In Rome, the College of Cardinals assembles to elect a new pope. Yet hidden somewhere in the Vatican is a bomb that relentlessly counts down to oblivion. With the countdown under way, Langdon joins forces with Vittoria Vettra, an Italian scientist, to decipher the labyrinthine trail of ancient symbols that spreads across Rome. The path leads to the Illuminati lair, a secret location that lies the only hope for Vatican salvation.
The convention of the plot problem is intertextually related to other mystery fictions.
This reference affects our response to the new text. The similarity creates expectations about the plot. It starts off as a crime story, and the readers are challenged, to solve it by determining the identity of the culprit. They work out the methodology used to disguise the circumstances of the crime. It is fundamentally a puzzle.
Plot development:
With each revelation comes a change of direction in the plot, leaving the protagonists to struggle with a seemingly invincible enemy. The antagonist must be someone in the Vatican because they had failed to capture him in each murder scene. The killer kidnapped Vittoria, but Langdon journeys to save her. Langdon became vulnerable to suffocation and violent attacks.
At this point, Langdon strongly believes that Kohler, the director of CERN,is the culprit.
Rising tension:
The carmelengo explained that we are in a world of apathy, cynacism and technological deification. He had lead the public to realize that the church had always reached out as the signpost of morality, not ignorance, and that we can bring up the goodnes that prevails. He appeared to be supposedly against the motives behind the murders.
Kohler had a strong personal revenge against the religious people who robbed him of his dignity. In one scene: ‘Kohler aimed his pistol at the carmelengo, who lay on the floor writhing in agony.’ Kohler is portrayed in such a way that the reader would suspect him to have masterminded all the killings. The writer had withheld some things from the reader, and misleads the reader about what is actually going on in the story. At this point, the culprit is thought to be revealed.
Climax:
When the carmelengo suddenly awoke, he seemed to receive a message from God, telling him where the antimatter is. In a dash he retrieved the antimatter, and accompanied by Langdon, flew it up in a chopper, in hopes of getting it high enough to avoid damaging the Vatican. They succeed, and the camerlengo jumps out of the helicopter, landing safely at the Vatican, using a parachute, which leads people to believe in this as a miracle. Meanwhile, Robert Langdon also escapes and lands in a river. Finally, the antimatter unraveled across the sky in a thunder shock.
Resolution:
The camerlengo had murdered the Pope. The camerlengo responds to this by telling everybody that the Pope had fathered a child and had broken his vow of celibacy. The Devil’s Advocate then revealed that the Pope had not broken any vow as his child was born through artificial insemination. Then the final revelation was that the Pope's child is the camerlengo himself. Struck dumb with the horrifying implications of this, the camerlengo flees and eventually commits suicide.
The mastermind behind the killings turns out to be a salient figure. Carlo was supposedly against the existence of the Illuminati. Although we may initially think that Carlo is the stereotype of a young and faithful servant devoted to God, he eventually emerges as the culprit of the Illuminati threats and therefore has hidden depths all through the novel.
The author had created the illusion to captivate the reader, and the reader in turn, works to experience, understand and appreciate the nature of the illusion. The mystery story gives us the thrill of how the author plots the world we are brought into, obscuring a enough details that we are challenged to interact with the clues, witness and take a position in the imaginary place created for us. Thus, the excitement of a mystery story comes from this emphasized relationship which is found in all fictional texts.
Symbolic meaning:
Horror and Hope is the only way to bring people to God. The crucifiction and resurrection would change the world. The carmelengo reminded the world about the Illuminati to create Horror, the fear. Without evil, there is no good. The Illuminati images had the motif that science has a threatening influence in society. He then played the Hope to prove that he could survive miraculously under God’s will because he has faith to God. Religion needed a miracle in the faithless world. The Horror and Hope thoery is more contemporary and plausible. Too often, the church uses a "scare people to faith" mentality to win souls. In the end, such faith doesn't have a very solid foundation.
Writing style:
Interior monologue effectively depicts Langdon’s unconscious feelings and random mental thoughts. ‘He saw blurry white forms. Aliens, perhaps? Yes, fortunately these beings would not harm him. All they wanted were his--.’ The story follows a typical narrative pattern of the discovery of a body, the discovery of the murderer’s identity and the explanation of the murderer’s motives. The text is classified as a realistic mystery because the storyline concerns revenge and commission of the murder cases. The subject matter includes technology abuse and religious influence.
Issues explored:
The analytical style of writing is the author’s interpretation of the era in which we live.
For the first time in human history, the line between science and religion is starting to blur. Particle physicists are witnessing an interconnectivity of all things and having religious experiences. Buddhist monks are reading physics books to confirm about what they have believed for centuries and are hard to quantify. Therefore, the view of reality is that science and religion are not at odds. Science is simply not ready to comprehend.
There is also the question of whether technology will save us or destroy us. Although the narrative is more of an optimist, science will save us according to the author’s view.
It is obviously true as science has the wonderful potential to control disease, create new fuel supplies, and engineer efficient food sources. The problem, of course, is that ‘every technology is a double-edged sword.’ The rocket engine that carries the space shuttle can also carry warheads. The medical breakthroughs that can eradicate disease, if misused, can bring about the end of the human race. The question about antimatter is: ‘Will this powerful new technology save the world, or will it be used to create the most deadly weapon ever made?’
The author draws us to the conclusion that as science will expand to meet man's growing needs; man's philosophy will have to mature fast enough as well. We should prove that we can truly comprehend our new power and the responsibility that comes with it.
