Digital Farce: How David Becker Makes a Joke of Dan Brown

Dan Brown, Digital Fortress (1998)

In Digital Fortress, Dan Brown explores the role of government in technological advancement and private communication. In advancing ideas of the role of government in this realm, Brown creates a series of characters that work on or with the NSA’s cryptology team, or “code-breakers” as they’re commonly referred to. Most of these characters are only reference points, without any depth or future reference; there are four exceptions to this lack of character development, with the lead male character, David Becker being the deepest character of them all. Even for being the deepest character of the book, Brown wrote David to be a shell to carry the overarching plot points and message he wanted to get across without ever giving the character any background or motivation(s) for the actions and decisions made throughout the book; and by writing a very generic character, Brown allows the reader to see that character as themselves while also giving just enough strong attributes to make the reader feel good about themselves.

First, to emphasize that David Becker is the deepest character and the author isn’t just picking a bone with Brown, a comparison of the other lead characters is in order. The other three characters that Brown gives any depth to are Susan Fletcher (David’s girlfriend and arguably the main character of the story), Trevor Strathmore (Susan’s boss with the NSA & David’s project manager for his side work with the NSA), Greg Hale (Susan’s coworker). Greg Hale is the easiest to dismiss as being the deepest as he only appears in the mid-late chapters as a potential antagonist and nemesis for our heroes Susan, Trevor, and David. The only depth Hale is given is to explain his role with the NSA and what other characters he associates with, as well as information on how he was given his job there relating to winning a code breaking contest that was sponsored by a privacy advocate group that often butts heads with the NSA over policy. This setup doesn’t give much, if any depth to Greg Hale, but gives enough information in context to purposely lead the reader into believing Hale may be the “bad guy.”

Trevor has a little more information given than Hale does to let you know him, but he’s just a generic stereotype: “Strathmore, the fifty-six year old deputy director of operations, was like a father to Susan. He was the one who hired her, and he was the one who’d made the NSA her home” (Brown 31). Strathmore was known for his abilities to act without remorse for the common good (Brown 32). Strathmore is “a patriot, a visionary” (Brown 32), and a man that has fallen for his female employee (Brown 437). At first glance Strathmore may see to be full of depth, but once one looks deeper and realizes that this explains the entire character and all of his motivations, Strathmore too is revealed to be quite lacking in depth beyond a generic stereotype.

Susan Fletcher as the main character has a little more depth, but only insomuch as she relates to the other characters. For the most part this depth is irrelevant and meaningless as the characters that she’s being related to are meaningless to the overall plot, but her relationships to David and Strathmore provide the bulk of her depth, background, and motivation. However, in the story she is static, only interacting with a small handful of characters and reference points as she operates almost entirely from within her office throughout the entire story. Every non-character reference or relationship is a reference to how much she likes breaking codes or how good she is at breaking codes. While this singular and recurring reference helped strengthen the drama as the reader waits for her to break the code at the center of the plot, it doesn’t help endear the reader to the character.

Which leaves only David, the lead male protagonist, as the character with depth. David, like Susan, has most of his depth built around his various interactions with other characters. Most of his depth is tied into Susan as Brown builds up their relationship and sets it where David is thinking about proposing to her, discusses how they met, and frequently has each worrying about the other. David, unlike Susan, travels in the book and runs into numerous other characters that all allow for more information on David and his motives to be described.

For his background information David’s character is built on a series of quotes over the first few chapters and a couple of flashbacks over the final few chapters. The bulk of these quotes focus on generic descriptions of David. Summarizing a series of these quotes gives the basic details as: “a rugged, youthful thirty-five with sharp green eyes and a matching wit” (Brown 8) that sees David as “the youngest full professor at Georgetown University” (Brown 8) and with a love of languages that has David “delivering standing room only lectures on etymology and linguistics” (Brown 8), and “practically a celebrity in his field” (Brown 8). The next series of quotes describing David and who he is paint him “as close to perfect as [Susan] could imagine” (Brown 17). Describing David as athletic, humorous, and chivalrous to go along with smart and handsome: “at six feet tall, Becker moved across a squash court faster than any of his colleagues could comprehend” (Brown 8); “there was nothing that David couldn’t twist into a joke” (Brown 14) and with an “outdated sense of chivalry” (Brown 18); Brown then summarizes who David is for the reader as, “he was ideal. He was compassionate, smart, funny, and best of all, he had a sincere interest in [Susan’s] work” (Brown 18).

With this background information the reader is given a character that is purposefully vague and generic; a character that is easily relatable and that make the reader feel good about relating to David’s character. By making David an ideal and nearly perfect character without any flaws Brown gives us a generic shell that can be related to by most any reader. Brown gives David an interest in a generic sport that any athletic readers will feel like they can also be competitive at and paints him as youthful so younger readers can relate, but gives him an age of thirty-five, so that older readers can also relate, even if only as a memory. If the specifics aren’t enough to get a reader to relate to the character, the summary Brown provides is vague enough that most readers will be able to latch on to one or more trait (smart, funny, and interested in his girlfriend). Not only does this vagueness and wide range of interests make David easily relatable, but the flawlessness in which he is described and even attributed (“nearly ideal,” “close to perfect,” etc) makes the reader feel good about identifying with David because he is described in such vague terms that the reader can project their image of ideal and perfect. Along with David’s vague description of “rugged,” “handsome,” and around six-feet tall (the average male height), this ability to project themselves into David’s looks as well makes the reader feel good about themselves in that regard as well.

However, David, as a character, even a main character, is rather unimportant to the story. In a good story that captures the reader’s imagination and heart, if the main character is taken out of the story, the story becomes irrelevant. However, in this book, the story stays the same. David is just the vessel used to tell the tale; a tale that could just as easily be told without him or through any number of other characters. David’s purpose, as a plot vessel, is only to serve a threefold goal: David provides drama, conflict, and resolution (while the plot unfolds around him; with or without him).

It is with the first of these three purposes that the bulk of David’s exposure to the reader occurs. David is found in one dramatic and unrealistic situation after another. Beginning with the very side project (recovering a ring in which the key to cracking a code is engraved) the NSA assigned the language specialist to complete to begin with, the drama starts right off. Along the way David’s contact is murdered before he gets to meet him (Brown 55), he gets entangled with a prostitute and a large German man (Brown 168), ends up at punk concert (Brown 243), in a motorcycle chase (Brown 379), a Jason Bourne like escapade through the streets of Spain (Brown 405), and a gunfight (Brown 421). Almost every segment featuring David is filled with drama colorfully described characters so as to keep the reader distracted from the emptiness that is David. The portions of the book with David are all fast-paced and action heavy, offering little time for reflection or question.

Though David is not directly involved, through implication he is strongly involved, in what ultimately amounts to the large conflict in the Brown’s book. David and Strathmore are pitted against each other as rivals for Susan’s affections. David is described through the whole book as Susan’s boyfriend, but Strathmore is also described as being close to Susan and as someone who spends a large amount of time with her. Which is why near the end of the book, after many hints throughout, when Brown reveals the twist that Strathmore is in love with Susan (Brown 516), it is of no surprise to see him pitted against David and providing the books major conflict that sees David fulfill his second purpose. David provides conflict, but conflict that would have better served the story if the conflict were centered more around the plot and not just existing for the sake of conflict. Brown could have easily added in conflict related to the topic of the book and entered in some points of reference from the oft cited rights advocacy group against the NSA and their point of view on governmental communication monitoring and privacy, but that would have made the book too political and alienated some of his readers, so it is left vague and generic and with unrelated conflict.

The one purpose David has that actually does serve the plot in some fashion is his final purpose of providing resolution. Granted, this was done in cheesy manner that invalidated much of the background information given for both David and Susan, but at least David did have one meaningful purpose to the story. Right at the end, David — who has been described countless times by Brown as not being very good at cryptology — solves a very simple code that stumped several of the NSA’s top cryptologists, including Susan, who Brown continually touted as “the best.” Whether it was writing in a stroke of luck or trying to give the reader a surprise ending, Brown creates a situation that is contrary to the characters he has spent over 500 pages not developing beyond these simple terms of “Susan cracks codes” and “David’s one flaw is that he doesn’t crack codes.” So David gets to provide final resolution to the story, but at the cost of making a farce out of the already weakly written book.

Dan Brown disappoints with Digital Fortress as he wrote lazy characters and didn’t write or develop characters with any background or motivation for their actions and decisions. Specifically, Brown’s lead characters, including David Becker, are nothing more than generic, “feel-good,” characters that serve as nothing more than empty shells to carry out the main plot arc while allowing the reader to identify themselves with the character. David’s like a rhinestone, shiny on the outside, but there is nothing real about him once his character is examined closer.

”David’s like a rhinestone, shiny on the outside, but there is nothing real about him once his character is examined closer.”