April 27, 2006
WWDVD?
I am now more or less halfway through Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and I'm ready to talk some about it. Just a personal observation, the book bears out my theory that popular adult fiction is much dumber than comparably popular children's literature. Brown has a tin ear for dialogue, stereotypes pouring out of his ears, and no respect for facts. As a side note, I wouldn't have a real problem with that (this being a work of fiction and all), if he weren't so obviously trying to pretend that some of this is actually legitimate. However, I'd best move on lest I spend all my time complaining. Suffice to say that, despite its numerous flaws, my reading thus far has not been devoid of enjoyment.
The story pits agents of Opus Dei, an extremely conservative and very powerful Catholic organization with a shadowy agenda (which actually exists, but is, of course, misrepresented here), against American university professor Robert Langdon and French cryptographer Sophie Neveu in a race for the Holy Grail and the explosive 2,000-year old secrets that lie behind it. Langdon and Sophie have been thrown together when they meet at a murder scene. The curator of the Louvre has been murdered, Sophie is aiding the investigation, and Langdon is the prime suspect.
When they discover that the curator was the head of the ultra-secret ancient society known as the Priory of Sion (of which Leonardo Da Vinci was once a member), and that he left behind a trail of cryptic clues, they join forces and become fugitives of justice in the race to be the first to break the code.
So far, little to no mention has been made of any of the traditional Grail lore, and I cannot discern any obvious parallels between the characters and situations and any of the legends we have studied. I suspect that this book will ultimately be redefining everything we know about the Holy Grail, and that the ground we have already covered in class will not play much of a role in this particular Grail quest.
Actually, a great deal of what I have read already flies directly in the face of tradition. Brown is far from sympathetic to Catholicism, and whatever happens in the final denouement, I doubt it will involve a return to faith or the Church. Also, there is a great deal of emphasis on the sacred feminine and Christianity's eradication of it. We have thrown off the balance, Brown asserts, through an insistence on male dominance over equality between the sexes (an ideal state supposedly enjoyed by the ancient pagans . . . yeah, right). He makes a good point about the traditional Grail stories, though. Women don't ever come off very well in them. At best they are distractions from the goal, at worst they are devils in disguise. In The Da Vinci Code, of course, one of the primary seekers after the Grail is a woman.
The key question is, what will the discovery of the Grail bring with it for Sophie and Langdon? What will they get out of it, and how will that be different from what those who have completed the quest received in the rest of the literature?
Posted by Jared at April 27, 2006 04:07 PM | TrackBack