I was originally going to buy the new Dan Brown on the day of release (yesterday) and read it and publish a full and frank review of it here. But because so many other people are doing that, and because I couldn’t be bothered to read a 500 page Dan Brown book overnight (I think I needed the sleep more), I have instead decided to try and unlock the mystery of THE LOST SYMBOL by choosing 5 passages of the book to analyse.
Starting with the opening section and ending with the book’s finale I have chosen three sections at random to see if I could decode the mysterious cipher of Dan Brown. I don’t know anything about the plot other than it involves Robert Langdon, the Freemasons and Washington D.C. I haven’t even read the blurb.
Here goes nothing:
The book is prefaced by a pargraph saying that in 1991 a secret document was locked in the safe of the director of the CIA, its cryptic text including reference to an ancient portal and an unknown location underground. So far, so X FILES, and a little STARGATE, and very INIDIANA JONES. ‘All rituals, science, artwork and monuments in this novel are real’ apparently.
PROLOGUE, p.3 ‘House of the Temple
8.33 P.M.
The secret is how to die.
Since the beginning of time, the secret has always been how to die.
The thirty-four-year-old initiate gazed down at the human skull cradled in his palms. The skull was hollow, like a bowl, filled with bloodred wine.
Drink it, he told himself. You have nothing to fear.’
Well you can’t go wrong with a book starting ‘Since the beginning of time...’ in classic gravelly voiced movie trailer style. Interesting neologism and compound of ‘bloodred’ too. What year is that vintage? So clearly this is a highly disturbing Masonic ritual. This initiate could be the key to the book, Brown’s already told us the secret is ‘to die’ so looking forward to seeing what else is in the remaining 499 pages. I wonder if this book also has a Mad Monk figure like Paul Bettany’s character in the film of THE DA VINCI CODE (haven’t read it). And what’s the significance of ‘thirty-four’?
CHAPTER 30, p. 131
‘Langdon was getting to it. “The legend of the Masonic Pyramid is quite simple. It states that the Masons , in order to fulfil their responsibility of protecting this great wisdom for future generations, decided to hide it in a great fortress.” Langdon tried to gather his recollections of the story. “Again, I stress this is all myth, but allegedly, the Masons transported their secret wisdom from the Old World to the New World—here, to America—a land they hoped would remain free from religious tyranny. And here they built an impenetrable fortress—a hidden pyramid—designed to protect the Ancient Mysteries until the time that all of mankind was ready to handle the awesome power that this wisdom could communicate. According to the myth, the Masons crowned their great pyramid with a shining, solid-gold capstone as symbol of the precious treasure within—the ancient wisdom capable of empowering mankind to his full human potential. Apotheosis.”'
Don’t know how many pages Langdon has been trying to get to the point. So the Masons are well into all this – what fools for choosing America as a place ‘free from religious tyranny’ – they didn’t bank on George Dubya! So the mysteries must be the things that can be unlocked by the lost symbol. A mystery unlocked by something lost. That’s tough. Langdon is very good at explaining things but he likes to cover his back doesn’t he? ‘This is all myth’, ‘allegedly’...he’s no Mulder. Wonder where this pyramid is, and assume that most of the book is taken up looking for it. Maybe it’s the Louvre again? Quite a random insertion of ‘Apotheosis’ though. Like the other Dan Brown books this one seems to be made up of narrative-by-way-of-dialogue.
CHAPTER 62, p.244
'Langdon listened in utter shock. For several moments, the two of them lay together in silence on the moving conveyor. Langdon knew he had an obligation to share with Katherine the rest of tonight’s terrible news. He began slowly, and as gently as possible could told her how her brother had entrusted him with a small package years earlier, how Langdon had been tricked into bringing his package to Washington tonight, and finally, about her brother’s hand having been found in the Rotunda of the Capitol Building.’
So Langdon has a love interest (good for him) and it looks like he’s stuck inside some sort of abominable factory. I wouldn’t entrust Langdon with a package of any size knowing the sort of trouble he gets himself into. The bit about the brother’s hand being discovered in the Rotunda is intriguing though. The Masons are clearly a barbaric lot, dismembering their victims and distributing them amongst the (‘real’) monuments of the USA’s capital. No word yet on the whereabouts of this symbol though.
CHAPTER 102, P. 378
'Eight Franklin Square . . . squares . . .this grid of symbols is a square . . .the square and the compass are Masonic symbols . . . Masonic altars are square . . . squares have ninety-degree angles. The water kept rising, but Langdon blocked it out. Eight Franklin . . . eight . . . this grid is eight-by-eight . . . Franklin has eight letters . . . “The Order” has eight letters . . . 8 is the rotated symbol ∞ for infinity . . . eight is the number of destruction in numerology . . .
Langdon had no idea.’
This bit is great. It reads like a cross between a poor man’s Sherlock Holmes and (with that water rising) a contestant babbling during a challenge on the Crystal Maze.
I should declare now that my second name is Franklin which makes this bit particularly exciting because my family name somehow represents apocalyptic destruction and general badassness. Brilliant comic timing as Langdon wrestles with the cosmic keys of creation and time but ultimately concludes he doesn’t have a bloody clue what he’s going on about.
EPILOGUE, p.508
‘As the sun rose over Washington, Langdon looked to the heavens, where the last of the nighttime stars were fading out. He thought about science, faith, about man. He thought about how every culture, in every country, in every time, had always shared one thing. We all had the Creator. We used different names, different faces, and different prayers, but God was the universal constant for man. God was the symbol we all shared . . . the symbol of all the mysteries of life that we could not understand. The ancients had praised God as a symbol of our limitless human potential, but that ancient symbol had been lost over time. Until now.
In that moment , standing atop the Capitol, with the warmth of the sun streaming down all around him, Robert Langdon felt a powerful upwelling deep within himself. It was an emotion he had never felt this profoundly in his entire life.
Hope.’
Like a master bricklayer, Brown lays it on with a trowel in the closing sentences of the novel. This has to be one of the only books where you can look at the last page to find out the answer to the book. Bit of a letdown that the lost symbol is boring old God and this reads like a Creationist text book introduction. Anyway, never mind that I’m not sure that warmth can ‘stream’ anywhere, how can you criticize a book where the hero is almost literally walking into the sunset?! You can almost hear ‘All You Need Is Love’ in the background. Which reminds me, enough of this reading malarkey, I’m off to play Beatles: Rock Band on Xbox.
