THE LOST SYMBOL: Another Exercise in Telling a Story Without Characters
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Doubleday Books | 2009 | 528 pages | List price: $29.95 | Get it for less at Amazon
In Dan Brown’s THE LOST SYMBOL, the main character from his bestselling THE DA VINCI CODE, Robert Langdon, is presented with another series of puzzles to solve, another fanatic with skin issues to outrun, and another female sidekick to help him beat the odds®”but this time in Washington D.C. as opposed to Paris. While learning about ciphers, symbols and various tidbits from art history was enjoyable, on the whole THE LOST SYMBOL was more frustrating than illuminating. Brown deliberately withholds clues from the reader in order to create suspense; however, because the tactic is so obvious, the main effect he succeeds in creating is annoyance. The characters are less like portrayals of people and more like caricatures of archetypes, and the random quirks they have serve only to help push the storyline in the desired direction®”they are accessories to the plot rather than integral to its making.
Two characters are especially problematic: the FBI director Inoue Sato and the blind Reverend Colin Galloway. Brown’s portrayal of Sato unabashedly utilizes the racist and sexist “dragon lady” stereotype: not only is Sato described as a “fearsome specimen” (rather than as a human), but she has mottled granite-looking skin (which calls to mind the stony scales of dragons), yellow teeth, and occasionally puffs a cigarette®”a blatant allusion to a dragon’s fiery breath. If there did not exist the stereotype of Asian women as “dragon ladies,” this combination of quirks could have been considered character development; unfortunately, Brown isn’t writing in a vacuum, and so instead it demonstrates laziness. Galloway’s character is especially sad®”the only part of the story that he appears “just happens” to be the part in which it becomes necessary for the main characters to remember that one may “see without sight,” which, let’s face it, became an unoriginal concept after the blind prophet Tiresias made an appearance in OEDIPUS REX. Brown’s abuse of a blind character shows an appalling lack of awareness that blind people are in fact people®”and people who may not want to be defined solely by their inability to see.
If neither lack of character development, the use of gimmicks to keep the plot going, racial, gender, and ableist stereotypes don’t bother you, then you may find the story enjoyable for its symbol play and plot twists. If not, you’re probably better off reading a different book.
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