#读书笔记# The Da Vinci Code -- Dan Brown

#50 book challenge#

#No. 7#

Watched the movie first and then bought the book.

The first sight of the book was like six or seven years ago at my uncle's. The Chinese version of that novel stood quietly on their bookshelf. Wooo spooky, I thought, as I turned the first few pages and saw the description of Jacques Saunirre dying. (Great I remembered how to spell his name.) I was quite a strong kid then, however massively afraid of death and blood.

Years have passed and I grew up into a feminist, understanding how the female gender was formed during the years and how the patriarchal institutions ruled over half of the population. Taking up the movie, (yet the novel) gave me a better insight of the world.

Jacques Saunirre had never really appeared in the plot, yet he was so continuously talked about, that he plays almost the main role (in contradiction to that of Robert Langdon). I thought Langdon lacked some sense of existence, though. He was just searching around and feeling cheated, by the police and by his friend. The one real achievement by him was in fact explaining the entire Grail experience to Sophie.

Sophie was important 'cause she's the final one, the only princess left on the world. Uneven treatment, however, when someone with a royal bloodline could and must be haunted and at the same time protected. 

See, the hero was Saunirre, at last.

Back to the Grail. I liked the idea that Christ is not the son of god nor did he turn eventually to divinity.  He was Jesus, who had a wife and also a bloodline. Like every religion is this way, to be precise. 

Leigh Teabing is too much a maniac who wanted to challenge the world, but Robert made it quite clear, it's up to the Priory of Sion's choices whether they reveal the truth or not. What Vatican really needs was not some critical church like Opus Dei that sticked to the old rules and tortured themselves, but some humble believers that made god for themselves. Those who literally believed Christ could turn water into wine and walk on the water made the religion powerful.

So how dare we deconstruct their world and tell them everything was a huge lie?

After all so many years have passed and grail stories have lived on in art, architecture and literature.

It shall be great that Sophie and her family could live happily ever after, still great for the church to spread their version of god and faith to innocent believers.

And the conclusion? Scholars are bastards. They are willing to kill for their "essential knowledge", and view human lives less than historical "truth". 

May us not live up to such kind of scholars in the end.

Btw, book was much better than the movie.