Silas: Villain or Victim?

Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code has received a lot of press lately. There was the trial over usage of other books. The controversy over whether the book represents theory as fact. A little known controversy is over Silas, one of the main villains in the film.

People with albinism are upset at the stereotyping of them through Silas. They feel Brown used his condition as a way to make Silas more sinister. Check out this article from the London Free Press: http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/Today/Entertainment/2006/05/17/pf-1583954.html

The flashbacks in the film don’t provide as much detail that the book does. The story behind him is that, tormented for his skin color, Silas turned to violence although he probably never wanted to. Torn by his actions, he was lead to God and the scriptures by the bishop of Opus Dei. The bishop manipulates Silas’s talent for killing to help him get to the secret of the Priory of Scion.

The question is, does the audience go away with the idea that albinism leads to corrupt moral character?

I don’t think so. I don’t believe that Silas’s albinism is really what makes him evil, so much as how the world treated him. Being treated as less than human led to his violent rage, and his intense loyalty to those who didn’t have his best interest at heart. I believe the self mutilation was an inward hatred of what he had done in his life. The lack of pigmentation isn’t what set this in motion – it was how the world he lived in treated him.

And that should be a warning to all of us, a warning that isn’t directly made in the film. Silas tragically dies running for his life and accidentally killing the bishop. The true tragedy happened much earlier when the world would not learn about who he was simply because of the lack of color on his skin.