The document summarizes key symbols in Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code. It discusses how red hair, blood, cell phones, the chalice/holy grail, and the pentagram are used symbolically. Red hair represents Sophie Neveu's divine bloodline. Blood stands for truth and enlightenment. Cell phones symbolize how secrets are both easier and harder to keep in the modern world. The chalice/holy grail and pentagram are symbols that are part of the novel's plot about the possibility of Jesus being married to Mary Magdalene.

1. Symbolism in Da Vinci
code
DHARABA GOHIL
Roll no: 7
Semester : 4
Enrollment no.: 2609108420170011
Batch : 2016- 18
Paper no: 13 The new Literature
Smt. S. B. Gardi. Dept. of English

2. About Dan Brown’s Da vinci code
• The Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery
thriller novel by Dan Brown.
• It follows "symbolists" Robert Langdon
and cryptologist Sophie Neveu after a
murder in the Louvre Museum in Paris
causes them to become involved in a
battle between the Priory of Sion and
Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus
Christ having been a companion to Mary
Magdalene.
• The title of the novel refers to the finding
of the first murder victim in the Grand
Gallery of the Louvre, naked and posed
similar to Leonardo da Vinci's famous
drawing, the Vitruvian Man, with a cryptic
message written beside his body and a
pentagram drawn on his chest in his own
blood.

3. What is symbolism?
• Symbols help to associate and connect things
with ideas or concepts. Sometimes,
representing an idea with a physical object
communicates more meaning than explaining
the idea itself.
• In writing, an author may not want to directly
state a concept. He may just want to represent
that idea with something else.

4. Symbols of Da vinci code
• Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors
used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
• Red hair
• Blood
• Cell phones
• Chalice or holy grail
• The pentagram
• Last supper
• Rose

6. Red hair
• Sophie neveu’s red hair,
mentioned at the beginning of
the text, foreshadows her divine
blood.
• When Langdon first sees Sophie,
he calls her hair “burgundy” and
thinks that her attractiveness lies
in her confidence and health.
• By the end of the novel, when
Sophie’s brother gives a tour of
the Rosslyn Chapel and his hair is
described as “strawberry blonde,”
we understand that Sophie and
her brother are of Mary
Magdalene’s bloodline.

8. Blood
• Blood stands for truth and
enlightenment in The Da Vinci Code.
• Sauniere draws a pentacle—for him,
a symbol of the Church’s intention to
cover up the true history of the
world—on his stomach in his own
blood.
• Sophie realizes that her grandfather
has left a message for her on the
Mona Lisa because a drop of his
blood remains on the floor.
• Silas himself had thought of blood as
truth in a different way—for Silas,
blood means cleansing of impurities.
• And at the very end of the novel, the
discovery of the blood of Mary
Magdalene running through Sophie
and her brother’s veins proves that
the story of the Grail is true.

11. Cell phone
• the cell phone symbolizes the fact that in the modern
world, secrets are both harder and easier to keep.
• Teabing conceals his identity as the Teacher by using
cell phones to communicate with his unknowing allies.
• Fache, for example, at one point figures out that
Sophie has tipped Langdon off by looking up her phone
number, which is stored in his cell phone, and finding
that it matches the number Sophie gave Langdon as
the American Embassy’s number.

12. http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/davincicode/symbols/
http://www.gradesaver.com/the-da-vinci-code/study-guide/themes
https://www.shmoop.com/the-da-vinci-code/
Bibliography