![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Jan. 6th, 2004 12:08 pmOkay, the holidays are over, and I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. While on vacation, I finished The Golden Compass, as well as the rest of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. All in all, it was a very interesting series. I certainly liked it, it was very enjoyable to read, but I had a few problems with it as well. On the surface, the books were great: fast-paced, adventurous, great characters, complex story line, unexpected twists, etc. The problems come in when you look a little deeper and try to examine the ideas that underlie the series. Somehow, the themes don't quite seem to hang together.
The biggest problem in this regard is the religious aspect of the trilogy. Pullman seems to be very anti-religious, and yet there are certain ways in which he echoes very traditional Christian/Catholic themes. The whole point of the series seems to be Lord Asriel's war against god (or The Authority, as he's known in the books), and Pullman uses some pretty strong anti-religious language, notably when he explains how The Authority is actually an impostor angel who has set himself up as the creator and when Mary Malone explains how she realized the futility of the self-denial she endured as a nun. Now, I'm not offended by these sentiments, in fact I agree with a lot of Pullman's ideas about the stupidity of the repressive aspects of religion. However, I can't quite figure out how this works with certain other aspects of the book. The ending of it all, after all, is an ending that emphasizes the necessity of self-denial and of giving up love, particularly physical love. Also, the role of the subtle knife seems strange, given Pullman's feeling about religion. The knife is an instrument of knowledge, created out of human knowledge in order to serve and increase human knowledge. And yet it proves to be the thing that is at the root of the undoing of humanity. Is this not a little bit reminiscent of the story of the Garden of Eden? And He comes right out and says that Lyra is Eve, and that she will be tempted as Eve was, and there's that whole bit with the red fruit and all, so it's rather obvious, but Pullman seems to be saying that her being tempted and falling to temptation is a good thing, it's her essential humanity, and it's what is needed to save the world. And yet the subtle knife, which seems to have many of the same qualities of the the apple, is bad and must be destroyed. Doesn't really make sense.
I also can't really figure out how the war against The Authority and the storyline about Dust are related to each other. Everything about Dust is presented in such a quasi-scientific, quasi-religious jumble that it's very hard for me to make heads or tails of it.
The good thing about these books is that these problems don't impede the enjoyment of the story. I still found myself swept up in Lyra's adventures, brokenhearted over the situation with Lyra and Will, surprised by the twists of the plot, and all that good stuff. I just wish that Pullman had more thoroughly thought through the themes behind the books.
I feel that this had been a very rambling entry, but that's because I'm primarily using it as a means of working out my own highly jumbled thoughts about these books.
Right now I'm reading The Birthday of the World by Ursula K. LeGuin. It's a collection of short stories, of which I have read two or three so far, all of which have been quite good. It's a pleasure to return to her wonderful style and her thorough thoughtfulness.
The biggest problem in this regard is the religious aspect of the trilogy. Pullman seems to be very anti-religious, and yet there are certain ways in which he echoes very traditional Christian/Catholic themes. The whole point of the series seems to be Lord Asriel's war against god (or The Authority, as he's known in the books), and Pullman uses some pretty strong anti-religious language, notably when he explains how The Authority is actually an impostor angel who has set himself up as the creator and when Mary Malone explains how she realized the futility of the self-denial she endured as a nun. Now, I'm not offended by these sentiments, in fact I agree with a lot of Pullman's ideas about the stupidity of the repressive aspects of religion. However, I can't quite figure out how this works with certain other aspects of the book. The ending of it all, after all, is an ending that emphasizes the necessity of self-denial and of giving up love, particularly physical love. Also, the role of the subtle knife seems strange, given Pullman's feeling about religion. The knife is an instrument of knowledge, created out of human knowledge in order to serve and increase human knowledge. And yet it proves to be the thing that is at the root of the undoing of humanity. Is this not a little bit reminiscent of the story of the Garden of Eden? And He comes right out and says that Lyra is Eve, and that she will be tempted as Eve was, and there's that whole bit with the red fruit and all, so it's rather obvious, but Pullman seems to be saying that her being tempted and falling to temptation is a good thing, it's her essential humanity, and it's what is needed to save the world. And yet the subtle knife, which seems to have many of the same qualities of the the apple, is bad and must be destroyed. Doesn't really make sense.
I also can't really figure out how the war against The Authority and the storyline about Dust are related to each other. Everything about Dust is presented in such a quasi-scientific, quasi-religious jumble that it's very hard for me to make heads or tails of it.
The good thing about these books is that these problems don't impede the enjoyment of the story. I still found myself swept up in Lyra's adventures, brokenhearted over the situation with Lyra and Will, surprised by the twists of the plot, and all that good stuff. I just wish that Pullman had more thoroughly thought through the themes behind the books.
I feel that this had been a very rambling entry, but that's because I'm primarily using it as a means of working out my own highly jumbled thoughts about these books.
Right now I'm reading The Birthday of the World by Ursula K. LeGuin. It's a collection of short stories, of which I have read two or three so far, all of which have been quite good. It's a pleasure to return to her wonderful style and her thorough thoughtfulness.
