left a myserious cipher. Sauniere’s granddaughter, Sophie was a cryptologist that got wind of her grandfather’s death. She went to the museum and met Langdon. They soon found out the real meaning of the cipher. Sauniere was killed, because he knew a secret, but he didn’t want it to end with him. In his last minutes of life, Sauniere left clues starting a journey to find the secret. “Suddenly, now, despite all the precautions . . . despite all the fail-safes . . . Jacques Sauniere was the only remaining link, the sole guardian of one of the most powerful secrets ever kept,” (Brown 5). It was now up to Robert and Sophie to figure out Sauniere's clues and figure out the secret that he was trying to get to them.


"The power of the female and her ability to produce life was once very sacred, but it posed a threat to the rise of the predominantly male Church, and so the sacred feminine was demonized and called unclean," (Brown 238). Throughout the story, Langdon explains the strong significance of women. In the religions and secret societies that the reader learns about there is always an emphasis on women. People use to see women as superior because they birthed the new nations. The women were the reason for life. Why do you think the current societies have lost the importance of the female? Why was the male the superior for so long?


The Da Vinci Code became a very controversial book, and upset many people. There was fact and fiction intertwined throughout the entire story. The story depicts one of the major world religions as a lie. The author, Dan Brown goes back to the time of Christ and gives reasons and symbols for all of the things that have happened. He turned around everything that we know about the Church into something completely different. Why were people so upset by a story that described a fictional scenario of our history?









7 comments:

Laura P 7-8 said...

1.) I believe that most societies started to lose the importance of the female, because they started to lose the sight of how important life actually is. Also, males were superior because women were viewed as property, thus not allowed to do much besides working around the house and caring for children, while males tended to most jobs in society. And it was not till a while when women were finally allowed to break out of the house and start actually getting jobs and rights.

2. I find that a lot of people were upset because religion plays a major roles in many peoples lives. When the idea of their religion was beginning to be based on a lie, I believe that many of those persons depicted the book as blasphemy.

Nicole H. 7-8 said...

1). I agree with Laura. Today, life is not as much of a struggle as it was in the early days of Christ. Now, and even a couple centuries back, the accommodations for living are far greater than what people had at the time of Christ. They had to fight for their lives everyday, as opposed to people relying on medical advances and technology of the current times. I also agree that for much of our history, the family depended on the male to work and support the family while the mother stayed home and cared for the children.

2). Religion plays a big part in the lives of many people; it is how they govern their actions and how they base their decisions. They worship Jesus, the center of their religion. To have that religion portrayed as something different, suggesting the events that created their religion never existed, is to question their way of life.

Natesa W. 7-8 said...

I agree with Laura that people began to lose sight of how important life was. But I don't really agree that women were viewed as property. I think they were viewed as less than the men, but no property.
I agree with Nicole that it questioned their ways of life. Some peoples' lives are completely lived through their religion. If they have rituals that they do every day and someone then tells them their religion is a lie, it is acceptable that they would be upset. But I still think that people should have been able to differentiate between the facts and fiction.

Lindsay S. 7-8 said...

I agree with what Natesa said. I do not think women were viewed as property, they were people but they were viewed less than men. And in some cases, their lives are completely revolved around their religion and history.

Hannah K. 1-2 said...

1. As males often naturally have more strength than women. I believe that as societies became more established and maintaining the population became less critical, the need for people to fulfill roles such as builders and warriors grew, which males are more inclined towards. Thus, their importance and role in society grew, overtaking that of a female.
2. Religion is a major and sometimes central part of many people's lives. When something is placed in such high regard, criticisms may be taken as a personal insult, and responded to as such. Even though the novel was fiction, it implied many things about the Christianity that some followers of the religion believed were sacrilegious, and thus against their beliefs.

Natesa W. 7-8 said...

I hadn't really thought about the point that Hannah brought up about the men being more powerful. It does make more sense, but I think that over the years the male population has been oppressing the female population to stay powerful. And also because some men just think that they are better.

Andrew C 7-8 said...

Most people have lived their life based on beliefs that they learned as kids. To have someone write something that may change all of this, questions everything that has been taught. This angers people because now they have to analyze everything and determine what this all means and if any of this fictional story could actually be real.