Analysis of "angels and Demons"

Ramon San Jose

May. 2, 2005

Period-4

Showers

SSR Analysis

1.) The main setting takes place in the beautiful, elegant, religious, Vatican City. The story pretty spread out throughout the Vatican in churches, especially St. Peter's Basilica, museums, the pope's hidden passageways, offices, and a lot of other interesting places. Vatican City is a beautiful city where an abundant amount of faithful living Catholics are located. This city is also where Christianity originated. In the middle of the entire city lies the most famous church in the entire world, St. Peter's Basilica. St. Peters is where a lot of important plot factors happen, so it is an important part of the novel. Also, there are an abundant amount of sculptures and artistic works of art across the Vatican, which are important to the story also. The atmosphere of the story is like a wave. The mood rises until it falls, then retreats back, and right as you think the novel is over, the mood rises again and finally drops. The novel is basically a suspense novel because of the different effects of the mood.

2.) The setting was a perfect match for the novel because of the topic choice for the plot. It is about the Illuminati brotherhood, an anti-christian group, coming back by making a big entrance by killing four cardinals and the whole Vatican City. In the old days, the Illuminati had used symbology to recruit new members to prevent them from being caught by the Vatican. They guided them to four churches and called it the Path of Illumination. These four churches were used again as a location to kill the four cardinals. The characters used symbology from sculptures, old written documents from scientists, churches, and old sayings to go from church to church. The setting helps the characters become closer to stopping the cardinals from being massacred by giving artistic works of art for symbology. The novel gains interesting factors from this setting because all the sculptures and churches fit exactly into the characters thoughts and beliefs of where to go next.

3.) The novel "Angels and Demons" is told in the third person. The narrator gives the reader the feeling of being near the characters or even next to them from details and thoughts. It makes them an invisible ghost following the characters through their journey. Telling the novel in third person gives the advantage of a more flexible storyline. The author can control scene changes to another person or place and give out more details or interesting information. Also, the third person point of view can let the reader invade the characters minds by telling them their thoughts, beliefs, and opinions. For example, if a complex situation has risen, this point of view can give the reader various options on which the situation can be handled. Another advantage of third person is that the author can give details and information that other point of views cannot, causing the reader to have a futuristic thought of what might happen next.

4.) The protagonist of the novel is Robert Langdon. He is an intelligent college professor that teaches symbology. He is the type of person that is bright and smart, but lacks the strength and aggressiveness. Robert loves symbology and is fascinated about the amount of symbols in the world that people see as just something in their daily life. He always loves to learn more about science, religion, symbols, or anything that interests him. In the story, his strengths are that he is a symbology teacher and that he has the intelligent mind to find certain symbols rapidly to move further and further in the Path of Illumination. Another one of his strengths is that he thinks quickly in situations where the necessity to act fast is needed. Like any other story or novel, the intelligent person is always considered weak, scrawny and lacks the ability to fight well or use weapon effectively. Robert is similar to that stereotype except for the fact that he is well built from swimming laps every day.

5.) The Illuminati is a brotherhood that is against Christianity, they are anti-christians and the Vatican thought they were the most dangerous anti-christian group in the world. In order to prevent themselves from being revealed, they created the Path of Illumination to recruit new members. The Path of Illumination is made of all symbols scattered across the Vatican leading to four churches which will finally lead to the church of Illumination, the Illuminati headquarters. Robert mostly used his abilities as a symbology teacher to locate each church and stop the antagonist from killing a cardinal. Finding the antagonist was crucial not because of the life of a cardinal, but because the antagonist knew the location of the antimatter (antimatter is matter's opposite, if the antimatter comes in contact with matter it is obliterated). Robert used his symbology to solve what I thought might be unsolvable to other symbologists like him. In some parts, Robert had lady luck on his side and dodged death. Just like regular people such as students and teachers at Moreau Catholic, they sometimes have no other choice but to rely on luck.

6.) The main conflict of the novel is that an Illuminatus stole the antimatter from CERN (Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire) and hid it inside Vatican City. The antimatter is stored in a canister which lies on a console which continually charges the battery powered magnetic field that prevents the antimatter from touching matter. When this canister is taken off the console, the battery can live for twenty-four hours. In the novel, the church had just recently lost their pope and are about to start conclave to elect a new pope. Another conflict is that the Illuminatus will kill four cardinals who are the likely candidates for the next pope. The Illuminati wanted to reveal themselves with a bang, and they decided to reveal themselves by killing the preferiti, the four cardinals that were the best candidates to become the new pope.

7.) The story starts off with Robert Langdon awakening from a dream by a phone call by Maximilian Kohler, the director of CERN. The phone call was concerning the murder of Leonardo Vetra with an ambigram of the word Illuminati charred onto the victim's chest. Then Robert flew over to CERN and educated Kohler of the knowledge he knew of about the brotherhood, the Illuminati. Moments after, Leonardo Vetra's adopted daughter, Vittoria Vetra arrived wanting to see her father. Kohler told her she couldn't in order for CERN reputation to stay at a high level. Then Kohler and Langdon filled her in with the Illuminati and asked her what they might have stolen from CERN. Vittoria