Chapters 68–75
Summary: Chapter 68
Langdon calls Jonas Faukman, his editor, who admits that
he sent a copy of Langdon's recent manuscript to Saunière in order
to get a blurb for the back of the novel from him. Teabing asks
whether the novel was critical of the Priory, and Langdon says it
takes a neutral stance. Teabing thinks the Priory should have revealed
where the documents were hidden. When they reach the airfield, the
pilot does not want to transport Sophie and Langdon, but Teabing
threatens him with the gun and offers him a bribe.
Summary: Chapter 69
In the jet, Teabing asks Sophie if she understands the
gravity of her own position. If she can find the Holy Grail, Teabing
says, she will have the power to reveal the great secret to the
world. He wants to know what she plans to do with that power. Sophie
says that when she finds the Grail, she will know what to do.
Summary: Chapter 70
At Château Villette, Fache is furious with Collet. André
Vernet calls the police and tells them that contrary to what he
said, Sophie and Langdon were at the bank that night. He says they
took something from Saunière's account. At the same time, another
agent has gone through Teabing's speed dial numbers and spoken with
the airfield. He has discovered that Teabing spoke with them that
night.
Summary: Chapter 71
On the plane, Langdon and Teabing try and fail to decipher
the text on the back of the rose. Sophie takes the text from them
and says it is simply written backwards, the way Da Vinci used to
write in his notebooks. One can read it in a mirror.
Summary: Chapter 72
Langdon, Sophie, and Teabing copy down the four-line poem inscribed
in the box. It includes references to Mary Magdalene's family, the
Knights Templar, and the Grail. It is written in iambic pentameter
and in English, which the Brotherhood considered the only language
uncorrupted by the church. The poem instructs them to find a headstone
“praised by Templars” and then use another code, the Atbash Cipher,
to decode the password. They feel a bit daunted about the prospect
of tracking all this down.
Summary: Chapter 73
At the airfield, Fache cannot find out who is on Teabing's
plane with him, but he does manage to determine where the plane
will land. He tells his police to have the Kent local police, not
the British intelligence service, to surround the plane.
Summary: Chapter 74
Langdon guesses that Sophie witnessed her grandfather
participating in a sex ritual. Sophie confirms this. Langdon tells
her it was the ancient ritual of Hieros Gamos. Before the Church
controlled societal norms, he says, sex was viewed as a sacred union
between male and female. Sophie tells him she saw men and women
in the basement of her grandfather's house, where her grandfather
was having sex with a woman.
Summary: Chapter 75
On his charter flight to Paris, Aringarosa speaks with
Fache and is horrified to learn that the plan is collapsing so quickly.
He offers the pilot all of the Vatican bonds to go to London instead
of Paris. The pilot asks for his ring instead. Aringarosa gives
it to him, feeling sick.
Analysis
Teabing thinks the Priory could be making a play for power,
just as the Church is. Teabing's expression of his doubts is one
of the only times the Priory is presented as anything other than
a wholly positive group. Teabing's theory is an interesting one
and, if true, would make the last third of the novel much more complex.
It is hard, however, to imagine the kindly Saunière involved in
anything bad.
Sophie is now filling the familiar thriller role of the
ordinary person put in a position of great importance. This typical,
almost stereotypical, construction allows the reader to imagine
herself as the protagonist. Readers can imagine that, given the
chance, they would show the same kind of resolve and strength that
Sophie does.
The mystery of Vernet's continued treachery continues
to puzzle. It isn't clear why Vernet would decide to help Sophie
and Langdon and then suddenly change his mind and stop helping them.
Vernet is one of the only characters whose motivations haven't been
closely examined. His sudden decision to tell the truth about what
happened at the bank is highly suspect. Perhaps Opus Dei has gotten
to him.
Once again, Saunière has hidden a message in a very simple
way. Like the anagrams of famous paintings, the mirror writing is
a level of code that even the very young can understand and decipher. Although
this simple cryptography allows Sophie to again show up the men,
it seems a bit unbelievable that such an important secret would
be hidden almost in plain sight. On the other hand, the mirror writing
reinforces Langdon's theory that the most important answers are
always self-evident.
Brown attempts to shock his readers out of their usual
assumptions by describing iambic pentameter as the meter scheme
of the divine feminine. Most people probably learn about iambic
pentameter in English class and never think about any relationship
to gender. Brown wants the process of reading this novel to be a
discovery, a series of new understandings about things that seem
like unremarkable fixtures in the cultural landscape. In the same
way Brown challenges the reader's way of thinking about iambic pentameter and
the Little Mermaid, he also challenges assumptions
about sex, suggesting it is a divine act that has been demonized
by the church.
Brown has yet to reveal the full extent of the plan to
which Aringarosa refers. It must be a crucial endgame if Aringarosa
is willing to sacrifice his diamond ring for it. Aringarosa is extremely
materialistic, and the pilot's comment—“What kind of priest carries
that much money around with him?”—reveals how far Aringarosa has fallen
from priestly ideals.
