Vatican City And Rome In Our Story example essay topic

Name: John Doe Period: 1 Date: 3/14/05 Title of the book: Angels and Demons Author: Dan Brown Year original book was published: 2000 Four words to describe the author: Cosmopolitan, Witty, Articulate, Sophisticated Characters in the book: The Hassassin: Strong, Merciless Commander Olivetti: Disciplined, Stubborn The Camerlengo / Janus: Deceitful, Powerful Cardinal Morta ti: Fortunate, Patient Robert Langdon: Clever, Cautious Leonardo Vetra: Humanitarian, Loving Victoria Vetra: Gorgeous, Dangerous Maximilian Kohler: Cold, Ruthless Setting of the book: This novel takes place during present times, but has several historical facts dating back several hundred years. The setting takes place from Harvard University in Massachusetts to Rome, Italy where Vatican City is located. The story takes place from underground tunnel systems and secret society dungeons and lairs, to the inside of famous architectural feats such as the Vatican Archives. Was the setting very important or not so important to the events of the story?

Yes, the setting was absolutely crucial for this novels plot and storyline. With the entire story devoted to the Catholicism and its root of power, Vatican City had to be the setting for this exciting novel. Without Vatican City and Rome in our story, the most critical details would have been forgotten. Without factual settings and places to help build and construct the thrilling and action packed scenes, the reader would have difficulty following along with this fast pace trek. What is the main conflict in the book?

There were three major conflicts in this novel, all of equal importance to the stories plot. With the Anti-Matter device threatening to blow up Vatican City and half of Rome, the Illuminati Hassassin kidnapping cardinals, leaving them for dead on the eve of "conclave", and trying to keep everything from the public gives this book multiple conflicts. How was this conflict resolved? The conflict is resolved when Robert and Victoria are no longer able to save anymore Cardinals lives, but follow the suspected Hassassin. When they reach him, Victoria is captured and Commander Olivetti is murdered.

When Robert follows the Hassassin and frees Victoria, killing the Hassassin in the process, they return to Vatican City and the Camerlengo. With the Camerlengo's help, they are are able to locate the Anti-Matter device and save Vatican City. While in the process of removing the Anti-Matter, the lives of tens of thousands of spectators and visitors are spared, as they would not move before when the idea of their bodies being vaporized was announced. Two reasons I would recommend this book: I feel that this novel gives a real grip on how early Catholicism and Christianity was created from a different and less looked upon perspective. Also, this is a very exciting, action packed story with a terrific plot and character thought ups. I believe that this will catch the attention and curiosity of the reader with the authors fantastic use of detail and imaginations.

With the help of obscure and lesser known interesting facts of infamous pieces of art and structure throughout Europe, I believe this novel to be a success with younger and older readers. Dan Browns sophisticatedly gives way to a whole new world of underground secret societies and well known and documented art where the only option is to open your eyes and let your mind explore a world teeming below the everyday surface. Angels and Demons starts with Langdon awakened one day by cryptic caller whom he thinks is an admirer. After hanging up, Langdon gets a fax from the same mysterious person, which is a photo of a dead man with an cryptic message carved into his chest that reads "Illuminati". Langdon, after hearing this new news, is by now wide awake. Having for years studied The Illuminati, a secret cult, and having thought them to be by now extinct, Langdon is amazed at the carving in the flesh.

Answering the fax-call back, he is introduced to Maximilian Kohler, the director of CERN. CERN is an international group of scientists based in Switzerland. They are from many countries around the globe, and they are encouraged to create and explore the limits of scientific investigation. One of the CERN scientists is the dead man in the photograph and director Kohler was the one to find the body. Rather than contacting the Swiss police or Interpol, he takes the unusual step of first contacting Robert Langdon.

Kohler persuades Langdon to come to CERN headquarters in Switzerland in under an hour by means of a new plane they have developed that moves at incredibly speed. When Robert arrives, Kohler turns to Langdon for some answers concerning the Illuminati, because Langdon has established himself an a authority on the secret group. The Illuminati "The Enlightened Ones", we are informed, were a group of somewhat worldly scientists who secretly grouped together to share ideas when they were outlawed by a paranoid and close-minded Church in the days of the famous heliocentric scientist Galileo Galilee. Considered heretics, the Illuminati had to meet under the radar, so-to-speak, of The Church.

Unfettered science was a no-no in those days. Legend had it that The Illuminati had never been completely disbanded and for centuries had remained alive but underground, infiltrating the likes of the Masonic Temple and banking, taking positions of power behind the scenes. Knowing that their time to strike Catholicism and the Vatican at the heart was of the essence, they decided to come out to the public. When the murder victim's daughter, another CERN-ish scientist named Vittoria Vetra returns to CERN to find out more about her father's death, she is questioned by Kohler about the research she and her father were doing.

What she tells is a secret that she and her father shared with no one as they attempted to prove that the big bang theory of creation and the religious version of creation could have been one and the same. While one argued that everything was created from nothing, science argued by the laws of physics that something could not be created from nothing. The anti-matter Vittoria (who is also a yoga-master, a fact whose implications are somewhat amorously humorous, as we find out in the last part of the book) and her father created was an unstable powerful force that they held in check with the usage of an electromagnetic field they had discovered. This type of canister would hold a microscopic amount in an electromagnetic field so that it couldn't come into contact with anything and explode Only one special canister contained a larger amount, visible to the naked eye, has now gone missing. Vittoria and Robert travel to the Vatican in an attempt to help find the canister (before it... explodes!) and bring all things dark into the illumination, so-to-speak. They get to The Vatican just in the nick of time- it is about to be closed since the papal election is about to start- but they do get in.

The horror of it is-should the anti-matter canister explode, the entire upper echelon of the Catholic Church would be wiped out in an instant. Brown's conjecture here is that so would a lot of the wealth of the Catholic Church, because all those rumored "treasures of the Vatican" would be vaporized in the fireball. And then, with the deaths of a lot of Catholic Church leaders gathered in Europe, and the erasure of a lot of the Catholic Church's money, it would he only a matter of hours before the church would all fall apart like a big house of cards, and then, presumably, would all the Protestant and Independent churches all come tumbling down, and Christianity would Be No More. Meanwhile, back at the Rancho-de-Vaticano, helped by the Swiss Guard, Robert and Vittoria do their best to solve the riddles and right the wrongs... before it is too late.