The Da Vinci Code: Book Review

The Da Vinci Code By Dan Brown

It’s a mystery thriller novel. And as it’s very well-known that this book nonetheless became a worldwide bestseller. The major reason behind its popularity was its storyline because of which it was extensively denounced by many Christian denominations, too, as an attack on the Roman Catholic Church.

The story revolves around seeking the Holy Grail which as per the book proves the companionship of Jesus Christ to Mary Magdalene and the Merovingian kings of France as the descendants of their bloodline. And this is very much opposed to the belief of Christianity, as per which Jesus is the incarnation of God the Son and the awaited Messiah.

Since the storyline of the book is based upon the controversial hypothesis about the life of Jesus Christ so I would strongly recommend readers who are strong followers of Christianity, please don’t give it a read as it may hurt your sentiments.

Also, I would like to mention since it was my first Dan Brown’s novel so it took me a few chapters to get hold of his writing. But once I got the grip, I must say I admire his way of writing now and will definitely be reading more of his books.

Avid readers who would have read this book would be aware that this story has a lot many twists—all satisfying, most unexpected— so it would not be good on my part to reveal too much of the plot in advance for the readers who are yet to read this book.

Plot of the story:

Robert Langdon, a “symbologist” who came to Paris on business, got summoned by police for the murder of Jacques Saunière (Louvre curator and Priory of Sion grand master). Sophie Neveu, a cryptologist and Saunière's estranged granddaughter, tried to decode Saunière’s last message which he wrote on his office floor at Louvre.

Now since the last line of that message said "P.S. Find Robert Langdon" so this made Fache thought Langdon as the murderer. On the other hand, Sophie thought that her grandfather intended Langdon to decipher the remaining code. Thus, Sophie secretly helped Langdon to escape the Police and then, began the journey to decode Sauniere’s remaining message or I would say the ultimate journey which led to the revelation of the Holy Grail.

And during this journey, you would come across different speculations about Jesus Christ and his marriage with Mary Magdalene, and their bloodline and the history of Christianity.

Below are the extracts from the book which I found very surprising, though, there is no validity of the information they are holding:

(P.S. I have never read the Bible and don’t know anything about Christianity. Below points are purely extracted from the book as they were.)

  

    i.            ‘…‘The pentacle’ is a pre-Christian symbol that relates to Nature worship. The ancients envisioned their world in two halves – masculine and feminine (Yin and Yang). When male and female are balanced in the world, there is harmony; when unbalanced, then, chaos. Pentacle is representative of the female half of all things – a concept religious historians call the ‘sacred feminine’ or the ‘divine goddess’. The pentacle’s demonic interpretation is historically inaccurate. It was altered by the early Roman Catholic Church as part of their campaigns to eradicate pagan religions and convert masses to Christianity, and thus recasting pagan’s divine symbols as evil…’    

 ii.            ‘…Da Vinci was a flamboyant homosexual and worshiper of Nature’s divine order. He was an exceptionally spiritual man, but was in constant conflict with the Church over the elimination of the sacred feminine from modern religion…’ 

 iii.            ‘…PHI (pronounced as fee and called as Divine Proportion), having a value 1.618, is a very beautiful number in the universe.

a.       Derived from a Fibonacci series – a progression famous not only because the sum of adjacent terms equaled the next term, but because the quotients of adjacent terms possessed the property of approaching the number PHI.

b.      In a honeybee community, the female bees always outnumber the male bees, and dividing the number of female bees by the number of male bees in any beehive in the world gives PHI.

c.       Leaf arrangement on plant stalks, insect segmentation – all obey to the Divine Proportion.

d.      Even human body parts follow this Divine Proportion. Measure the distance from the tip of your head to the floor and divide it by the distance from your belly button to the floor, you will get PHI. Hip to floor divide by knee to floor; Shoulder to fingertips divide by elbow to fingertips; spinal divisions all approach to PHI.

e.      In the Pentacle, the lines automatically divide themselves into segments according to Divine Proportion, thus, the symbol has always been the symbol of beauty and perfection associated with the goddess and the sacred feminine…’

iv.            ‘…Mona Lisa is neither male nor female. It carries a subtle message of androgyny. It is a fusing of both…’ 
v.            ‘…The Last Supper has much more than the Cup of Christ, which is called as the Holy Grail. But the Holy Grail is not the cup at all. Our preconceived notion of the Last Supper is so powerful that our mind blocks out the incongruity and overrides our eyes…’

[Do read the book to know the secret behind the smile of Mona Lisa and the hidden message in the Last Supper, my words you would be utterly surprised to read.]

vi.            ‘… Jesus was a Jew and the social decorum that time virtually forbade a Jewish man to be unmarried. According to Jewish custom, celibacy was condemned, and the obligation for a Jewish father was to find a suitable wife for his son. If Jesus were not married, at least one of the Bible’s gospels would have mentioned it and offered some explanation for His unnatural state of bachelorhood… ’ 

vii.            ‘… Every religion describes God through metaphor, allegory and exaggeration. Metaphors are a way to help our minds process the unprocessable. The problems arise when we begin to believe literally in our own metaphors…’ 

viii.            ‘… four suits of cards represent:

a.       Spades were Swords – The blade, Male

b.      Hearts were Cups – The Chalice, feminine

c.       Clubs were Sceptres – The Royal Line, the flowering stuff

d.      Diamonds were Pentacles – The goddess, the sacred feminine…’

Lines which I liked the most:

(Ones highlighted in bold are my fav.)

         i.            The prospect of death is the strong motivation. 

       ii.            Misunderstanding breeds distrust. 

      iii.            Life is filled with secrets. You can’t learn them all at once. 

     iv.            History is always written by the winners. 

       v.            What is History, but a fable agreed upon. 

     vi.            By its very nature, history is always a one-sided account. 

    vii.            Definition of faith: acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove. 

  viii.            Forgiveness is God’s greatest gift. 

     ix.            You will eventually find what you seek. One day it will dawn on you.

 Rating: 3.5/5