The Da Vinci Code, like
many international thrillers, operates in a world of extreme privilege.
The characters’ interactions take place against grand backdrops.
Langdon, who is cast as a modest schoolteacher, teaches at Harvard
and stays in the Ritz while in Paris to give lectures to assembled
cognoscenti. Sophie, a police inspector with a heart of gold, grew
up in a big house in Paris—she remembers running from room to room
and up and down stairs looking for the clues her grandfather left
for her in treasure hunts. Even the revelation of Sophie’s grandfather’s
participation in the ritual of Hieros Gamos takes place in the basement
of her grandfather’s chateau in Normandy—a rather exalted setting.
Saunière is a curator at the Louvre and can bring his granddaughter
to see the Mona Lisa when there are no pesky tourists
to interfere. He is also friends with the head of the Zurich Bank
in Paris, André Vernet. Several other highly influential men are
also members of the Priory of Sion. In the moral universe of The
Da Vinci Code, one can be rich and still be good, but once
a certain level of income is exceeded, greed sets in. Sir Leigh Teabing,
who has all the money he could possibly want, and whose house is
a study in overprivilege, can have anything that his heart desires.
He can get across borders without passports and board planes at
the drop of a hat. All of this privilege, Brown implies, ruins Teabing
morally and makes it impossible for him to cope mentally with the
fact that he can’t have the one thing he really wants: knowledge
of where the Grail is hidden. Similarly, Aringarosa, the head of Opus
Dei, is accustomed to the clout that excessive amounts of money
buy for his order. When the Church says that the Pope has decided
to disassociate himself from Opus Dei, Aringarosa is shocked, because
Opus Dei bailed the Vatican Bank out of trouble a few years earlier.
Aringarosa confuses economic power with moral power. This confusion
is his moral failing.
Additionally, In Brown’s world, people who simply prefer
riches, like Bishop Aringarosa, are morally inferior. The difference
between crude rich people, like Aringarosa, and rich people with
taste, like Teabing, is that the tasteful rich can tell the difference
between a good painting and a bad one.