- This article is about the book Angels and Demons; for other meanings, please see the articles on angels and demons.
Angels and Demons book cover Angels and Demons (2000) by Dan Brown is the lesser known, first novel in a series, which is followed by The Da Vinci Code.
Plot
Angels and Demons features Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon as he tries to stop the Illuminati, a legendary secret society, from destroying the Vatican City with the newly-discovered power of antimatter.
CERN researcher Leonardo Vetra is found murdered in his secured, private quarters at the research facility. On his chest is branded a symbol — the word "Illuminati". After researching the Internet, Director Maximillian Kohler contacts Professor Langdon, who is an expert on the Illuminati and has written a book on the subject, and requests his assistance in uncovering the murderer.
What Langdon discovers at the murder scene frightens him: the symbol appears to be authentic, and the legendary secret society, long thought to be defunct, seems to have resurfaced. The Illuminati has also appropriated CERN's supply of antimatter, the ultimate weapon, and have their sights on fulfilling a centuries-old dream: to destroy Vatican City.
Time runs short as Langdon and Vetra's adopted daughter, Vittoria, race to stop not only the Vatican's destruction, but to save the life of four cardinals who have been kidnapped by a deadly assassin.
Main characters
- Robert Langdon: Protagonist, symbologist
- Vittoria Vetra: CERN physicist
- Leonardo Vetra: Murder victim, CERN physicist
- Maximillian Kohler: Director of CERN
- Commander Olivetti: Head of the Swiss Guard
- The Hassassin: Killer hired by the Illuminati
- Carlo Ventresca: Camerlengo (Papal Chamberlain)
- Saverio Cardinal Mortati: Member of the College of Cardinals and participant in the papal election
- Gunther Glick: BBC reporter
- Chinita Macri: Glick's videographer
Comparisons to The Da Vinci Code
The Da Vinci Code is undoubtedly Dan Brown's breakthrough novel. However, upon close examination, there are founded allegations that The Da Vinci Code was largely based on the formula he evolved in Angels and Demons. Similarities between the two books include the following:
- The male protagonist, Robert Langdon, unravels a trail of mystical, ancient clues which leads to his discovering the truth about a legendary, secret society and its relationship to the Vatican.
- A prologue depicts the assassination of a murder victim, which results in Langdon having to be awakened by a telephone call by the relevant authorities, asking him to offer his assistance in symbology.
- Events take place during the course of not much more than one day, where Langdon is teamed with a beautiful, highly intelligent woman who is closely related to the murder victim.
- The prominent assassin of the book (i.e. the Hassassin in Angels and Demons and Silas in The Da Vinci Code) commits the murders under the impression that he is doing so for an organisation which is apparently involved in but actually framed for the murders (i.e. the Illuminati in Angels and Demons and Opus Dei in The Da Vinci Code).
- At one point along the way, Langdon makes a mistake whilst following the trail of clues and is directed to the wrong place.
- The mastermind behind the killings turns out to be a salient figure for most of the book, and supposedly against the motives behind the murders. The camerlengo, for example, is thought to be against the existence of the Illuminati, while Sir Leigh Teabing's motives appear to be parallel to those of the Priory of Sion.
- Langdon and the female protagonist end the story with the implication of a sexual relationship.
Factual inaccuracies
Given the book's claims to realism, the number of inaccuracies is disappointing, in areas including science and technology, culture, characterisation and the geography of Rome. For example:
- According to Vittoria "everything has an opposite. Protons have electrons. Up-quarks have down-quarks." In actual fact the antimatter equivalent of a proton is not an electron but the antiproton. Electrons are not antimatter and they have their own anti-particle equivalents called positrons. Also neither the up-quark nor the down-quark are anti-matter. They are just two of six quark flavours of normal matter.
- In a discussion about science and religion, the character Robert Langdon says "Outspoken scientists like Copernicus..." when Maximilian Kohler finishes the sentence with "...were murdered...murdered by the Church for revealing scientific truths". Far from murdering Copernicus the Catholic Church actually "supported" his work during his lifetime. His heliocentric model was only published after his death.
- In a flashback, Langdon recalls a lecture he gave in his Symbology 212 class where he tells his class that "The practice of 'god-eating' — that is, Holy Communion — was borrowed from the Aztecs." It's unclear how this could have occurred, as communion has its roots in the Last Supper (ca. 30 C.E.) and the Aztec civilization did not rise until the 14th century. Even if the Aztecs had been around when the practice of communion began, there is no evidence of contact between Europeans and the inhabitants of Central America at that time. The first clear evidence of European contact with these people occurred after Christopher Columbus reached the New World in 1492.
- Brown claims that hatha yoga was an ancient Buddhist art. Although influenced by Buddhism, hatha yoga predates Buddhism.
- Langdon recalls "that much of Galileo's legal trouble had begun when he described planetary motion as elliptical. The Vatican exalted the perfection of the circle and insisted heavenly motion must be only circular." Galileo famously refused to believe in his friend Keplers elliptical orbits.
- An antimatter containment system used to contain "anti-hydrogen" would also require a refrigeration system to keep the substance from evaporating.
- It is highly unlikely that CERN would own an X-33, since the only prototype was developed jointly by NASA and Lockheed-Martin.
- Langdon claims that the Pantheon "got its name from the original religion practiced there, Pantheism — the worship of all gods, specifically the pagan gods of Mother Earth." Pantheism was never practiced by the Romans, and it has nothing to do with pagan gods of Mother Earth.
- The first marker of illumination (EARTH) is supposedly the angel from Habakkuk and the Angel in Cappella Chigi. The angel points southwest and Vittoria claims that there are no churches in that direction of the Piazza del Popolo until they hit St Peters. In actual fact there are many churches southwest of the Piazza but St Peters is not one of them. It lies almost directly west.
- Dan Brown claims that "Bernini's city-wide cross of obelisks marked the fortress in perfect Illuminati fashion; the crosss central arm passed directly through the center of the castles bridge, dividing it into two equal halves." Neither of the two arms of the cross go through the Castel Sant Angelo.
Facts and mythology behind the book
References
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