Saralee Says
Murder, religion, sexism, history and mayhem: The Da Vinci Code (Doubleday) has all of those ingredients and more to make for extraordinary reading. There are countless ways to approach the discussion of this book by Dan Brown, author of Deception Point and Digital Fortress.
Robert Langdon, who was also the main character in one of Brown's earlier novels, Angels and Demons, is a symbologist or a professor of religious symbology at Harvard University, where he has studied the meaning of the cross and chalice in Christian religion and the ideas behind the concepts in religious paintings. Langdon is in Paris to lecture on religious history and symbols. While in Paris, he has scheduled a meeting with the curator of the museum where some of the world's most valuable artwork is exhibited, the Louvre.
In the first chapter of The Da Vinci Code this curator is brutally murdered at the Louvre, and he manages to arrange his body at the foot of the "Mona Lisa." The victim is trying to tell Langdon who killed him and why.
Sophie Neveu is the French granddaughter of this curator, and she is also a brilliant code breaker. She works for the French police as a specialist who deciphers codes, and the police do not know, at first, that she is the granddaughter of the murder victim. With Sophie's help, Landon is thrown into a position where he and Sophie must find the reason for her grandfather's brutal murder or be killed themselves.
I plead ignorance to knowing much about the search for the Holy Grail. It was not a subject that we studied in my Sunday school classes or in any of my college history classes. I think this book is so intriguing because Brown has so many questions about how the teachings of Christianity may have been changed since the life of Jesus. These theories are part of the legends around the search for the Holy Grail.
My questions for our book club are many: What do you know about ancient secret religious societies? How much about the role of women in religion has been deleted from history and why? Do you agree with what Brown says is the actual Holy Grail? Have you ever heard of the Priory of Sion? After reading The Da Vinci Code will you look at groups like the Masons differently? What do you know about the Opus Dei, a conservative Catholic organization? If you are Catholic, do you agree with the author's interpretation of the teachings and role of the Opus Dei?
This book is not an academic discussion of religious history but instead sparkles with energy and adventure, especially for those seeking the explanation of how religion and history have used, abused and misused women.
Larry's Language
Cardboard characters. Plot devices that seem artificial. Character motivations that are hard to believe. Bias against the Catholic Church. All these failures should have doomed Dan Brown's best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code, but instead this is a novel that compelled me to read it word for word because of the puzzles, mysteries and the historical conspiracies.
From the opening murder scenes and the exploration of the Louvre in Paris to their flight to escape the police and the murderers to the political objectives of the Catholic Church, this book grabs hold of your imagination and answers all riddles in the end. As everyone who has already read this book knows, you will never look at a painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo Da Vinci the same way again.
Da Vinci's drawings of biblical figures from the time of Jesus Christ have always provided religious inspiration, and now, with Brown's interpretation, they provide political significance. This book is full of historical mysteries and Brown's modern-day answers, ranging from the origin of Friday the 13th representing bad luck as a result of arrests made by French King Philip IV in 1307 A.D. to the Knights Templar, a military organization formed in Jerusalem in the 12th century.
What they really discovered and protected relates directly to the murder of a French museum director and three of his associates. The murders and their religious significance reflect, according to Brown, the true nature of Opus Dei, a modern Catholic religious organization with its own somewhat secretive agenda. Along the way, Brown also manages to explain the King Arthur mythology or at least the part played by Sir Galahad, Sir Gawain and Sir Lancelot.
None of these themes, however, are the essence of this story which is really about the role of the goddess in the Christian church and how a 900-year-old secret society called the Priory of Sion has concealed - or protected - the evidence of the goddess.
The modern-day Lancelot in this story is Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor who goes to Paris to give a lecture who rapidly becomes the chief suspect in the murder of the museum director. His quest is to understand the competing and conspiratorial forces of good, evil and paternalism with the help of a modern Guinevere, Sophie Neveu, a French police officer who breaks the codes and interprets the symbols. Just as the Arthurian legend can be seen both as handsome adventure and allegory about changes created by religion, The Da Vinci Code forces the reader to realize the complexity of religious organizations and their inescapable connection to violence.
Join us for our next Book Club discussion, which will feature Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom.
