The Lost Essay

1621 words - 7 pages

Rarely is there a book such as Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, where you will find just the sheer number of conflicts within one piece literary work. These are not just simple problems either but multiple, complex things that involve multiple people and do not get solved in just a page or two. These conflicts are quite possibly the most intriguing and the most difficult kind to get through; these are conflicts of the mind. These are not your physical, quite possibly violent conflicts that you see when it is man against man or some other variation of that. These conflicts are the ones where you will face the greatest adversary that you possibly could – yourself. Although there are some conflicts that do involve physical contact with a person and the outside world, the main conflict that the main character deals with throughout the book goes on inside his mind.
The story follows the main character Robert Langdon, who has played major roles in Dan Brown’s other novels The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons. Although he is the main character in the novel, the book switches viewpoints between three major characters; the other two being Katherine Solomon and Mal’akh. These characters all become very intertwined although none of them, except for maybe Mal’akh, would have known that when the novel starts. The entire book revolves around the Lost Symbol that is supposedly hidden in Washington D.C. and it grants infinite power to the person who can find and unravel its mysteries. It is around this mythical symbol that all the conflicts within the novel circle around.
A major conflict that starts near the very beginning is a conflict that is physical, it is man versus time. Sadly, in almost every conflict time is on the side of the “bad” guy; the good guy is always racing against a deadline that seems near impossible to meet but the good guy almost always seems to pull through in the end. This conflict goes on throughout basically the entire book; which really attests to the skill of the author because this six hundred plus page book takes place in only about twelve hours or so when it seems like it should take days. The level of detail that is required to write like that is just incredible really showing that Dan Brown is an excellent author. This conflict pits the main character, Robert Langdon, against the clock so that he can save his best friend Peter Solomon who is in grave danger. “ ‘I’ve already taken what I need from Peter Solomon. But for his sake, I suggest you provide what I need from you. Time is of the essence… for both of you. I suggest you find the portal and unlock it. Peter will point the way’” (Brown 48). This is a bit from a call that Mal’akh made to Robert in the beginning of the book. It states right there that time is a very important factor in the whole scheme of things. It ends up being something that Langdon and Katherine are battling against throughout most of the book.
Katherine also deals with a rather physical conflict,...

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