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Revealing 'the hell'
Robert Langdon is back
R
span class="inline inline-left">Robert Langdon is back.
The fictional Harvard University professor created by novelist Dan Brown embarks on another adventure to solve the mysteries of symbols and icons, just as he did in previous Dan Brown novels Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code and the Lost Symbol.
In Dan Brown's latest thriller Inferno, released in May 2013, Brown explains that 'Inferno' is the underworld as described in Dante Aligheri's epic poem The Divine Comedy, which portrays hell as an elaborately structured realm populated by entities known as 'shades' ' bodiless souls trapped between life and death.
Langdon starts his new adventure as he lies in a state between consciousness and unconsciousness in the intensive care unit (ICU) of a hospital in Florence, Italy, during which he experiences hallucinations. He sees a veiled woman facing him across a blood red-water river surrounded by thousands bodies ' some dead, some alive ' crying and writhing while they are consumed by fire, buried in feces, devouring one another. The woman whispers to Robert: 'Seek and ye shall find'.
Langdon could hear what she said clearly, even though she was just whispering. She then lifts the veil and he sees a woman who looks to be in her sixties with long and silver-gray hair.
But before he is able to think about who the woman is, he wakes up with a headache, feels pain and has dozens of stitches caked with dried blood on his head.
Under supervision of two doctors, Dr. Marconi and Dr. Sienna Brooks, he finds out that the wound on his head was caused by a bullet-to-the-head that gave him a concussion.
Wondering why someone would try to kill him, a woman with a strong appearance, dark spiked hair and dressed entirely in black leather tried to burst into the ICU. She then shot dead Marconi, who tried to stop her. Sienna saved Langdon and helped him escape.
The dark spiked hair woman is later found out to be an agent from Consortium, a private organization that operates in seven countries and provides services for its clients to 'pursue their ambitions and desires without consequence'.
Sienna, who is along for the ride now, and Langdon, attempt to find the meanings to all these mysteries: What do the hallucinations mean? what brought him to Florence? ; Why was he shot? And most importantly, what is the correlation between Dante's Inferno and the mysteries?
Inferno is fast-paced with a lot of chase sequences so settings in the story change rapidly, we see Langdon moving from one historical site to another, Florence and Venice (in Italy) as well as Istanbul (Turkey) as he tries to evade the Consortium and find answers to the mysteries.
Langdon's adventure always brings into the spotlight particular works of art, literature and history while he tries to solve mysteries by interpreting symbols or codes. The main literature reference in Inferno is Dante Aligheri's epic poem The Divine Comedy. With the poem, Langdon tries to solve code and symbols behind works of art that illustrate Dante's hell in The Divine Comedy, such as La Mappa dell' Inferno or The Map of Hell painting by an Italian Renaissance artist, Sandro Boticelli.
In Inferno, Langdon once again is helped by a female scientist. In Angels & Demons, we met Vittoria Vetra, scientist at CERN or European Council for Nuclear Research and in The Da Vinci Code he seeks help from cryptologist Sophie Neveu while in The Lost Symbol he is assisted by noetic scientist Katherine Solomon. In Inferno, Robert involves Sienna Brooks, a doctor who was a child genius with an IQ of 208.
Unlike The Da Vinci Code, which triggered anger from Catholics, Inferno does not create much controversy. However, this novel has caused anger in the Philippines, as it is said to depict the capital of the country, Manila as 'the gates of hell'.
Page 351-354 of the book describes Sienna's experiences in the Philippines. During her trip, Sienna says she witnessed 'horrifying' conditions: Awful traffic jam, suffocating pollution, poverty, panhandlers, pickpockets, and terrible child prostitution.
Inferno is not much different from Brown's previous novels in terms of its plot and characters. However, the novel is able to show Brown's excellent skill of incorporating historical facts, as well as interpretations of art and literature, which make Inferno an enjoyable read.
Inferno
Dan Brown
Doubleday, 2013
461 pages
