Thrid Post

I am going to continue with the theme of morals. I just finished my outside reading book and it had an amazing surprise ending. At this point, all four cardinals were dead and there was only a few minutes until the antimatter exploded the carmalengo (the man who was the pope’s assistant: in charge in between his death and the election of the new pope) had a “revelation;” in which god told him a verse of the bible. The verse: “Upon this rock, I will build my church,” is actually a riddle. St. Peter’s church wasn’t built on a rock, but Jesus’ nickname for Saint Peter was the Rock because he was his first disciple and was so devout. So when the carmalengo, Robert Langdon, Victoria, and others found the antimatter on his tomb they were overjoyed. Then, the carmalengo was going to bring the antimatter up in the helicopter into the sky to explode. But Robert Langdon jumped in thinking that they would throw it out, but the carmalengo had other plans. He left Langdon in the copter with the antimatter locked inside, so Langdon ditched and landed in the Tames river. When he came to, he saw a video of the carmalengo’s confession to being Janus, the master-mind behind all the recent atrocities. The carmalengo’s reasons were to make people devout again. However, in the process, he murdered the pope, who he had thought broke his vow of celibacy. This wasn’t true, due to science, he was able to have a child with a nun, without breaking his vow, and his child was the carmalengo, though he never knew. So then the carmalengo burned himself alive. The moral issue was how the carmalengo killed the pope, his “adoptive” father, and real father, because he didn’t hear the pope out: The pope had told the carmalengo that he was his son, but in his haste, the carmalengo didn’t listen to the pope’s explanation.

Angels & Demons by Dan Brown

Post 2

This post is again about morals and doing the right thing. I am quite frankly not surprised that this came up again because there are so many controversial huge decisions being made. This example comes later in the book when the head of security at Vatican City is confronted with a huge conundrum; he has antimatter inside the Vatican somewhere which will detonate in 4 hours and destroy the entire country and some of surrounding Rome. On top of that, it is the night that the cardinals elect the new Pope and the 4 most favored cardinals to become the next pope were kidnapped by the Illuminati. He has to make a hard decision on whether to try and capture the Hassassin and attempt to save the four Preferiti or save the Vatican and the other 161 cardinals and try to find the Antimatter. He initially goes with the latter because finding the killer is too far-fetched because they would have to station Swiss Guards at every church in Rome. However, when the protagonist Robert Langdon, a famous symboligist, code cracker and art-lover, discovers where each cardinal will be murdered, the head of security changes his mind, hoping the Hassassin will solve all their problems. After continuing my reading, I think that morality is defiantly a theme in the novel. Therefore, I stick with my prior conclusion: morality has been debated by the characters for a dozen or so pages, which is a large amount if you think about it. From the book, I have learned that morality is dependant on the circumstances and the individual and what options they are presented with.

Angels & Demons by Dam Brown

Post 1

This post is slightly late, but I am using a homework pass, so it's all good. Because I haven't found my uncle's manuscript yet, I am reading the book Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. The book is very captivating because it is so dramatic. It contains murder, kidnapping, bomb-threats, ancient cults, symbology, codes, even religion. I am thoroughly engrossed. One theme of the book however, is morality and doing the right thing. For example, in the beginning of the novel, an accomplished scientist has just been murdered by a satanic group (Illuminati=anti-god no devil worship) and branded with their sacred ambigram*. They do this because he has just discovered antimatter, a high energy substance that vaporizes all mater within a certain range, depending on its size. When his daughter returns, she and the director of the institute have a long argument on whether they should call the police about the murder or if they should try to solve the problem themselves and call later. The argument progresses into a quarrel over morals. So far in the novel, morality has been debated by the characters for a dozen or so pages, which is a large amount if you think about it. From the book, I have learned that morality is dependant on the circumstances and the individual and what options they are presented with.

* A word/ symbol that that forms the same word/symbol no matter which way you read it.

Angels and Demons by Dan Brown