by erin thursby scopes1925@msn.com
Just a few weeks ago I got a panicked email about Phillip Pullman’s trilogy, His Dark Materials. It was from the same folks who once emailed me about the dangers of the Harry Potter series to the Christian faith, so I wasn’t going to take it too seriously. Still, I did some research and read the books. And I have to say—those Christian alarmists were actually right about this one. The ideas contained in the fantasies would have been enough to have Pullman burned at the stake for heresy, back when Christians did that sort of thing.
There’s a strong sense of morality in his series, but there’s a sympathy for the devil that can’t be denied. Pullman himself has acknowledged that many of his ideas come from the sometimes heretical works of Milton’s Paradise Lost. But Pullman chooses to invert Milton’s war between heaven and hell. Pullman has claimed that His Dark Materials aren’t atheistic.
The main character in all three books is Lyra. She’s an orphan and an excellent liar, but she’s good at heart. She lives in a world parallel to ours, where the human soul is embodied by a separate animal called a daemon, which accompanies each human. She travels to the North with an armored polar bear and gyptians (water gypsies of her world) after a friend is kidnapped by the mysterious Gobblers, who have been taking children away for gruesome experiments in order to study a substance called Dust.
Lyra walks through a doorway and finds an alternate world. There, she meets a boy named Will Parry, a traveler from our own world who has reason to hide in the empty city of Cittàgazze in this strange specter-filled world. He becomes the wielder of the Subtle Knife. One side can cut any matter; the other can create windows to other worlds. Using the knife, she and Will travel between worlds in a quest to find Will’s missing father and to get Lyra’s golden compass from the wily man who stole it from her. Lyra and Will’s importance in the war between God and the rebel angels becomes clearer in this book.
In the Subtle Knife, Mary Malone discovers what part she has to play in the fight between the Authority and the rebel angels. Following instruction she receives, she waits for Lyra and Will in a wondrous world, fashioning an Amber Spyglass to study the mysterious Dust. Meanwhile, Lyra decides she must travel to the world of the dead to save a friend. All the while, the war between the Authority and the rebellious angels rages (along with a ragtag army lead by Lyra’s father, Lord Asriel), finally coming to a conclusion in this book.
If you’re a conservative Christian, should you forbid your children from reading this series? No, because if you forbid them and they pick up the books, it will confirm the ideas contained in the pages – that authority wants to stifle any ideas outside their own rigid laws of faith. Rather, you should read the books with your kids and talk about the ideas and themes.
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