Brief Overview on Da Vinci Code

Hetal Dabhi

Sem-4 

Paper no:-13(New Literature)

Assignment

Overview on Da Vinci Code

Plot Overview of Da Vinci Code

In the Louvre, a monk of Opus Dei named Silas apprehends Jacques Saunière, the museum’s curator, and demands to know where the Holy Grail is. After Saunière tells him, Silas shoots him and leaves him to die. However, Saunière has lied to Silas about the Grail’s location. Realizing that he has only a few minutes to live and that he must pass on his important secret, Saunière paints a pentacle on his stomach with his own blood, draws a circle with his blood, and drags himself into the center of the circle, re-creating the position of Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. He also leaves a code, a line of numbers, and two lines of text on the ground in invisible ink.

A police detective, Jerome Collet, calls Robert Langdon, the story’s protagonist and a professor of symbology, and asks him to come to the Louvre to try to interpret the scene. Langdon does not yet realize that he himself is suspected of the murder.

After murdering Saunière, Silas calls the “Teacher” and tells him that, according to Saunière, the keystone is in the Church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris. The Teacher sends Silas there. Silas follows Saunière’s clues to the keystone’s location and discovers that he has been tricked. In a fit of rage, he kills Sister Sandrine Bieil, the church’s keeper and a sentry for the Priory of Sion. At the Louvre, Langdon meets Jerome Collet and Bezu Fache, the police captain, and realizes that the two policemen suspect him of the murder.

Sophie Neveu, an agent of the department of cryptology and Saunière’s granddaughter, arrives at the crime scene and tells Langdon that he must call the embassy. When Langdon calls the number Sophie gave him, he reaches her answering service. The message warns Langdon that he is in danger and should meet Sophie in the bathroom at the Louvre.

In the bathroom, Sophie shows Langdon that Fache is noting his movements with a tracking device. She throws the device out the window onto a passing truck, tricking the police into thinking that Langdon has escaped from the Louvre.

Sophie also tells Langdon that the last line in the secret message, “P.S. Find Robert Langdon,” was her grandfather’s way of alerting her: P.S. are the initials of her grandfather’s nickname for her, Princesse Sophie. Langdon thinks that P.S. might stand for Priory of Sion, an ancient brotherhood devoted to the preservation of the pagan goddess worship tradition, and to the maintenance of the secret that Saunière died protecting.

Langdon decodes the second and third lines in Saunière’s message: “Leonardo Da Vinci! The Mona Lisa!” Sophie returns to the paintings to look for another clue. The police have returned to the Louvre as well, and they arrest Langdon. Sophie finds a key behind the Madonna of the Rocks. By using the painting as a hostage, she manages to disarm the police officer and get herself and Langdon out of the building.

Vernet successfully smuggles Sophie and Langdon past Collet in the back of a locked armored car. Vernet turns on them, but they manage to get away with the cryptex, which Langdon realizes is actually the Priory keystone—that is, the key to all of the secrets the Priory holds about the location of the Holy Grail.

Langdon and Sophie go to the house of Sir Leigh Teabing, a historian, to ask for his help opening the box. Teabing tells them the legend of the Grail, starting with the historical evidence that the Bible didn’t come straight from God but was compiled by Emperor Constantine. He also cites evidence that Jesus’ divinity was decided by a vote at Nicaea, and that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, who was of royal blood, and had children by her. Teabing shows them the hidden symbols in The Last Supper and the painted representation of the Magdalene. He tells them that the Holy Grail is actually Mary Magdalene’s body and the documents that prove Mary’s blood line is related to Jesus. He says he thinks Saunière and the others may have been killed because the Church suspected that the Priory was about to unveil this secret.

As Langdon is showing off the cryptex, Silas appears and hits him over the head. Silas holds Sophie and Teabing at gunpoint and demands the keystone, but Teabing attacks Silas, hitting him on the thigh where his punishment belt is located, and Sophie finishes him off by kicking him in the face. They tie Silas up.

Collet arrives at the castle, but Sophie, Langdon, the bound Silas, Teabing, and his servant, Rémy, escape and board Teabing’s private plane to England. Sophie realizes that the writing on the cryptex is decipherable if viewed in a mirror. They come to understand the poem, which refers to “a headstone praised by Templars” and the “Atbash cipher,” which will help them arrive at the password. Langdon remembers that the Knights Templar supposedly worshipped the god Baphomet, who is sometimes represented by a large stone head. The word, unscrambled by the Atbash Cipher, is Sofia. When they open the cryptex, however, they find only another cryptex, this one with a clue about a tomb where a knight was buried by a pope. They must find the orb that should have been on the knight’s tomb.

Fache realizes that Teabing and the rest of them are in the jet. He calls the British police and asks them to surround the airfield, but Teabing tricks the police into believing that there is nobody inside the plane but himself. Then he goes with Sophie, Langdon, Rémy, and Silas to the Temple Church in London, the burial site of knights that the Pope had killed.

Rémy frees Silas and reveals that he, too, follows the Teacher. Silas goes to the church to get the keystone, but when he tries to force Langdon to give it up, Langdon threatens to break it. Rémy intervenes, taking Teabing hostage and thus forcing Langdon to give up the cryptex.

Meanwhile, Collet and his men look through Teabing’s house and become suspicious when they find that he has been monitoring Saunière. Over the phone, the Teacher instructs Silas to let Rémy deliver the cryptex. The Teacher meets Rémy in the park and kills him. The Teacher calls the police and turns Silas in to the authorities. As Silas tries to escape, he is shot, and he accidentally shoots his idol, Bishop Aringarosa.

Silas takes Bishop Aringarosa to the hospital and staggers into a park, where he dies. In the hospital the next day, Aringarosa bitterly reflects that Teabing tricked him into helping with his murderous plan by claiming that if the Bishop delivered the Grail to him, he would help the Opus Dei regain favor with the Church.

Sophie’s and Langdon’s research leads them to the discovery that Sir Isaac Newton is the knight they are looking for, the one buried by a Pope, because they learn he was buried by Alexander Pope. They go to Westminster Abbey, where Newton is buried. There, the Teacher lures them to the garden with a note saying he has Teabing. They go there only to discover that Teabing himself is the Teacher. Teabing suspected that Saunière had decided not to release the secret of the Priory of Sion, because the Church threatened to kill Sophie if the secret was released. Wanting the secret to be public knowledge, he had decided to find the Grail himself.

Teabing gives Langdon the cryptex and asks Langdon and Sophie to help him open it. Langdon figures out that the password is apple—the orb missing from Newton’s tomb. He opens the cryptex and secretly takes out the papyrus. Then he throws the empty cryptex in the air, causing Teabing to drop his pistol as he attempts to catch it and prevent the map inside from being destroyed. Suddenly, Fache bursts into the room and arrests Teabing.

The papyrus inside the second cryptex directs Sophie and Langdon to Scotland, where Sophie finds her brother and her grandmother. During the reunion, she discovers that her family is, indeed, of the bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Sophie and Langdon part, promising to meet in Florence in a month. Back in Paris, Langdon comprehends the poem, which leads him to the small pyramid built into the ground in the Louvre.

Characters of Da Vinci Code

Robert Langdon

The novel’s protagonist, anchors the story. He is likable, capable, and goodhearted. Langdon is trustworthy, as is Sophie, his female counterpart and love interest. This trustworthiness makes him stand out in a narrative in which the author casts doubt on the motivations of every major character except Langdon and Sophie. In the novel’s many moments of uncertainty, Langdon’s presence is consistently reassuring.

Although he is seen as a sex symbol in the academic world, Langdon is clumsy and inept with guns and weapons and lacks resolve when it comes to planning and executing action. He would rather think about codes and symbols than figure out how to escape the Louvre under the eyes of policemen. For this reason, he is balanced well by Sophie, who transforms his intellectual abilities into survival skills that are applicable to real life.

Sophie Neveu

presence in the novel embodies the Chinese idea of yin and yang, or two complementary forces that work together in harmony. From Langdon and Teabing, Sophie learns that pagan religions and the Priory valued balance between male and female. Sophie and Langdon form the male and female halves of a single protagonist, and their goals never diverge. In this way, they echo Teabing’s and Langdon’s ideas about the partnership of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. In their view, the male and the female worked together toward a goal, without the female being subordinate to the male in any way.

Both Sophie and Langdon, like the Mona Lisa, exhibit male and female traits: for example, Langdon’s headiness is balanced by Sophie’s real world know-how. Sophie is quick-witted, agile, devious when she needs to be, and physically assertive, as when she helps to disable Silas in the chateau. But at the same time, she is caring and compassionate. She feels the loss of her family deeply and mourns the death of her grandfather. Both brilliant and sexually attractive, Sophie combines a masculine toughness with typically feminine qualities.

Leigh Teabing

Initially, Teabing is a welcome benefactor for Sophie and Langdon. His estate, Château Villette, with its gorgeous sitting room and enormous, book-lined study, seems to be an appealing embodiment of its owner. Teabing supplies much-needed comic relief, and he banters with his manservant and with Sophie as if he were a rich and dotty old uncle. His Land Rover and the bribes he gives to his pilot at the airfield in France help Sophie and Langdon escape from the police.

Soon enough, though, Brown reveals that Teabing is a murderer. After his true identity is known, Teabing turns into a living example of the way wealth can corrupt. Teabing, who has always lived a privileged life, convinces himself that his money entitles him to the knowledge of the Grail’s location. His ballroom-turned-study, which at first seems charmingly cluttered, begins to look like the crazy lair of a serial killer. His jokes turn from entertaining to manipulative. And his habit of throwing money around, bribing people in order to ensure the group’s safe passage out of France, seems self-serving.

Themes 

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-Sulpice, is a sentry for the Brotherhood, but Silas, indoctrinated in the hypermasculine 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.

Reference,

SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on The Da Vinci Code.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2005. Web. 7 Mar. 2020.

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Major themes of Things Fall Apart and character of Okonkow

Name:- Hetal Dabhi
Sem:- 4
Paper:-14 (The African Literature)



Assignment


Character of Okonkow

The protagonist of Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo is also considered a tragic hero. A tragic hero holds a position of power and prestige, chooses his course of action, possesses a tragic flaw, and gains awareness of circumstances that lead to his fall. Okonkwo's tragic flaw is his fear of weakness and failure.In his thirties, Okonkwo is a leader ofthe Igbo community of Umuofia. Achebe describes him as "tall and huge" with "bushy eyebrows and [a] wide nose [that gives] him a very severe look." When Okonkwo walks, his heels barely touch the ground, like he walks on springs, "as if he [is] going to pounce on somebody." Okonkwo "stammers slightly" and his breathing is heavy.Okonkwo is renowned as a wrestler, a fierce warrior, and a successful farmer of yams (a "manly" crop). He has three wives and many children who live in huts on his compound. Throughout his life, he wages a never ending battle for status; his life is dominated by the fear of weakness and failure. He is quick to anger, especially when dealing with men who are weak, lazy debtors like his father. However, Okonkwo overcompensates for his father's womanly (weak) ways, of which he is ashamed, because he does not tolerate idleness or gentleness. Even though he feels inward affection at times, he never portrays affection toward anyone. Instead, he isolates himself by exhibiting anger through violent, stubborn, irrational behavior. Okonkwo demands that his family work long hours despite their age or limited physical stamina, and he nags and beats his wives and son, Nwoye, who Okonkwo believes is womanly like his father, Unoka.Okonkwo is impulsive; he acts before he thinks. Consequently, Okonkwo offends the Igbo people and their traditions as well as the gods of his clan. Okonkwo is advised not to participate in the murder of Ikefemuna, but he actually kills Ikefemuna because he is "afraid of being thought weak." When the white man brings Christianity to Umuofia, Okonkwo is opposed to the new ways. He feels that the changes are destroying the Igbo culture, changes that require compromise and accommodation —two qualities that Okonkwo finds intolerable. Too proud and inflexible, he clings to traditional beliefs and mourns the loss of the past.When Okonkwa rashly kills a messenger from the British district office, his clansmen back away in fear; he realizes that none of them support him and that he can't save his village from the British colonists. Okonkwo is defeated. He commits suicide, a shameful and disgraceful death like his father's.

Major themes of Things Fall Apart

Introduction

For many writers, the theme of a novel is the driving force of the book during its creation. Even if the author doesn't consciously identify an intended theme, the creative process is directed by at least one controlling idea —a concept or principle or belief or purpose significant to the author. The theme —often several themes —guides the author by controlling where the story goes, what the characters do, what mood is portrayed, what style evolves, and what emotional effects the story will create in the reader.

Igbo Society Complexity

From Achebe's own statements, we know that one of his themes is thecomplexity of Igbo society before the arrival of the Europeans. To support this theme, he includes detailed Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apartdescriptions of the justice codes and the trial process, the social and family rituals, the marriage customs, food production and preparation processes, the process of shared leadership for the community, religious beliefs and practices, and the opportunities for virtually every man to climb the clan's ladder of success through his own efforts. The book may have been written more simply as a study of Okonkwo's deterioration in character in an increasingly unsympathetic and incompatible environment, but consider what would have been lost had Achebe not emphasized the theme of the complex and dynamic qualities of the Igbo in Umuofia.

Clash of Cultures

Against Achebe's theme of Igbo cultural complexity is his theme of the clash of cultures. This collision of cultures occurs at the individual and societal levels, and the cultural misunderstanding cuts both ways: Just as the uncompromising Reverend Smith views Africans as "heathens," the Igbo initially criticize the Christians and the missionaries as "foolish." For Achebe, the Africans' misperceptions of themselves and of Europeans need realignment as much as do the misperceptions of Africans by the West. Writing as an African who had been "Europeanized," Achebe wrote Things Fall Apartas "an act of atonement with [his] past, the ritual return and homage of a prodigal son." By his own act, he encourages other Africans, especially ones with Western educations, to realize that they may misperceive their native culture.

Destiny

Related to the theme of cultural clash is the issue of how much the flexibility or the rigidity of the characters (and by implication, of the British and Igbo) contribute to their destiny. Because of Okonkwo's inflexible nature, he seems destined for self-destruction, even before the arrival of the European colonizers. The arrival of a new culture only hastens Okonkwo's tragic fate.Two other characters contrast with Okonkwo in this regard: Mr. Brown, the first missionary, and Obierika, Okonkwo's good friend. Whereas Okonkwo is an unyielding man of action, the other two are more open and adaptable men of thought. Mr. Brown wins converts by first respecting the traditions and beliefs of the Igbo and subsequently allowing some accommodation in the conversion process. Like Brown, Obierika is also a reasonable and thinking person. He does not advocate the use of force to counter the colonizers and the opposition. Rather, he has an open mind about changing values and foreign culture: "Who knows what may happen tomorrow?" he comments about the arrival of foreigners. Obierika's receptive and adaptable nature may be more representative of the spirit of Umuofia than Okonkwo's unquestioning rigidity.For example, consider Umuofia's initial lack of resistance to the establishment of a new religion in its midst. With all its deep roots in tribal heritage, the community hardly takes a stand against the intruders —against new laws as well as new religion. What accounts for this lack of community opposition? Was Igbo society more receptive and adaptable than it appeared to be? The lack of strong initial resistance may also come from the fact that the Igbo society does not foster strong central leadership. This quality encourages individual initiative toward recognition and achievement but also limits timely decision-making and the authority-backed actions needed on short notice to maintain its integrity and welfare. Whatever the reason —perhaps a 

Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apartcombination of these reasons —the British culture and its code of behavior, ambitious for its goals of native "enlightenment" as well as of British self-enrichment, begin to encroach upon the existing Igbo culture and its corresponding code of behavior.A factor that hastens the decline of the traditional Igbo society is their custom of marginalizing some of their people —allowing the existence of an outcast group and keeping women subservient in their household and community involvement, treating them as property, and accepting physical abuse of them somewhat lightly. When representatives of a foreign culture (beginning with Christian missionaries) enter Igbo territory and accept these marginalized people —including the twins —at their full human value, the Igbo's traditional shared leadership finds itself unable to control its whole population. The lack of a clear, sustaining center of authority in Igbo society may be the quality that decided Achebe to draw his title from the Yeats poem, "The Second Coming." The key phrase of the poems reads, "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold."Underlyingthe aforementioned cultural themes is a theme of fate, or destiny. This theme is also played at the individual and societal levels. In the story, readers are frequently reminded about this theme in references to chi, the individual's personal god as well as his ultimate capability and destiny. Okonkwo, at his best, feels that his chisupports his ambition: "When a man says yes, his chi says yes also" (Chapter 4). At his worst, Okonkwo feels that his chi has let him down: His chi "was not made for great things. A man could not rise beyond the destiny of his chi....Here was a man whose chi said nay despite his own affirmation" (Chapter 14).At the societal level, the Igbos' lack of a unifying self-image and centralized leadership as well as their weaknessin the treatment of some of their own people —both previously discussed —suggest the inevitable fate of becoming victim to colonization by a power eager to exploit its resources.In addition to the three themes discussed in this essay, the thoughtful reader will probably be able to identify other themes in the novel: for example, the universality of human motives and emotions across cultures and time, and the need for balance between individual needs and community needs.

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These tools are internet tools that allow the user to go beyond just receiving information through the web. The user is expected to interact and to create content with others. Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are examples of Web 2.0 tools. Web tools can be used to enhance teaching and collaboration among teachers and students as well as increase professional collaboration between educators.

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How Literature shaped me ?

                       

What is literature ?

This is very basic question for the students of literature. While studying literature, teachers' and students are mostly concerned on the language rather then understanding, because literature is most generally made by language. In English literature, students are actually not aware with the concept of literature, but they are more interested in learning English language.

Most of the students have a basic understanding of literature that "It is the mirror of society". Mirror never reflects the real image of a person or a thing. It is a mere inverted image. However, literature reflects society in a bit different way. It can be considered as an x-ray image of society, which represents the the harsh reality and real image of society. Literature is of two kinds, first is the books and and paper one can buy from the shop and second is when a person experiences the lives hidden in the books. When a person feels the happiness and pain of different characters from the books, and its creates a different point of view of a person towards the literature.

Literature can be considered as a "Change" in us after its understanding. All can read literature but only few can feel and understand it. When we feel the conflict of Hamlet towards his life and when we understand the philosophical point of view of grave digging scene' we real understood it, that understanding changes our way of thinking. That change is not permanent but it leaves its effects in our mind. Literature contains various way of thinking in one piece of art! It has the villain like lago and the passionate hero like Othello. It contains a housewife like Mrs. Ramsay and a girl with freethinking like Lily Briscoe. It contains absurdity and nothingness like meaninglessness of Vladimir and Estragon's life and their condition. It contains Frankenstein's innocent monster and Edger Allan Poe's evilest and harmful humans. It gives us numerous ways of living life. It gives us each characters way of thinking and understanding of way they are behaving in a particular manner.

All these experiences can change us. We live thousand times in one life through literature. It attacks harshly and brutally kills our beautiful dreams( illusion) of life. Literature hurts our ego, and heals our hearts. It criticises us, and admires, but ultimately, it changes us.

No one can bind literature in any particular definition because it is made from language and as "Derrida said " Language bears within itself the necessity of its own critique". 

Literature is not easy to define in language but we can feel it, understand it, and express it through emotions. Catharsis is the way of getting literature. It changes us. By each reading, we can get the different essence of each subject. As it is said that by reading literature, one can read about people, he/she could never be, and adventures he/she would never have.

How Literature Shaped me....?

Yes, Literature shapes,  I have seen the changes in me. Like, one needs to be thinking man. 

Not only thinking but makes us ready  to be more onus. Theories of existentialism makes this life more interesting to live. It teaches the importance of choice. Most importantly , it gives a new way of life by creating the better human being.