This week in our lit. circle for the novel The Lost Symbol, we discussed a few different things including the source of evil in the story, Mal'akh, the conflicts present for Langdon and Katherine, and what we think will happen next. Mal'akh is the antagonist of the story and all we know is that he is searching for a pyramid for some unknown purpose. In our discussions we also determined that he is planning on using it for some sort evil deed, a demonic ritual or evil tradition, we still don't know but those seem like realistic possibilities considering how crazy he is. We thought of why he would want to do such a thing but couldn't figure out why. It seems as if that answer will only be revealed much later in the novel. We also examined Katherine and Robert's situations throughout our discussion. We know that Katherine's science is so powerful that it will change the entire world when its results are revealed, and we've been getting hints that it could be legendary such as "...if enough people begin thinking the same thing...And it can have a measurable effect on our physical world.". We discussed this idea that everyone's thoughts have mass and thought of reasons why it would be important to the storyline but none of us had any real tangible ideas, so I guess we'll just have to find out eventually. Langdon was a main discussion topic as well since he's the one who can save Solomon, his discoveries so far have been amazing. We talked a lot about what could happen next with Langdon, what he'll find, solve, or come up with. We recognized Langdon's uncanny ability to bring up historical facts from deep inside his brain and use that information to figure things out, all the while under huge pressure from the fact that his best friend might die if he doesn't. His mental capacity is what's going to save Peter. We also discussed what will happen in the next part of the novel and hypothesized that Katherine and Langdon will continue to solve codes and decipher messages...etc and meet Mal'akh sometime soon because of it.
In the two discussions we had this week, I think we did a good job of building off each others' ideas, especially since with only three of us there, we could have more time to discuss our ideas as well. For this week, I think we will do even better because we will have our entire group present but we can still improve on asking more questions and delving deeper into the many layers of the novel which will lead to a richer discussion.
