Major themes in Da Vinci Code

Name: - Thakar Aneri R

Roll no: - 01

Paper no 13 New Literatures

Topic: - Major themes in Da Vinci Code

Submitted to: - S.M.T S.B Gardi Department of English

                            M.K. Bhavnagar University

      Introduction: - The Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery-detective novel written by Dan Brown. It follows symbologist Robert Langdon and cryptologist Sophie Neveu as they investigate a murder in Paris's Louvre Museum and discover a battle between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus having been married to Mary Magdalene. The title of the novel refers to, among other things, the fact that the murder victim is found in the Grand Gallery of the Louvre, naked and posed like Leonardo da Vincis famous drawing, the Vitruvian Man, with a cryptic message written beside his body and apentagra drawn on his chest in his own blood.

                                                          The book has provoked a popular interest in speculation concerning the Holy Grail legend and Magdalene's role in the history of Christianity. The book has been extensively denounced by many Christian denominations as an attack on the Roman Catholic Church. It has also been consistently criticized for its historical and scientific inaccuracies. The novel nonetheless became a worldwide bestseller ^[1] that sold 80 million copies as of 2009^[2]and has been translated into 44 languages. Combining the detective, thriller and conspiracy fiction genres

      Major themes of the novel :-

      Good Intentions Win over Greed.

      The Search for truth is Timeless.

      Christianity V/s Paganism.

      Power of the Roman Catholic Church.

      Sacrifice.

      Quest.

      Christianity.

      The false conflict between Faith and Knowledge.

      The Subjectivity of History.

      The Intelligence of women.

      Good Intention Wins over Greed: - The Da Vinci Code is written as a classic thriller in which, throughout the book, good and evil take turns having the upper hand. However by the end of the book, the age old truth is proven again, that good triumphs over evil. In this book, evil was more accurately described as greed. Sir Teabing’s misguided intentions to reveal the truth about the Holy Grail were result of his greed for knowledge of the truth and power to lord over the Vatican. Meanwhile, the intention of Sophie Neveu and Robert Langdon were more pure. For Sophie, her greatest interest was in finding the truth about her family and discovering why her grandfather was murdered.

                                       For Robert Langdon, his intention started out being to help Sophie find why her grandfather was murdered. Once the Holy Grail and the key stone entered into the picture, Robert becomes motivated by discovering where the Holy Grail was located. The search for the grail and the truth about whether Christ and Mary Magdalene were married was a pursuit of Langdon’s for his entire academic career. Because Sophie and Langdon’s motives were pure, their quest triumphed over the quest for power motivated by greed. In the word of Leigh teabing, “You do not find the Grail, the Grail finds you.” 

      Search for truth is timeless.

                                             The question of whether Christ and Mary Magdalene were married is about as old as the Christian church. The search of the truth is about this subject is timeless and has permeated lore for thousands of years. As the success of Dan brown’s book proves, it is still a great question. The millions of readers are interested in the quest for the truth on this subject as well as the characters of the book. Robert Langdon and Sir Teabing, two of the main characters, have devoted their lives to the quest for the truth about the Holy Grail. Although their motives become very different, the two men have made the search for the Holy Grail a central point of their lives and careers.

                       Throughout the course of the book, the reader learns, through Langdon and teabing about the historic quest for truth throughout the ages. They discuss the Church’s suppression of the truth and the formation of the Priory of Sion to protect the truth and quietly pass it down to generation to generation. In the end, Langdon and Neveu’s quest for the truth rewarded when Langdon learns the location and truth about the Holy Grail and Sophie learns the truth about her family and heritage. However, Teabing’s and Aringarosa’s quest goes UN requited.

      Christianity V/s Paganism.

                                                                 A central theme to the Da Vinci Code is the similarities and differences and its influences upon each other of Christianity and paganism. Throughout the book, the author provides a history of the influences that paganism had on the early Christian church and how those influences have prevailed throughout history. The book also discusses the power that paganism had over the early Christian church and the eventual power that the Christian Church gained over paganism to force the suppression of many of the pagan practices, including goddess worship and nature worship.

         

      Power of the Roman Catholic church

                                                      

                                                        Another  underlying  theme throughout the book is the power of the Vatican and the Roman Catholic church on the world wide stage .through their research, Robert Langdon and Sir teabing  have learned, and discuss numerous times throughout the book, how the church has suppressed the truth about the Mary Magdalene. They discuss how the church, throughout history, has suppressed the truth through edicts and even violence. This theme is one that underlies the Teacher’s motive for finding the grail. He believes that the church had pressured Sauniere and the leadership of the priory of Sion to continue hiding the truth about Jesus and Mary Magdalene so he takes it upon himself to seek to un earth the Holy Grail himself. The power of the church is proven when the Vatican leaders are able to pay the bishop 20 Million in Vatican bonds to keep him quite. The power and influence of catholic organizations, such as Opus Dei, also shows case the power of the church.

         Sacrifice:- 

                      The Da Vinci Code opens with dramatic personal sacrifice-------Sauniere’s death to protect the secret of the Priory of Sion-------but theme of sacrifice appears repeatedly throughout the novel. It does not always require a death, however, a sacrifice can beauty type of loss, from loss of integrity or freedom to the loss of a physical item. A Sacrifice entails the giving up of something in exchange for something else. It is a circumstance that does not allow for two competing needs to exist together. For example, Sauniere makes the ultimate sacrifice--- death--- that hundreds in the priory throughout history, according to Brown, have been willing to make. Likewise, Sister Sandrine Bieil sacrifices her life to warn the Priory when Silas attempts to unearth the keystone in the church of Saint-Sulpice. Sophie’s grandmother and brother, whom she had long thought dead, sacrifice their freedom---and time with their family to go in to hiding in order to protect her grandfather’s identity. Leigh Teabing, the long time scholar of the Sacred Feminine, sacrifices his integrity and conscience in exchange for the possibility of gain; he is willing to stop at nothing in order to procure the Holy Grail. But perhaps the greatest sacrifice in the novel is not made by one of the characters, but by, according to Teabing and Langdon, the Catholic Church. They believe that in order to keep the knowledge of Christ’s earthly wife and child a secret, the Catholic Church, in essence, sacrificed Mary Magdalene. Teabing and Langdon’s theory is that the church designated her prostitute to discredit any rumour of Christ’s involvement with her, in fear that knowledge of a marriage with Mary would affect Christ’s divine status.

      Quest:-

               At the heart of Brown’s novel is the quest, not only as a long adventurous journey in search of something, but also as one of the most archetypal elements in literature, the pursuit of the Holy Grail. Several characters are on quests in the novel for different reasons. Silas looks for the keystone that will lead to the Holy Grail for his saviour, Bishop Aringarosa. Detective Fache searches for the murder of Sauniere. Langdon explores the meaning behind Leonardo da Vinci’s symbol to greater understand the subject to which he has devoted his studies. Sophie seeks answer to truths about her family. In the novel, or the these fictional pursuits merge with the quintessential quest for the Holy Grail, a tale represented in Christian tradition literary as the search for the goblet that Christ drank from during the Last Supper and that Joseph of Arimathea used to catch Christ’s blood as he hung from the cross, and figuratively as the search for Christ within one’s soul. The tale of the quest actually surfaced in the twelfth century as a poem by Chretien de Troyes, and the legend took different forms as others re wrote it.

                                                       The most famous of those to invoke the legend in their art are thirteen—century German epic poet Wolfram von Eschenbach, fifteenth—century English writer Sir Thomas Marlory, English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and composer Richard Wagnerian the nineteenth century. Brown’s novel changes the quest considerably in proposing that the grail is not a chalice at all, but rather Mary Magdalene herself and the texts that tell the secret of her marriage to Jesus.

      Christianity:-

                   Though The Da Vinci Code appears to implicate Catholic institution in a conspiracy to wipe out alternative Christian histories, its suggestions that Jesus was not divine, that Mary Magdalene had children by him, that she, rather than the apostle Peter, was intended to be the first leader of Christianity, and Constantine the Great suppressed all of this and assembled the Bible at the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D., all relate to Christians of any denomination. Of course, history, which the narrative declares is written by those who are victorious, does not support any of these suggestions. The gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John repeatedly refer to the divinity of Christ, and there is no evidence that Mary Magdalene was married to Jesus. The major texts of Gnoticism---the belief in the gnosis of the human soul, surfaced in the second and third centuries, well after early Christians and deemed the four gospels authoritative, though they are said in the novel to be suppressed by Constantine. Christianity, moreover, is portrayed in the novel as a patriarchal religion built on authored by those who want to suppress information. Nevertheless, Brown carefully phrases his page of facts to state simply that the Priory of Sion exists. That Opus Dei has built an elaborate and expensive headquarters in new York and has been the subject of controversy, and that description of art architecture, rituals, and documents are accurate. Most of the claims about an alternative Christian history, furthermore, are spoken authoritatively by the novel’s villain, Leigh Teabing.

      The False Conflict between Faith and Knowledge:-

Dan Brown refuses to accept the idea that faith in God is rooted in ignorance of the truth. The ignorance that the Church has sometimes advocated is embodied in the character of Bishop Aringarosa, who does not think the Church should be involved in scientific investigation. According to The Da Vinci Code, the Church has also enforced ignorance about the existence of the descendents of Jesus. Although at one point in the novel Langdon says that perhaps the secrets of the Grail should be preserved in order to allow people to keep their faith, he also thinks that people who truly believe in God will be able to accept the idea that the Bible is full of metaphors, not literal transcripts of the truth. People’s faith, in other words, can withstand the truth.

      The Subjectivity of History:-

                                                                  The Da Vinci Code raises the question of whether history books necessarily tell the only truth. The novel is full of reinterpretations of commonly told stories, such as those of Jesus’ life, the pentacle, and the Da Vinci fresco The Last Supper. Brown provides his own explanation of how the Bible was compiled and of the missing gospels. Langdon even interprets the Disney movie The Little Mermaid, recasting it as an attempt by Disney to show the divine femininity that has been lost. All of these retellings are presented as at least partly true.

The Intelligence of Women:-

Characters in The Da Vinci Code ignore the power of women at their peril. Throughout the novel, Sophie is underestimated. She is able to sneak into the Louvre and give Langdon a secret message, saving him from arrest, because Fache does not believe her to be capable of doing her job. Fache specifically calls Sophie a “female cryptologist” when he is expressing his doubts about Sophie and Langdon’s ability to evade Interpol. When interpreting one of the clues hidden in the rose box, Langdon and Teabing leave Sophie out, completely patronizing her. When she is finally allowed to see the clue, she immediately understands how to interpret it. Sophie saves Langdon from arrest countless times.

Other women are similarly underestimated. Sister Sandrine, in the Church of Saint-Sluice, is a sentry for the Brotherhood, but Silas, indoctrinated in the hyper masculine ways of Opus Dei, does not consider her a threat. And Marie Chauvel, Sophie’s grandmother, manages to live without incident near Rosslyn Chapel for years, preserving her bloodline through Sophie’s brother.