Tracing Puritan Complex In Dan Brown's Deception Point

Deception Point as map of modern American culture conceals an old concept of thought in its characters and way of life description. The old concept is imprinted by one of the American ancestors, the Puritans, who have an ultimate dream of establishing a leading 'city upon the hill' nation. The old concept remains in the collective unconsciousness of the modern Americans who are still pursuing the same old dream of establishing the leading nation. Similar to Goldmann's Hidden God, this study reveals the collective unconsciousness of the actual society in the novel. That dream of the Puritans lies in the modernity aspect that is identified by analyzing the description of the novel's characters. The modernity results from the Puritans' education and rational thinking spirit. Both of those Puritan's spirits become the basis of many Puritans society development. They also develop the current American's socio-cultural thoughts such as democracy and image of good citizens. The modern American democracy system is rooted in the Puritans' system that initiated the system of power division. Americans' images of good citizens are incorporated into the skills of being highly-educated, zealous, economical, and able to apply work ethic, all of which result from the Puritans' rational thinking and calculation spirit. All of those Puritans-originated cultural aspects are applied in the modern era by the modern characters to still pursue the Puritans' leading nation goal.The condition of intermingling process of those cultural aspects in a society cannot be evaded since this condition is natural in the structure of society where every aspect of life is developed in a multifaceted way. Every cultural aspect, which explains how modern this novel and its characters are, still refers to the values of the ancient Puritans. It blends each other in the same purpose of establishing the leading nation of America. The education and rational thinking aspects are always related to other aspects like modernity, democracy, and image of good citizens. The democracy also involves educational concern and good citizens and vice versa. This intermingling condition of the social aspects happening in the pursuit of the leading nation is the complexities existing in the novel. Those modern social thoughts, regarded as the Puritan archetype, are complex in a way that the more they are leading to the future, the more ancient they are