Table of contents:

Robert Langdon

The main protagonist in the story is Professor Robert Langdon. Professor Robert Langdon holds a position at Harvard University, specializing in art history and “symbology”, a fictional field that studies historical symbols without any methodological connection to the real semiotics discipline. In “The Lost Symbol,”  Robert Langdon had an adventure in Washington, DC, involving Freemasonry concepts. Robert Langdon, deceived into visiting the nation’s capital, spends twelve hours racing around the founders’ monuments and buildings, searching for the truth in the Masonic hidden society. Secrets lurk behind new doors, threatening to influence people’s perceptions of science and politics, with Robert Langdon serving as the last line of defense.

(Click here for Robert Langdon’s detailed biography.)

Peter Solomon

Peter Solomon is the Smithsonian Institution’s secretary. He has a few billion dollars in the bank. He went to Yale, and Langdon joked that his “second-rate diploma” was “the only stain on his sterling pedigree.”

Peter is a 33rd-degree mason. Katherine Solomon, his sister, is four years younger than he is. She is also the only member of his family who is still alive. They believed Zachary Solomon, his son, had passed away.

Peter gave a talk about semiotics and archetypal history at Princeton University when Robert Langdon was an undergraduate. This talk made the young Langdon interested in symbols. Langdon wrote to Peter later about how humble he was, and they became good friends. Even though Peter was only 12 years older than Langdon, he became like a father to him.

Eddie Izzard portrayed Peter in the TV show based on his novel “The Lost Symbol.” The TV show portrays Katherine as his daughter.

Isabel Solomon

The matriarch of the Solomon family, who is the mother of Peter and Katherine Solomon and the grandmother of Zachary Solomon. Mal’akh accidentally caused her death.

Katherine Solomon

Peter Solomon’s sister, Katherine Solomon, is approximately fifty years old. She had inherited her ancestors’ resilient Mediterranean skin, and even at this age, she had a smooth olive complexion. She wore almost no makeup, and her thick black hair was down and unstyled. She had gray eyes and a thin, patrician elegance like her older brother, Peter.

Katherine had never married, despite her brother’s periodic nudging and a plethora of admirers. Science had become her life mate, and her profession had proven to be more gratifying and intriguing than any guy could wish for. Katherine had no qualms.

Her chosen area, noetic science, was almost unknown when she first heard of it, but it had recently begun to open new doors of understanding into the power of the human mind.

Her two books on Noetics had established her as a pioneer in this obscure field, but the release of her most recent discoveries promised to mainstream Noetic Science worldwide.

Katherine joins Langdon as his deuteragonist halfway through the novel, after he saves her life, and assists him in solving the clues to find her brother before it’s too late.

In the 2021 television series based on “The Lost Symbol,” Valorie Curry represented Katherine, who was also Peter’s daughter and Zachary’s sibling.

Zachary Solomon

Zachary Solomon is Peter Solomon’s son. Zachary was a late bloomer, ungainly and fragile, as well as a stubborn and irate teen. Despite having a rich childhood and a genuinely loving family, the boy seems determined to distance himself from the “Solomon establishment.” He partied heavily with the “celebrate,” was expelled from prep school, and ignored his parents’ passionate attempts to provide him with loving, stern supervision. He hurt Peter’s feelings. According to Solomon family custom, Zachary received an enormous amount of the family’s dynastic wealth on his eighteenth birthday. Zachary broke away from the family as soon as he received the money, leaving the house without taking any of his stuff. A few months later, he reappeared in tabloids, chronicling Zachary’s ruined life of excess. One day, the news revealed Zachary’s imprisonment in a Turkish prison for smuggling cocaine across an Eastern European border.

Throughout the novel “The Lost Symbol,”  Zachary appears in four different personas in various situations.

1. Inmate 37

Inmate 37 was Zachary Solomon’s prisoner number when he was forced by law to stay at the brutal Soganlik Prison, outside of Istanbul, Turkey. He escaped from this prison, murdering the prison’s administrator, and went to the Greek Islands.

2. Andros Dareios

After escaping a Turkish prison, he moved to the Greek Islands. He chose the Greek name Andros Dareios—Andros means “warrior,” and Dareios means “wealthy.” He shaved his shaggy hair and avoided the drug world entirely. He started a new life. He purchased a huge villa on the Greek island of Syros. He enjoyed sailing, cliff diving, beach jogging, tanning his pale body, and reading books. He began lifting weights, and his chest and arms quickly grew larger. Andros changed himself into someone he never believed he could be—a perfect male specimen. With the help of aggressive steroid cycles, black-market growth hormones, and endless hours of weight lifting, he gained height and muscle mass. The steroids and hormones altered not just his body but also his voice box, giving him a strange, breathy whisper that added to his mystery. He imagined himself to be a masterpiece.

3. Mal’akh

4. Dr. Christopher Abaddon

To gain his father’s faith, he disguised himself as Dr. Christopher Abaddon. He looked almost aristocratic in his well-made clothes. His tall stature, broad frame, tanned complexion, and well-combed blond hair suggested that he was accustomed to luxuries rather than laboratories.

Inoue Sato

Inoue Sato is the Japanese-American director of the CIA’s Office of Security. Known as Director Sato, she is a formidable figure in her department, rarely seen yet universally feared. She is a woman who stood just four feet ten inches tall and had a bristly, stormy temperament. She is bone-thin, has jagged features, and suffers from vitiligo, which gives her skin the variegated appearance of coarse granite spotted with lichen. She had thinning hair, tobacco-stained teeth, and a disconcerting white scar that ran horizontally across her neck, a reminder of throat cancer surgery that caused her voice to become as hoarse as gravel on a blackboard. Inoue Sato had supervised the CIA’s Office of Security for over a decade. She had an IQ that was off the charts and instincts that were chillingly accurate, a combination that gave her the self-assurance to be horrifying to anyone who could not perform the impossible.

Warren Bellamy

The story portrays Warren Bellamy as the architect of the Capitol. He is lithe and slim, with an erect posture and penetrating stare that projected the assurance of a guy in complete command of his surroundings. Bellamy had been the United States Capitol’s supervisor for the previous twenty-five years.

His diction was so rigorous for a northeastern Ivy League graduate that he sounded nearly British. He pronounces his words clearly and precisely. Bellamy is a Freemason and a personal acquaintance of Peter Solomon. He makes every effort to save Peter Solomon’s secrets.

Trish Dunne

Trish Dunne, a 26-year-old redhead, worked as Katherine’s metasystems analyst and was a brilliant data modeler. She was the only other person on the planet permitted to enter Katherine’s lab, and she had signed a nondisclosure agreement for this. She is murdered by Dr. Abaddon.

Colin Galloway

The dean of the Washington National Cathedral, Reverend Dr. Colin Galloway, is a blind elderly man, stooped and withered, dressed in a modest black cassock. For many years, he was the Masonic brother of Peter Solomon and Warren Bellamy. He helped Langdon and Katherine escape the CIA.

Alfonso Nunez

Alfonso Nuez is a freshly hired security officer at the Capitol Building’s entrance. He helps Bellamy and Langdon escape from the Capitol building via a secret passage.

Trent Anderson

Trent Anderson, the chief of Capitol Police, had been in charge of security in the United States Capitol Complex for more than a decade. He was a big, square-chested man with a chiseled face and red hair who kept his hair clipped in a buzz cut, lending him a military aspect. He wore a visible sidearm as a deterrent to anyone who dared to question his authority.

Anderson spent most of his time managing his small army of police personnel from a sophisticated monitoring hub in the Capitol’s basement. Here, he led a team of technicians who monitored visual monitors, computer readouts, and a phone switchboard that connected him to the numerous security guards under his command.

Nola Kaye

Nola Kaye is the senior OS analyst at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. She works under Director Inoue Sato in a basement office deep inside the headquarters.

Mark Zoubianis

Mark Zoubianis, a systems security specialist, is a hacker—a hardcore computer nerd. Trish Dunne, Katherine’s assistant, hired him to hack into an unknown person’s system and download an internet document for Katherine.

Agent Turner Simkins

Agent Turner Simkins is the operation leader of the CIA team who was chasing Robert Langdon. Throughout the novel, he chases Langdon and Katherine.

Agent Hartmann

He was the CIA field agent who raided Mal’akh’s hideout at Kalorama Heights. He was ambushed by Mal’akh, who pierced his throat with a screwdriver. He was killed suddenly, unaware.

Pam

Pam is in her forties. Her curly blond hair peeked out from beneath a fashionable knit wool cap. She was wearing a passenger services badge and clutching a clipboard. She approached Professor Langdon on the tarmac of Dulles International Airport, greeted him enthusiastically, and offered him a ride in her car. Langdon expressed gratitude to Pam for her hospitality. 

Omar Amirana

He’s a young Arab cabbie. In his cab, he was taking Langdon and Katherine. After learning that Langdon and Catherine are fugitives, he informs the police about them, but they flee, misleading the CIA team.

Rick Parrish

He is the CIA systems security specialist, who wore bottle-bottom glasses. He became aware of the hacking attempts of Mark Zoubianis. He was trying to download a a file on  one of CIA’s internal databases, for which Katherine Solomon paid him a huge amount. Rick Parrish stops Zoubians’ attempts and informs Nola.

Jonas Faukman

He is the New York-based fictional editor of Robert Langdon. He appears in “The Da Vinci Code”, “The Lost Symbol”, and “Inferno”, typically providing Langdon with a crucial item. He doesn’t, however, show up in any of the films. His name is an anagram of Jason Kaufman, Dan Brown’s real editor.

Charles

He serves as a cab driver for Beltway Limousine. He transports Langdon from the airport to the Capitol.

INTRODUCTION THEMES AND MOTIFS CURIOSITY & SUSPENSE PLOT SUMMARY

CRITICAL OVERVIEW   STRESSFUL MOMENTS & CLIFFHANGERS

DESCRIPTIONS OF OBJECTS, PLACES, ORGANIZATIONS & PROCESSES TV SERIES ADAPTATION