Spoiler alert: Plot revealed at length
Disclaimer: Not being Catholic or even Christian, this book does not offend my religious sensibilities. However as a history buff and aficionado of good literature, it sure does. I have nothing but respect for women in general. I have been brought up to treat all women with respect irrespective of circumstances whether they deserve it or not and I believe I do so. There are many women who I love and admire.
Start
Any attempt to rationalise Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code (DVC) will also involve an attempt to understand the entire sacred feminine hypothesis, which I shall not attempt. The book however is another matter. I read it twice within the span of two weeks. Yes, I read it again, mainly to reference my review and because I needed a laugh. But you my dear reader, need not do the same. Just read this review and save yourself the cost of this book, the day or two it takes to get through it and the endless mind abuse it subjects you to.
I am a comparatively late reader. Most of the reviews came out eight odd years ago when the book was released and I only got a copy recently. Thankfully I didn’t put up hard earned money for it, it was a gift and a strongly recommended read. The review excerpts describes the book as “a thundering, tantalizing, ... powerful narrative... several doctorates worth of fascinating history and speculation... brain candy of the highest quality”. It is nothing of that sort. It is fast paced and an undeniable page turner and perfect for the two day train journey I made. But then so would a couple of James Hadley Chases', which would have amply served the purpose without pretending to educate.
To start with, the characters are as one-dimensional as cartoon characters. The love interest between the leading characters is foregone from the page where they meet. The wise beyond his years, handsome Richard Langdon, taking the naive beyond her years, beautiful Sophie Neveau through a journey of discovery, helped along the way by a character, who except for the last few pages, strongly resembles PG Wodehouse’s Sir Gallahad Threepwood.
Coming to the story behind Sophie disowning her Grandfather, who is the single most significant influence in her life, who brought her up for twenty years like a father, who grounded her in languages and code breaking and all the other skills from which she earns her living today. OMG she broke into a secret meeting and saw two consenting adults indulging in a sexual act, albeit with a lot of observers. So, it’s not like there was rape or child sex or beastiality going on here. Hello?! Have we forgotten that this is the 21st century and this is a supposedly modern liberated woman of twenty years.
Even granted that she may have been young and immature at 20, are we to suppose that she was a virgin and didn’t know her birds from her bees? So her grandfather has a thing for elderly women (yawn) and does it in secret with a lot of robed people watching and chanting. Admittedly it’s difficult to come to terms with, but certainly not enough to disown someone so dear for ten years. Sorry Sophie, next time, knock before you barge in and keep your long nose out of your grandfather’s (admittedly interesting) affairs, he is as entitled to his secrets as you are.
And I just don’t buy the leaving letters unopened bit. Given Sophie's recent experience, can anybody believe that she could have left piles of unopened correspondences from her dearly beloved Grandfather, without ever opening even one?
Chapter after chapter you are forced to accept feeble hypotheses such as these on which Dan Brown bases his entire ridiculous, supposed fiction but based on fact, book. Take this for instance, apparently all women are divine because they can bear children. FYI, every living mammal from the tiniest bat (Kitti’s hog-nosed bat weighing 2 grams), to the gigantic blue whale (weighing up to 170 tons) is capable of the same method of reproduction and also suckle their young. Some birds and reptiles too are known to be devoted parents. It’s no big deal. Feminists, find something better to base your goddess complex on.
The Walt Disney theory is so ludicrous I won’t bother to go into it but suffice to say that anyone who has watched early Walt Disney productions like Sleeping Beauty, Snow White etc will know that for every one pure angelic ‘divine’ girl, there are two or more evil wicked, witches. Come to that, Walt Disney was the ultimate racist.
The book starts with a disclaimer that the Priory of Sion is a real organisation, whereas all available research findings suggest that the entire Priory and the Meringovian bloodline is a modern hoax created by Plantard. So granted that it is true and Jesus did indeed marry and his appointment of Mary Magdalene as his successor apparently makes him the first him a feminist?
If true, all this makes him is a dynasty and God help us we have enough of those in today’s world. Now coming to the Priory’s alleged purpose which is to keep the bloodline of Jesus safe. So these twenty times removed new generation Jesus descendants are supposed to supplant the Church? If true, all this proves is that Jesus was the original sycophant rewarder and his disciples opposed him and created a democratic system which elevated him to a god and ensured that no such line of descendants would serve as living gods through history.
Apparently Dan Brown thinks that that is a bad thing and a huge fraud perpetuated by the Catholic Church. If this is true, because to believe this is true calls for the reader to believe that a shadowy 2000 year old secret organisation has secured these documents of tremendous power and will reveal it at the right time.
I really haven’t done a socio-economic profile but many of the people I've come across raving about this book, by some strange coincidence are the same pinko liberals who have a problem with religious teaching in schools, rightly dismissing them as fairy tales. So their interpretation of history of Christianity is a secret bloodline nurtured by a secret organisation for two thousand years. Is it okay to teach this in school? Me thinks that the only reason these so called liberals rave about this book is because it lends support to their feeble sacred feminine theory.
Some works of literature have a way of making you a better person or at least aspire to be a better person simply by reading it. Some books enrich you in a way your entire life has not, others serve to broaden you mind and open up avenues of knowledge. Some books are pure mind rape and Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code is one such book.
It does irreparable harm to the feminist cause, it makes a huge joke of their pet theories, especially the goddess one. Feminists do not read this book.
Prose, style, character building, are pathetic. Lovers of good literature, do not read this book.
I have read and derived inspiration from several reviews, mentioning a couple of them.
https://totaldrek.blogspot.in/2004/08/da-vinci-crap.html
https://telegraph.co.uk/culture/3621838/Ive-cracked-the-code-its-rubbish.html
