In which the Code gets dirty.

[kippurbird]

And so we begin chapter six.

Let us sum up what we know so far. Something horrible happened to someone somewhere which he did to himself. And Someone has to find something somewhere. Got that? Because I don't.

Anyway. Bull boy and Langdon are walking. And they're walking. And you know what? They walk some more. However they discuss the crime scene and what happened. And they walk some more. And Langdon flashes back to some chick named Vittoria, probably the side-chick from the last book. Though there's no particular reason for him to bring her up, except to let us know that she awoke passions in him that he never thought he could have. My heart's all a flutter, but still, pointless paragraph.

As they go, we learn that security actually did show up, but they couldn't get into the gallery and didn't see anyone but, did hear someone, who they thought was the bad guy so they called the cops. See if the curator really wanted to live, he should have stayed where he was so that the security people could find him, and you know, save his life. Which also would have probably allowed him to live longer since he wouldn't have been exerting himself and causing more blood to pool out. If he had stayed still, then he would have been alive and wouldn't have to worry about the secret being lost. I mean, Silas was actually stupid enough to walk off while he was still alive. So, he didn't have a cell phone, at least he knew that security would be there quickly. Because he is the fricking CURATOR of the bloody museum. He'd know these things.

But, apparently I'm being logical and intelligent here.

Finally we get to the goat picture I mean the crime scene.

The pallid corpse of Jacques Sauniere lay on the parquet floor exactly as it appeared in the photograph. Seeing as how the fact that Jacques was arranged in such a strange manner and they're bringing the expert back to see him, I really think that it's unlikely that they'll move the body. As Langdon stood over the body and squinted in the harsh light, he reminded himself to his amazement that Sauniere had spent his last minutes of life arranging his own body in this strange fashion.

Sauniere looked remarkably fit for a man of his years... And this is important to know, why? and all of his musculature was in plain view. He had stripped off every shred of clothing, placed it neatly on the floor Okay, I'm dying of a gun shoot wound to the gut. I only have a certain amount of time to relay my message because I was stupid to move from where the guards can find me, so I'm going to take the time to fold my clothes neatly into a pile, because God knows that they might think I'm a slob if I don't. and lain down on his back in the center of the wide corridor, perfectly aligned with the long axis of the room. His arms and legs were sprawled outward in a wide spread eagle like those of a child making a snow angel... or, perhaps more appropriately like a man being drawn and quartered by some invisible force.

Just below Sauniere's breastbone a bloody smear marked the spot where the bullet had penetrated his flesh. The wound had bled through surprisingly little, leaving only a small pool of blackened blood.

Sauniere's left index finger was also bloody, apparently having been dipped into the wound to create the most unsettling aspect of his own macabre deathbed; using his own blood as ink, and employing his own naked abdomen as a canvas, Sauniere had drawn a simple symbol on his flesh -five straight lines that intersected to form a five-pointed star.

The pentacle

And he couldn't have told us that it was a pentacle in the first place? The whole five lines making a star thing is just pointless words that delay the reader getting to the actual information. Not only that, it's not the pentacle that's the important thing, but what the pentacle symbolizes. Or symbolizes according to Brown. Which is apparently that the pentacle is part of the Pagans now considered synonymous with the devil worship (as opposed to Wiccians) and then starts to ramble on about how the pentacle is part of the female half of all things.

The Truth behind the Da Vinci Code by Richard Abanes says this:


Quote from the Da Vinic Code: The pentacle. This symbol, a five pointed star within a circle, represents "the female half of all thing all things - a concept religious historians call the 'sacred feminine' or the divine goddess... in it's most specific interpretation, the pentacle symbolizes Venus - the goddess of female sexual love and beauty."

The Truth behind the code

The pentagram (which is called a pentacle when drawn inside a circle) has no "specific interpretation." Writer and lecture Kerr Cuhulain, who is a recognized spokesman for Wicca explains that, "There seems to have been no single tradition concerning their [pentagrams'] meaning and use, and in may contexts they seem simply to have been decorative." Popular Wiccan Doreen Valiente also has noted that the pentagram's uses, adding, "The origin of the magical five pointed star is lost in the mists of time."



So, basically, we were just told a great big lie. The book's front piece said that everything is factual, but it's not. Neither is the fact that the planet Venus traces a perfect pentacle shape in the sky nor the fact that the Olympic rings were originally going to be a pentacle. HOWEVER according to Langdon, "The pentacle's demonic interpretation is historically inaccurate. The original feminine meaning is correct, but the symbolism of the pentacle has been distorted over the millennia. In this case, through bloodshed."

Bloodshed being the Roman Catholic Church having a smear campaign against pagans and the divine symbols.

Sauniere is apparently positioned himself into a pentacle which is supposed to reinforce the imagery of the pentacle.

The bull asks him about why he used blood, and Langdon suggests that was the only ink available to him. However the Bull contradicts him motioning to an invisible ink pen. When they turn off the lights and turn on the Black Light Langdon sees that Sauniere has written a dirty limerick. Well... no, but again we're not told what it is that he's written. So, instead he sees:

Young man Jerry Hank
Went down to the national bank
He fell in the grass
getting a surprised in the ass
by a cock the size of a tank.

Meanwhile someone named Lieutenant Collet had returned to the Louvre. I'm GUESSING this is Bobo from earlier. Who else would be returning to the Lourve that's been mentioned? See, this is the problem here, we have no idea who this Collet is and why he's in Sauniere's office eavesdropping on Langdon and the Bull. The way the that the paragraph is written, it sounds like we should know who this guy is, but if it's Bobo, he never was given a name earlier.

Our next chapter is about a Nun. She doesn't like Opus Dei but apparently she has to give one of its numeraries a tour of the Church of Saint-Sulpiece which is where the Keystone to the Afikomen is hidden. The entire point of this two page chapter was apparently to talk about how Opus Dei treats women like slaves. And that's it. Really. Absolutely nothing has been added to our needed knowledge of the story. The plot did not inch forward one bit. It's just there.

Comments

[the-norseman.livejournal.com]

Consider also that the cameras actually work! So the security people would know exactly who was there!

In other words even the most basic research would have scuppered this story entirely. I mean poor Harold Bell Wright was accused of writing trash, but compared to this the Shepherd of the Hills seems like shakespeare.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Earlier, it was said that the cameras don't work because it would take too many monitors. Of course that's why you have divided monitors that flip through different cameras. Brown says they're all fakes. Convenient, no?

[zoe-i-am.livejournal.com]

I am enjoying your interpretation of the book much more than the actual book itself!

(Still rooting for the Albino)

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Why thank you. ^_^ I do try to make logic out of gibberish.


(I think that deserves to be on an icon)

[evil_plotbunny]

I read through this so quickly it was much less painful.

I apologize for making you suffer through the mess (not that I want you to stop).

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

It's a quick read if you don't stop and think about it. Much like Eragon and Eldest.

It's okay. =D I haven't had the desire to throw the book yet. ^_^

[evil_plotbunny]

Yay. Throwing books=bad. Even the Da Vinci Code. /librarian

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

What about Eragon? ^_^

But, no, I wouldn't throw it. The librarian in me would also be very unhappy.

[evil_plotbunny]

*shakes finger at you in a stereotypical!librarian way* ;)

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

But Eragon is fan fiction!

[evil_plotbunny]

Very true. That doesn't mean you can throw books in the library though. ;)

[-youngblood-.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm dying of a gun shoot wound to the gut. I only have a certain amount of time to relay my message because I was stupid to move from where the guards can find me, so I'm going to take the time to fold my clothes neatly into a pile, because God knows that they might think I'm a slob if I don't.

Here, I'm going to defend the text. God knows why I bother, but here I go anyway. If the curator hadn't put his clothes in a neat way, had strewn them or thrown them messily, the investigators might be inclined to believe that someone else had stripped him. A clothes-ripping attacker would never bother to fold the clothes neatly, so perhaps the curator was trying to make it clear that he stripped himself? *hopes*

Also, just further reinforcing the confusion over the pentacle:

I just finished reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight for a Medieval Lit. class, and Sir Gawain's symbol is the 'pentangle'-- pasically a simply pentagon. In this text, it's supposed to symbolize the five virtues as well as the five wounds of Christ. So, yeah, Dan Brown was literarally pulling stuff out of his ass with all this pentacle shite; the pentacle stands for a bajillion things.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Here, I'm going to defend the text. God knows why I bother, but here I go anyway. If the curator hadn't put his clothes in a neat way, had strewn them or thrown them messily, the investigators might be inclined to believe that someone else had stripped him. A clothes-ripping attacker would never bother to fold the clothes neatly, so perhaps the curator was trying to make it clear that he stripped himself? *hopes*

He's in a locked room, by himself. Who else would have done it?

So, yeah, Dan Brown was literarally pulling stuff out of his ass with all this pentacle shite; the pentacle stands for a bajillion things.

Yup.

[delphinapterus.livejournal.com]

A clothes-ripping attacker would never bother to fold the clothes neatly unless of course the attacker was also a complusive neat freak or had a clothes folding fetish. *grin*

[delphinapterus.livejournal.com]

Langdon has passions? He's yet to exhibit anything but a bit of stuffy pomposity and some vanity. Does mirror gazing count as a passion. I love how you're fixing the not telling the reading issue: goat fucking and dirty lymerrics, it just get better and better.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Well, I have to do something. I mean, I can't just keep on referring to "that thing that Langdon was shocked about" or something. It's too much trouble.

[spoofmaster]

Mmm, just wait until Langdon goes into random flashbacks to pompous lectures he's given about historical, mathematical, and religious matters that Brown apparently made up as he went. Even if the stuff was true, it'd still be obnoxious because of the way it seriously interrupts the flow of the story. "Oh, you liked that big chase scene I just gave you? Well, then, it stands to reason that you'll love it when I halt the action in order to insert exposition about things that aren't even relevant!"

[millenium-king.livejournal.com]

This is when I stopped reading this shitty book. As soon as Brown said: "He saw something written in the invisible pen! But I won't tell you what it is! The suspense! I am so clever! Aren't I a genius to create an artificial mystery by withholding mundane details rather than slowly adding pieces until they create a logical, undeniable whole? It is so much smarter just to withhold things from the reader. Next I will say that Langdon travels miraculously swiftly to the Vatican on a mysterious device! A magical device that shoots through the air at many hundreds of miles per hour! But I will wait three to four perspective-shifting paragraphs before I tell you that the device was an airplane! I am so fucking smart!"

Anyway. After that passage (which I assure you all is actually in the book) I put that piece of crap down.

[karma-kalisutah.livejournal.com]

I was told that that the five points of the pentacle represent the four elements plus "spirit," a metaphysical fifth element that presides over the others. Which sort of makes me think of Monty the Superfluous from Captain Planet, but that's not the point. The point is that, yeah, there are lots of interpretations.

[sonic-sues.livejournal.com]

I've heard that one, too. The pentagram is only Satanic when it's upside down. Satanists like turning things upside down. O_o

[(Anonymous)]

I have been following along so far and I am thinking that the movie was a big improvement on the book. Also hoping that the book will produce some literary equivalent of Sir Ian Mackellen's performance. (Watching him chew the scenery made the movie a lot more fun than it would have been otherwise!)

[dove-cg.livejournal.com]

I agree with you. The movie was definitely better than the book (because the movie went ahead and showed this shit.) That said, the movie was still horrible. The incident with the escape in the van was completely WTF. There was other stuff but that was the part that stuck in my head afterwards. Sir Ian Mackellen's performance was really the only good thing about it (and even then, I would recommend watching another movie that he was in.)

:P :)