Honors 1110 MacKay Spring 2004

Summary: The novel describes the murder of Jaques Saunière, curator of the Louvre Museum in Paris. His nude body is found at midnight in the Louvre’s Grand Salon. He’s positioned his body to resemble Leonardo Da Vinci’s sketch, The Vitruvian Man. In his lifeless hand he holds a black light pen, and written on the floor beside his body is a message that is obviously in code.

Harvard’s Professor of Religious Symbology, Robert Langdon, is called, primarily because the message mentions his name. Even though he’s the immediate suspect, he’s Brown’s hero, described as “Harrison Ford in Harris tweed” (Brown, 9). The next character to appear is Sophie Neveu, a lovely young cryptologist with the DCPJ, France’s answer to the FBI. Since she’s Saunière’s granddaughter, the message is aimed at her.

The reader is told who the murderer is. He is Silas, an albino hit man who works for Opus Dei, a conservative Catholic group. He’s been hard at work, murdering the four men who know the location of the Holy Grail. Saunière is the fourth and last, and his encoded message is meant to lead his granddaughter and Robert Langdon to the Grail. The rest of the book is spent with Robert Langdon and Sophie running around France and England, with Silas and the French police hot on their trail.

The book—complete with footnotes of source materials—is a novel, but in a controversial introductory note, Brown writes that "all descriptions of documents and secret rituals are accurate." Are they? An incomplete list of author Dan Brown's theses include (the following list primarily based on "The feminist mystique," first published in Haaretz Daily (Jerusalem) by Aviad Kleinberg November 7, 2003):

early Christianity entailed "the cult of the Great Mother"
Mary Magdalene represented the feminine cult and the Holy Grail of traditional lore

she was also Jesus' wife and the mother of his children

Magdalene's womb, carrying Jesus offspring, was the legendary Holy Grail (as seen in Da Vinci's encoded paining, The Last Supper)

Jesus was not seen as divine (God) by His followers until Emperor Constantine declared him so for his own purposes

The Nicean Council of the 3rd Century was the context for Constantine's power grab and the relationship of Magdalene as paramour of Christ was quashed there

"Mary Magdalene's remains and the secret documents that tell the real story were found on the Temple Mount when Jerusalem was conquered in the First Crusade.”

Brown sees a connection between the Nag Hammadi documents (a.k.a., Gnostic Gospels) discovered in 1945 and this storyline

The "truth" about Christ and Mary Magdalene has been kept alive by a secret society named the Priory of Sion that was lead by great minds like Da Vinci

Random House has a reading group guide to the book which includes the following discussion questions, some of which we might consider:

Web site of Dan Brown: http://www.danbrown.com/
Dan Brown is the author of numerous best selling novels, including the #1 New York Times bestseller, The Da Vinci Code. He is a graduate of Amherst College and Phillips Exeter Academy, where he spent time as an English teacher before turning his efforts fully to writing.

In 1996, Dan’s interest in code-breaking and covert government agencies led him to write his first novel, Digital Fortress, which quickly became a #1 national best selling eBook. Set within the clandestine National Security Agency, the novel explores the fine line between civilian privacy and national security. Brown’s follow-up techno-thriller, Deception Point, centered on similar issues of morality in politics, national security, and classified technology.

The son of a Presidential Award winning math professor and of a professional sacred musician, Dan grew up surrounded by the paradoxical philosophies of science and religion. These complementary perspectives served as inspiration for his acclaimed novel Angels & Demons—a science vs. religion thriller set within a Swiss physics lab and Vatican City. Recently, he has begun work on a series of symbology thrillers featuring his popular protagonist Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor of iconography and religious art. The upcoming series will include books set in Paris, London, and Washington D.C.

Dan’s wife Blythe—an art historian and painter—collaborates on his research and accompanies him on his frequent research trips, their latest to Paris, where they spent time in the Louvre for his new thriller, The Da Vinci Code.

We will process the Da Vinci Code in journals posted on the Web and in class discussions.

We will work with the text in sections: (send your journal by email to kmackay@weber.edu by date posted: