Pedagogical Technique in Brown’s The Da Vinci Code Contrasted With Gaarder’s Sophie’s World

Abstract

This article is a comparative and critical study, presenting Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code in relation to Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s World. The pedagogical matter in Sophie’s World is quite clear, nonetheless, this paper displays the possibility of pedagogy in The Da Vinci Code as well. Both novels contain a form of historical facts and philosophical knowledge with the purpose of educating the audiences. This article aims to analyze The Da Vinci Code and Sophie’s World from a pedagogical perspective in which Brown highlights a variety of notions when analyzing historical facts, to teach or explain to the woman Sophie, things which the reader comes to realize, are strongly desired for her to understand. This helps to display the types of sources of information people have access to nowadays. Gaarder also uses a unique technique to simplify different and difficult ideologies to be easily acquired by readers. Moreover, this paper intends to find answers to the questions of whether Gaarder has succeeded in keeping readers engaged in the imaginary story ‘Sophie’s World’ or whether the pedagogical narration impacts their engagement. There may be a constraint in how far Gaarder can use the pedagogical teaching in his novel. The authors force rhetorical style throughout the novels. This scholastic approach highlights a clear and effective explanation but this seems to take readers directly back to their role as students, which is quite passive. These philosophical interpretations might take readers out of the novel and show that the passage between imaginative and pedagogical teaching is more complex than it appears. Brown, in his novel The Da Vinci Code, uses a conspiracy thriller as a subgenre of thriller fiction to show philosophical interpretations of historical facts.