Pullman's "Dark Materials" as Allegory
Leonard F. Wheat
Philip Pullman's "Dark Materials" trilogy. I replied that Pullman is
using the sad ending for a symbolic purpose. He is saying that bliss
(symbolized by a future life with Will, or bliss) cannot be found in
another world (Will's world, a figurative heaven) promised by God but
must be found in our own world. I noted that Pullman's story
displayed what is called "allegorical tendency," or occasional
allusion to an antecedent work or idea. But I was undecided about
whether full-fledged allegory was present. Now I have had a chance to
reread Pullman's three volumes, study them, and search out the
symbolism. All sorts of symbolism that I thought might be present but
didn't originally see has come to light. There can no longer be any
doubt that the Dark Materials trilogy qualifies as full-fledged
allegory.
To understand Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy, you must understand
why it was written. Pullman is an atheist who is highly critical of
C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (LWW) and
companion books in Lewis's seven-volume Narnia series. Lewis was a
Christian apologist who wrote nonfiction as well as fiction books
having Christian themes and philosophy. The Narnia books, the first
in particular, are children's books on one level but deliver a
religious message on another level.
Pullman decided to write his own series of two-level children's books
to counter Lewis's Narnia books. In the Pullman books, God is evil
and effete; he ultimately dies. The church leaders are also evil.
The churches suppress knowledge, replacing it with religious
superstition. The worst of these superstitions is belief in
supernatural salvation – heaven. The heroine, Lyra, ultimately learns
that there is no Kingdom of Heaven, no other world of eternal bliss.
We must create our heaven, a Republic of Heaven, in this world, during
our lifetimes.
THE NARNIA CONNECTION
I haven't read any of the Narnia books, but I have read about them on
various occasions. A brief summary of LWW and Lewis's theological
objectives provides insight into Pullman's counter-objectives. (I
used Google to brush up on the details.) Four siblings are playing in
a house when one of them discovers that a wardrobe (closet) leads to
the magical land of Narnia. Talking animals inhabit Narnia. They are
ruled by an evil White Witch, who represents Satan. (In Lewis's Mere
Christianity, which I did read, Lewis specifically says he believes in
Satan and is skeptical only about such details as Satan's horns and
tail.) The children go to Narnia and lend support to a magical Lion,
Aslan, who is the Christ figure. The witch uses candy to lure one of
the children, Edmund, into behavior that symbolizes sin. Aslan (the
lion) sacrifices himself to rescue Edmund from the clutches of the
witch. But Aslan, like the Christ he symbolizes, is resurrected and
goes on to use his magical powers to restore other dead animals to
life (just as theology's Christ restored the dead and healed the
sick). Edmund later redeems himself, and the five allies bring about
the witch's (Satan's) demise. Then the children return through the
wardrobe to their own world.
Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy – The Golden Compass (GC), The
Subtle Knife (SK), and The Amber Spyglass (AS) – takes the form of an
allegory. An allegory is a surface story (the story you actually
read) that uses symbols (persons, places, things, events, sometimes
names, etc.) to tell a hidden story that most people are apt to miss.
The hidden story in Pullman's trilogy is an amalgam of (1) Lewis's The
Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (LWW), (2) Milton's Paradise Lost
(PL), and (3) basic Christian theology. Mixing the three in one
hidden story isn't hard, because both LWW and PL are based on
Christian theology. But there is a fundamental difference between
Pullman's hidden story and the Christian theology it retells. In
Pullman's hidden story God and the Christ are bad guys, Satan is a
good guy, all three of them die, heaven is a lie (it doesn't exist),
and the hero and heroine learn that the eternal bliss embodied in the
promise of heaven – blissful life in another world after death in this
one – must be replaced by a Republic of Heaven (not a "kingdom" ruled
by God) built in this world during our lifetimes.
The universe of Pullman's story has three main worlds, not counting
millions of others that exist but have little to do with the story.
Pullman's three worlds symbolize the three worlds of Lewis's story.
The world that Will Parry and Mary Malone come from – a world with
automobiles, helicopters, and ATMs and PINs – is our own (late 20th
century earth) and symbolizes the home world of the four children who
journey to Narnia. Lyra's world symbolizes Narnia, where the lion and
the witch live. This world loosely resembles early 20th century earth
– there are zeppelins and autogyros – but is populated not only by
humans but by supernatural creatures, including witches, armored
bears, and daemons. The daemons (pronounced "demons') are the
outside-the-body souls of the humans and take the forms of animals.
Pullman's third world, the world of Cittigazze (a town), is an
intermediate world that must be passed through to get from Will's
world to Lyra's and vice verse. (Later in the story, "windows" are
cut that allow direct passage between Will's and Lyra's worlds.) The
intermediate world obviously symbolizes the LWW wardrobe, which must
be passed through to get from earth to Narnia.
These three symbols are just the beginning. The Dark Materials
trilogy also has symbols for knowledge, religious superstition, bliss,
heaven, God, the Christ, Satan, Judas, churches and sects, sin, and
possibly Satan's demons and evangelism (these last two are uncertain).
KNOWLEDGE VS. RELIGIOUS SUPERSTITION
Pullman's underlying theme, largely hidden in symbolism, is that we
live in a world where knowledge and religious superstition are at war.
The churches seek to replace knowledge with superstition; religion
is the enemy of knowledge. You could say that a remarkable parallel
exists between A. D. White's two-volume 1896 classic, A History of the
Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, and Pullman's Dark
Materials trilogy. White's well marshalled facts and Pullman's
imaginative, tendentious fiction deliver the same message: religion is
the enemy of knowledge. The angel Xaphania delivers the message: "The
history of human life has been a struggle between wisdom and stupidity
[religion]" (AS 429). Mary Malone puts it this way: "The Christian
religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that's all" (393).
John Parry, Will's father, is less pithy in his description of the
struggle: "Every advance in human life, every scrap of knowledge and
wisdom and decency we have has been torn by one side [knowledge] from
the teeth of the other [religious superstition]. Every little
increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between
those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger [advocates of
knowledge], and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit
[advocates of superstition]" (SK 283).
Like all allegory, Pullman's trilogy has a surface story and a hidden
story. The hidden story is told symbolically. In the surface story,
celestial "dust" symbolizes knowledge. (Dust is not knowledge in the
surface story.) Evil, dust-eating, soul-devouring specters represent
religious superstition. The specters "grow by feeding on Dust" (AS
436). That is, religious superstition grows by destroying and
replacing knowledge. Each time a new window between parallel worlds
is opened – Will's subtle knife opens windows – a new church or sect
is created: the windows are churches. Simultaneously, two things
happen. First, a new specter (a new superstition or syndrome of
superstitions) is created: "Every time we open a window with the
knife, it makes a specter" (436). Second, Dust leaks out of the
world. In short, superstition replaces knowledge when a new church or
sect arises. (All page reference are to the paperback editions, whose
pagination probably differs from that of the hardback editions.)
Lord Asriel, who is Lyra's father and the leader of the rebellion
against the Kingdom of Heaven, is "trying to preserve the Dust" (341).
Rebel angels are among the forces that gather under his command. The
highest rebel angel, Xaphania, alludes to Dust when she says, "The
rebel angels, the followers of wisdom, have always tried to keep open
minds [open to knowledge]; the Authority [God] and his churches have
always tried to keep them closed" (429).
DUST. To better understand this specters-replace-dust symbolism, we
must examine Dust and the specters separately. Pullman's hidden story
is about the need to preserve knowledge (dust) by eliminating the
superstition (specters) that destroy (eat) it. To repeat, each time a
new window is opened, a new specter is created and dust escapes. This
means that each time a new church or sect arises, its unique
superstitions replace knowledge and lead to an erosion of human
wisdom. In the surface story plot, dust is constantly escaping,
because open windows are everywhere: dust is literally going out the
windows. At the end of the story, the windows are all going to be
closed by Xaphania's angels. The dust will no longer escape.
Symbolically, this means that, in an ideal world, the churches would
all be closed.
How do we know the dust represents knowledge? The evidence is
compelling. Consider the following:
1. Xaphania tells Lyra and Will: "Dust is not a constant. There's not
a fixed quantity that has always been the same. Conscious beings make
dust – they renew it all the time, by thinking and feeling and
reflecting, by gaining wisdom and passing it on" (AS, 440). That is,
humans create knowledge by thinking, applying wisdom, and learning.
2. Lord Asriel says, "Dust is what makes the alethiometer work" (GS
325). Lyra's alethiometer is a truth-telling instrument. The
device's name comes from the Greek word "aletheia," which means truth.
Asked a question, the alethiometer answers with the truth. Truth is
essentially the same thing as knowledge, because to tell the truth the
alethiometer must have knowledge – dust. Hence, much later, Asriel's
demon says: "She can read the alethiometer; she has access to
knowledge" (AS 429).
3. The Church's "Magisterium decided that Dust was the physical
evidence for original sin" (GC 325). Original sin refers to Adam and
Eve and to their eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of
knowledge. Dust was created when Adam and Eve acquired knowledge.
4. Skulls dated about 33,000 years ago had "a lot more dust around
them" than skulls dated earlier (SK 74-75). The reason is that the
more recent skulls were from the time when homo sapiens evolved and
began producing knowledge. "There were shadow particles [Dust] around
before then, . . . but there was no physical way of amplifying their
effects. . . . And then something happened . . . and it involved
evolution. . . . Around that time [33,000 years ago], the human brain
became the ideal vehicle for this amplification process" (SK 211). In
other words, the human brain produced knowledge.
5. Anthropologists found that "anything that was associated with human
workmanship and human thought was surrounded by Shadows [Dust]" (SK
79). Workmanship requires
knowledge; thought produces knowledge.
6. If the dust vanishes, "everything good will fade away and die" (AS
433). If knowledge disappears, all that will be left is superstition.
7. Dust begins to settle more heavily on persons when they reach
puberty. Passage to adulthood marks the beginning of creativity, or
contribution to human knowledge. Intelligence reaches a level
sufficient to permit the development of new knowledge. In the story,
the theologians interpret this post-puberty knowledge narrowly as
knowledge of our sexuality, knowledge that comes with puberty. But we
can take a broader view of knowledge than that of the theologians.
(GC 78-79, 325)
8. Specters devour dust. Superstition devours knowledge.
SPECTERS AND THEIR WINDOWS. In the surface story the specters are
spiritlike creatures that attack and kill the daemons (souls, in the
form of animals) of humans. Religious people – people who are
superstitious – are vulnerable. When Dr. Mary Malone leaves her world
(which is also Will's, and ours) and goes to the intermediate world of
Cittagazze, where specters rule, she is somehow immune to the
specters. The computer, which she has rigged to let the Dust speak to
her, has told her she need not fear the specters. Why is she immune?
Because she has become an atheist. A former Catholic nun, she has
left the Church and no longer believes in God. Therefore, she no
longer harbors religious superstition. More precisely, superstition
can no longer attack her: she is immune to it.
Other considerations reinforce the deduction that the windows and
specters symbolize the churches and their superstitions. It is well
known that Pullman is an atheist and wrote the Dark Materials trilogy
as a rebuttal to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. At the end of
Pullman's story, there exist myriads of windows that must be closed.
In the context of an atheistic story, what is it that needs to be
closed? The logical answer is that the windows represent something
that atheists would be happy to see disappear. In the story context,
this something can't be God, because he died earlier in the story.
Besides, God is just one entity, whereas the windows are a multitude.
I can think of no more persuasive "multitude" needing to be closed
than the multitude of churches and their superstitions.
The windows and the specters (churches and their superstitions in the
hidden story) go hand in hand. The windows represent churches, sects,
and religions. These organizations are our society's "windows" to
superstition. So, in one sense, the other worlds seen through the
windows represent the superstitions of particular churches or sects.
The specters, in turn, are a second symbol of religious superstitions.
Each time the knife cuts (opens) a new window, a new specter is
created: each time a new sect appears, it brings with it the new
superstitions that distinguish it from other sects.
THE NARROW THEME: THERE IS NO HEAVEN
Within Pullman's broad theme of warfare between knowledge and
superstition, the chief superstition needing to be destroyed is the
belief in heaven. Like Islam but unlike Judaism, Christianity is what
scholars call a salvation religion. The overriding purpose of
Christianity is to prepare its adherents for salvation – life in the
next world. Those who obey God's laws, worship God, engage in the
proper rituals and other religious practices (e.g., baptism), and ask
for forgiveness can be "saved." (Different churches have different
requirements but, in general, "every little bit helps.") After death,
these people can enter into the Kingdom of God, also called the
Kingdom of Heaven or, more commonly, simply "heaven." In heaven, the
saved are reunited with loved ones and enjoy eternal bliss in a life
beyond the grave, where they can fraternize with angels, saints, and
perhaps even Jesus and God. But most people are not saved. In Jesus'
words, "Many are called, but few are chosen." Those not chosen by the
Christ for salvation will be cast into the "eternal fire" – hell –
where, Jesus warned, "men shall weep and gnash their teeth."
Pullman's message that "there is no heaven" is visible in both the
surface story and the symbolically told hidden story.
THE SURFACE STORY. Lyra and Will eventually learn that heaven does
not exist. They visit the world of the dead and discover its horrors.
But before this happens, the angel Baruch tells Will that "the
churches . . . tell their believers that they'll live in Heaven, but
that's a lie" (AS 29). How big a lie? The children discover that
there is no separation of the good and the wicked. Upon dying,
everyone goes to the world of the dead. It is a dismally oppressive
place where the ghosts of the dead just stand or sit in gloom. There
is no running or jumping or laughing. Harpies occasionally attack
"with gusts of rotten stink, battering wings, and those raucous
screams" (AS 264-67). The angel Balthamos calls the world of the
dead "a prison camp" (AS 29). (The name Balthamos is biblically
derived, alluding to both Yahweh's rival Baal [Balthamos is a rival of
the Authority] and Jesus's disciple Bartholomew [Balthamos is a
disciple of Xaphania, although Xaphania doesn't symbolize Jesus].)
One of the ghosts describes the world of the dead: "When we were
alive, they told us that when we died we'd go to Heaven. And they
said that Heaven was a place of joy and glory and we would spend
eternity in the company of saints and angels praising the Almighty, in
a state of bliss. That's what they said. And that's what led some of
us to give our lives, and others to spend years in solitary prayer,
while all the joy of life was going to waste around us and we never
knew. Because the land of the dead isn't a place of reward or a place
of punishment. It's a place of nothing. The good come here as well
as the wicked, and all of us languish in this gloom forever, with no
hope of freedom, or joy, or sleep, or rest, or peace" (AS 286).
To emphasize the message, Pullman metaphorically describes what
really happens when we die. What really happens, of course, is that
we get buried, we decay, and the decay gets taken up by the roots of
trees and other vegetation. Or our ashes are scattered and dissolve
in the air, the earth, and the waters. Or, under less favorable
circumstances, our bodies are consumed by vultures and other
scavengers and are recycled that way. Pullman's metaphor is Lyra's
description of what will happen when the ghosts emerge from the world
of the dead and experience genuine death: "When you go out of here,
all the particles that make you up will loosen and float apart. . . .
All the atoms . . . [will go] into the air and the wind and the trees
and the earth and all the living things. They'll never vanish.
[They'll just be recycled]" (AS, 286).
The surface story also attacks the heaven-related belief that a
supernatural soul lives on and goes to heaven (or hell) after the
physical body dies. In Pullman's story it is the soul that vanishes
and the body that, in the form of a ghost, goes to the afterworld.
Each human and witch has a daemon, which basically is that person's
soul – this is explicit, not my deduction – but is also a reflection
of the person's personality. Rather than being an inner spirit like
theology's soul, the daemon is external and has the physical substance
and form of an animal – a mouse, skunk, dog, monkey, lion, bat, snake,
moth, sparrow, or other creature. External, not internal. Physical
substance, not spirit. A child's daemon changes shape constantly,
mostly in response shifts in the child's mood or situation, but at
puberty the daemon assumes a permanent form that reflects the person's
supposedly stabilized personality or status. A daemon is also a part
of a person's intelligence and talks to its human half. When a person
dies, that person's daemon vanishes: the soul does not go to heaven or
any other afterworld. This bit of irony is Pullman's way of saying
that we have no supernatural souls that live on after we die.
Lest there be uncertainty that "heaven doesn't exist" really is
Pullman's symbolic message, we can consult the concluding lines of the
story. Lyra's deamon recalls Will's saying "there isn't any
elsewhere." Lyra interprets: "I remember. He meant the Kingdom was
over, the Kingdom of Heaven, it was all finished. We shouldn't live
as if it mattered more than life in this world, because where we are
is always the most important place." Will might have stayed in Lyra's
world (for ten years, after which he would die), "but then we wouldn't
have been able to build it. No one could if they put themselves
first." Lyra's daemon asks, "Build what?" "The Republic [not God's
Kingdom] of Heaven," said Lyra.
Earlier, the ghost of Will Parry's father introduced the above idea:
"We can only live in our own [world]. . . . We have to build the
Republic of Heaven where we are, because there is no elsewhere [there
is no supernatural heaven]" (AS 325).
THE HIDDEN STORY: The allegory's hidden story uses symbolism to get
the same point across, the point that there is no heaven. Lyra falls
in love with Will. From then on, he represents the promise of
heavenly bliss, bliss in a figurative heaven (Will's world).
Unfortunately, this bliss cannot be realized. They learn that if
either one goes to the other's world, the one living outside his or
her own world will die in ten years or so. Although Will could live
in Lyra's world for a while and then restore his health by returning
to his own world through a window before the ten years were up, that
would require keeping a window open. Dust (knowledge) would then
escape through the open window. Neither can Will keep and use the
knife to open a window to his world periodically, because the knife
must be destroyed lest it fall into the wrong hands. Also, opening a
window would create a new specter (a new superstition). Besides, Will
must return to and stay in his world to care for his mentally ill
mother.
So Lyra and Will must part. They must forego bliss; they must forego
heaven. Some readers have argued that this parting is the result of
arbitrary plot rules laid down by Pullman; it could easily have been
avoided. And that is true. But it also misses the point. The point
is that Will symbolizes eternal bliss, heaven, for Lyra. Pullman
needs to make Will inaccessible to deliver his message: there is no
eternal bliss, no heaven. We must build our heaven in our own world,
during our own lifetimes.
Pullman repeats this point by using Lyra as an alternate symbol of
eternal bliss, bliss for Will. Will wants Lyra – he wants the eternal
bliss she represents – but he can't have her. For him as for Lyra,
there can be no eternal bliss, no other world. Lyra must live in her
world while he lives in his. Separating Lyra and Will is Pullman's
metaphorical way of separating humans from the seductive allure of
religious superstition. Closing all the windows (churches) finalizes
this separation, removing human access to religious superstition.
Separation represents the final victory of knowledge over
superstition.
THE AUTHORITY
Pullman's symbolization of (1) the three worlds of the Narnia books,
(2) the warfare between knowledge and religious superstition, and (3)
the message that heaven doesn't exist strongly hints at the presence
of allegory. But allegory requires more symbols than seen thus far
and also requires continuity. These requirements can be met if
important characters in the surface story are symbolic. Are they?
Indeed they are.
We can begin with "the Authority." He is so obviously a symbol for
God that not much needs to be said about him. The Authority was the
first angel created and, in a monumental lie, told the later angels
that he was the Creator of the universe and the angels. He has become
the Supreme Being that the churches of the various world's worship.
But he is now extremely old, feeble, senile, and moribund. His power
has been delegated to his Regent of Heaven, Metatron.
METATRON
Who, if anyone, does Metatron symbolize? The answer is found in the
Bible's book of Revelation and Milton's Paradise Lost. Revelation
12:7-9 tells of a war fought in heaven between rebellious angels led
by Satan and angels loyal to God, led by Michael. Pullman reprises
this conflict by providing another war between loyal angels and
rebellious ones. The loyal angels are led by Metatron, the rebellious
ones by Lord Asriel. At first glance, then, Metatron would seem to
symbolize Michael.
But Michael is just a minor character in the Bible, whereas Metatron
is far more important in Pullman's trilogy. Evidence from Paradise
Lost permits little doubt that Pullman is using Metatron to symbolize
Jesus, the Christ. In Paradise Lost, Michael and Gabriel initially
lead God's loyal angels in the fight against Satan's rebel angels.
But when Michael and Gabriel encounter difficulty, Jesus takes over.
Driving his "fierce chariot," Jesus herds the rebels to the wall of
heaven. The wall opens, and the Christ drives Satan and his rebels
over the edge of heaven, sending them tumbling into hell.
In Pullman's trilogy, Metatron moves across the sky in a Clouded
Mountain, sometimes called "the Chariot" (AS 25, 28, 334). The
Chariot moves "with the Regent at the reins." Metatron uses this
chariot in attacking Asriel's Republic of Heaven. Metatron's
"driving" the chariot and his using it to attack the rebel angels make
it clear that Metatron symbolizes the Christ, as depicted in Paradise
Lost. Identifying Metratron with the Christ is the whole point of
calling the floating mountain "The Chariot." Were "Chariot" not an
allusion to the Christ's chariot from Paradise Lost, there would be no
point in giving the floating mountain two names.
As the clincher, we have the method by which Metatron meets his
demise. In Revelation, Satan is thrown into a pit. Likewise, in
Paradise Lose, Satan falls into a deep pit. So it is that Pullman
arranges for Metatron, dragged down in battle by Lord Asriel and Mrs.
Coulter, to meet his demise by falling into a deep "chasm." The chasm
was created earlier by an incredibly powerful bomb intended for Lyra.
LORD ASRIEL
Once you figure out who Metatron symbolizes, it's easy to deduce who
Lyra's father, Lord Asriel, represents. In both Revelation and
Paradise Lost, Jesus and the loyal angels are opposed by Satan and his
rebellious angels. In Pullman's work, Lord Asriel has gone to war
with the Kingdom of Heaven and has rebel angels fighting on his side.
Lord Asriel, leader of rebel angels, therefore symbolizes Satan,
leader of rebel angels.
You might ask: how can Satan be on the side of good, the side of
knowledge? That question is easily answered. Pullman is writing an
antireligious opus. In it the forces of religion are evil and the
opponents of religion are good. Metatron, symbolizing the Christ, is
evil. Asriel, symbolizing Satan, the enemy of the Christ, is
therefore good.
The idea that Asriel is Satan does seem to conflict with explicit
statements by Pullman identifying Mary Malone as "the serpent."
(Malone introduces Lyra, the new Eve, to knowledge–specifically,
knowledge about love, which symbolizes knowledge in the abstract.
Dust, symbolizing knowledge, begins to fall from the sky onto Lyra
when she falls in love.) According to both Paradise Lost and popular
theology, the serpent in the Garden of Eden was Satan. But in Genesis
the serpent, or tempter, in Eden is not explicitly identified as
Satan, and this fact allows Pullman to treat Satan and the serpent as
separate entities. A further consideration is that Mary's role as the
serpent is explicit and is presented as a figure of speech, not really
a symbol, whereas Asriel's role as Satan involves subtlety and can be
recognized only through deduction.
Lord Asriel's name conceivably could also imply something. Asriel is
Israel spelled with the I and the A transposed. The name has
intriguing possibilities, but I can't see where "Asriel" has any
significance beyond putting the character in a religious context.
THE GALLIVESPIANS
Lord Asriel's spies, the Gallivespians, might also be a symbol, a
collective symbol for Satan's demons. The Gallivespians are tiny
people, a hand-span tall. As such, they resemble the tiny
Lilliputians of Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Indeed, their name is
clearly derived by combining "Gulliver" (spelled with a substituted
for u) and "Lilliputian." Venomous spurs protrude from their heels.
They fly around on dragonflies and hawks, leap onto their enemies, and
sting them. In the world the Gallivespians come from, humans "regard
them as diabolic" (AS 187). This characterization ("diabolic"), the
harassing-of-humans behavior, and the fact that the Gallivespians work
for Lord Asriel (Satan) are fairly good evidence that the little
people symbolize Christian theology's demons. But I could be wrong.
LYRA BELACQUA
Lyra Belacqua is the heroine and central character of the trilogy.
Who or what, if anything, does she symbolize? You might think she
symbolizes Eve, because in several places the surface story refers to
her as a new "Eve" who will come "again" (SK 35, 278; AS 60, 64, 183).
Like the original Eve of Genesis, Lyra will (according to a witch
prophecy) "be tempted" and "will fall." Her tempter will be "the
serpent," a metaphor for Mary Malone (SK 21; AS 68, 71). But this new
Eve is merely a figurative Eve, not the literal Eve of Christian
theology. Lyra is indeed a figurative Eve, but only in the surface
story. In the allegory's hidden story she is something else. Not a
person but a thing. Moreover, her "fall" involves falling in love;
she does not fall in theology's sense of falling from God's grace,
i.e., sinning by disobeying God.
Lyra really symbolizes two things. The first is the bliss (Will's)
in a life after death that Christians are promised as a reward for
good behavior. I have already discussed this symbolism. The second
thing Lyra symbolizes is Sin. In Milton's Paradise Lost, Sin is the
child of Satan and is the mother of Death. Correspondingly, in
Pullman's trilogy, Lyra is the child of Lord Asriel (GC 108, 322-23),
who symbolizes Satan. And she is the metaphorical mother of Death.
The child of Satan part is clear enough, but in what sense is Lyra
the mother of Death? In Pullman's story, the dead do not really die.
Whether good or bad during their mortal lives, all humans live on as
ghosts in the world of the dead. Without dying, Lyra goes to the
world of the dead and finds a way to lead the dead out of their
prison. Once outside they truly die: they joyously dissolve into
atoms and become part of the night, the air, the leaves, the grass,
and all else that is nature. So delightful is their vanishing that
Will is reminded of "the bubbles in a glass of champagne" (AS 325).
Pullman is saying, symbolically, that when we die our bodies
decompose, or are eaten by scavengers, so that our atoms are recycled
into trees, rivers, and other things in the natural world; we do not
go to heaven, hell, or purgatory. My immediate point, though, is that
Lyra brings genuine death to the suffering ghosts. Hence she is the
mother of Death. As such, according to Milton, she is Sin.
In Christian theology sin is bad. It is disobeying a command or law
of God. But in Pullman's hidden story, sin is good. It is partaking
of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Recall that theology's Eve was
the first to sin. After being tempted by the serpent, she sinned by
eating fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Eve's
"original sin" (plus Adam's) is, in Christian theology, called "the
fall." In Lyra's case, the figurative serpent is explicitly
identified as Mary Malone. Mary tells Lyra how she, Mary, once fell
in love. Mary's "fall" symbolically "tempts" Lyra to do the same.
Lyra then metaphorically "eats" fruit from a somewhat different Tree
of Knowledge: the Tree of Knowledge of Love. Just as the original Eve
fell (from God's grace), the second Eve, Lyra, "falls" (in love with
Will). Symbolically, Lyra's "fall" constitutes sin. Thus does Lyra
become Pullman's symbol for Sin, redefined as acquiring knowledge. As
soon as Lyra falls in love, Dust (knowledge) begins falling on her
from the sky, symbolizing her coming into possession of knowledge.
To acquire knowledge is, in the eyes of the Church, to become
sinful. Why? Because knowledge replaces superstition, and knowledge
is false whereas the superstition is "truth." Earlier, Father
MacPhail, President of the Church's Consistorial Court, correctly
stated that "if this temptation does take place, and if the child
[Lyra] gives in, then Dust [knowledge] and sin [acquisition of
knowledge] will triumph" (AS 62). He therefore declared, referring to
"Dust," that "we must destroy it altogether" (64). Dust brings sin,
and "better a world with no church and no Dust than a world where
every day we have to struggle under the hideous burden of sin" (64).
Now we can understand why Lyra, in love and consequently covered with
the falling Dust, symbolizes Sin. The Church wants to destroy Lyra
because, in doing so, it will destroy Sin.
WILL PARRY
You might think that, because Lyra is a new Eve or second Eve, Will
is a new Adam or second Adam, the second Eve's mate. And in a sense
he is. But, we have seen, Lyra's role as a second Eve – Eve "come
again" – is too explicit to be regarded as symbolism. Most
allegorists, and Pullman in particular, are far more subtle than that.
Lyra's being the new Eve is really a figure of speech and is part of
the surface story, not part of the hidden story. The same is true of
Will's role, implied, as the new Adam.
What Will really symbolizes was stated under the "There Is No Heaven"
heading. Will symbolizes heavenly bliss vis-a-vis Lyra. In Christian
theology, heaven is another world where people go after they die, if
they deserve to be "saved." Correspondingly, Will is from another
world, a symbolic heaven, not Lyra's world. People who go to heaven
live in bliss. If Lyra could go to Will's world and live with him,
she would experience bliss, because she and Will love each other so
dearly. But Lyra will not be able to experience this bliss. She is
being denied a future with Will. She is being denied access to heaven
and its bliss. Lyra-can't-have-bliss-in-another-world is probably the
most basic symbolism of the story. It is Pullman's way of delivering
the message that there is no heaven, no other world where bliss can be
experienced. We must find our bliss, our "Republic of Heaven," in
this world, during our lifetimes.
MRS. COULTER
Just as Metatron's symbolic identity (the Christ) leads to that of
Asriel (Satan), so does it lead to that of Lyra's mother, Mrs.
Coulter. During most of the story, Mrs. Coulter is one of religion's
most fervent zealots. In effect if not literally, she is a disciple
of Metatron. And then she turns against Metatron, betrays him, and
brings about his death. She goes to Metatron, proposes a sneak attack
on Lord Asriel, and then leads Metatron to where Asriel waits near the
edge of the abyss. There she betrays Metatron by joining Asriel in a
two-party attack on the regent. Coulter and Asriel drag Metatron over
the edge of the abyss. He and his two attackers then fall to their
deaths.
Metatron, remember, symbolizes the Christ. Who was it that betrayed
the Christ and caused his death?
Correct! Mrs. Coulter is Judas. The Dark Materials character who
symbolizes Judas is the one who betrays the character who symbolizes
the Christ. Now, it might seem implausible that a woman symbolizes a
man, but that is the way symbols often work. One good analogy
(betrayal in this case) is all it takes to make a symbol. After all,
if George Orwell in Animal Farm can use a pig to symbolize Joseph
Stalin, and Aesop can use a hare to symbolize a talented but lazy
human, and C.S. Lewis can use a lion to symbolize the Christ, why
can't Pullman use a woman to symbolize a man? Here's an even better
example: If Lewis can use the white witch, a female, to symbolize
Satan, a male, why can't Pullman use a female to symbolize a male?
XAPHANIA?
A remote possibility exists that the angel Xaphania symbolizes
wisdom. Her name offers no clue. "Xaphania" is apparently based on
"Zephaniah," one of the books of the Old Testament: Pullman has (a)
replaced Z with X, which has the Z sound when used as the first letter
of a word, (b) replaced "e" with "a," and (c) dropped Zephaniah's last
letter, "h." What does offer a clue is that Xaphania displays profound
wisdom, as when she says "the history of human life has been a
struggle between wisdom and stupidity [religion]" (AS 429). Another
clue is something the angel Balthamos says: "One of those [angels] who
came later [than the Authority] was wiser than he was, and she found
out the truth [that the Authority was not the creator], so he banished
her [Xaphania]" (AS 28 ). Also, Xaphania is "one of the followers of
wisdom" (429). Mary laments that, because of the Authority and his
churches, "wisdom has had to work in secret" (429). And Xapahnia
advocates "gaining wisdom and passing it on" (440).
The trouble is, wisdom doesn't fit the allegorical context; it has no
role to play in the hidden story. At best, it tends to duplicate
knowledge, which Dust already symbolizes. (Wisdom includes knowledge
but also includes discretion, awareness, empathy, occasional firmness,
even harshness, and especially the ability to reach, make, or develop
wise, accurate, fair, moral, or safe inferences, conclusions,
decisions, judgments, evaluations, theories, and expectations.) The
overlap between knowledge and wisdom makes me doubt that Xaphania is
intended as a symbol. In other words, a separate symbol for wisdom
serves no real purpose in the hidden story.
FATHER GOMEZ?
Father Gomez, the priest who is sent to assassinate Lyra, is another
possible but improbable symbol. He participates in a nonessential
subplot whose main, and perhaps only, purpose is to pump additional
suspense and excitement – plus a bit of humor ("preemptive penance")
– into the main plot. Gomez is "blazing eyed" and "trembling with
zealotry" (AS 64, 62). And the mission for which he volunteers is to
destroy Sin, symbolized by Lyra. That attitude and that mission sure
strike me as constituting a superb description of an evangelist. In
fact, Gomez actually contemplates "staying to evangelize this world"
when he finishes his mission. Another argument supporting Gomez's
being a symbol is that, if he is a symbol, that symbol must relate to
what he is trying to do, namely, destroy Sin – kill Lyra. Evangelism
does relate to Sin. So, as a hypothesis, I suggest that Pullman may
have created Father Gomez as a symbol for religious evangelism (or
evangelists), caricatured as crusading against Sin.
Yet Gomez's role is so peripheral in the story – any symbolism here
is really gratuitous – that the hypothesis might well be wrong. Many
other relatively minor characters in the story do not seem to be
symbolic, so it isn't necessary that Gomez be a symbol. I am
undecided.
THE SUBTLE KNIFE
At least one other "thing" (contrasted with person) besides Dust,
specters, windows, and the three main worlds is a symbol. Will's
"subtle knife" opens windows to other worlds. The windows, we have
seen, symbolize churches and sects. The knife, therefore, would seem
to symbolize the human impulse to create new religions, new sects.
This is why, in the hidden story, the knife must be destroyed. It
must be destroyed to prevent the creation of new churches and the
superstitions that go with them. God and the Christ (the Authority
and Metatron) have died. Their legacy, the churches, must die with
them.
The title of each one of the three books of the trilogy – The Golden
Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass – refers to an
instrument. Since the knife symbolizes something, I wondered if the
golden compass (alethiometer) and the amber spyglass might likewise be
symbols. But I can't find any convincing symbolism. The compass is
used to acquire knowledge, so it might seem to represent the human
brain; but that idea doesn't fit the religious context of the
allegory. As for the spyglass, it is used to see dust, which
represents knowledge. So we might hypothesize that the spyglass
symbolizes the human quest for knowledge, just as the knife symbolizes
the quest for new churches and their new superstitions. This pairing,
or knife vs. spyglass = the superstition impulse vs. the knowledge
impulse, is somewhat plausible but not wholly convincing.
David Johnston
Wheat) wrote:
>supernatural salvation – heaven. The heroine, Lyra, ultimately learns
>that there is no Kingdom of Heaven, no other world of eternal bliss.
>We must create our heaven, a Republic of Heaven, in this world, during
>our lifetimes.
Or if we live in the real world, we just accept that there's never
gonna be a heaven and we are all ultimately doomed.
Dark Lensman
> >that there is no Kingdom of Heaven, no other world of eternal bliss.
> >We must create our heaven, a Republic of Heaven, in this world, during
> >our lifetimes.
>
> Or if we live in the real world, we just accept that there's never
> gonna be a heaven and we are all ultimately doomed.
What a sad deduction!
Surely you would seek to maximize joy and love.
David Johnston
wrote:
Sure, but the best we can possibly do will still far short of a
heaven, and in the long run it will still all fall to ash. Of course
at the moment my mood may be shaped by sitting alone in the house
as the person I am closest to tries to breath in a hospital a thousand
miles away, and doesn't succeed all that well. Still, if heaven
depends on us building it...fat chance.
how...@brazee.net
On 22-Aug-2004, rgorma...@telusplanet.net (David Johnston) wrote:
> Or if we live in the real world, we just accept that there's never
> gonna be a heaven and we are all ultimately doomed.
"Doomed" is a word that I use to describe a sad end. Certainly a world
where we all die is preferable to a world where even one (much less the vast
majority) of people will be tortured beyond all understanding forever and
ever without hope of parole. Nothing bad about termination. Nothing sad
about termination. Nothing evil about termination. But something is very
bad, very sad, and very evil about having one of our brothers or sisters
going to Hell.
Heaven's not a big attraction. But if it means we also have a Hell, nobody
should want it.
how...@brazee.net
On 22-Aug-2004, darkl...@yahoo.co.uk (Dark Lensman) wrote:
> > Or if we live in the real world, we just accept that there's never
> > gonna be a heaven and we are all ultimately doomed.
>
>
> What a sad deduction!
>
> Surely you would seek to maximize joy and love.
If heaven comes with hell, then we're better off without the pair.
Leonard F. Wheat
> In other words, a separate symbol for wisdom
> serves no real purpose in the hidden story.
>
> FATHER GOMEZ?
>
> Father Gomez, the priest who is sent to assassinate Lyra, is another
> possible but improbable symbol. He participates in a nonessential
> subplot whose main, and perhaps only, purpose is to pump additional
> suspense and excitement -- plus a bit of humor ("preemptive penance")
> -- into the main plot. Gomez is "blazing eyed" and "trembling with
> zealotry" (AS 64, 62). And the mission for which he volunteers is to
> destroy Sin, symbolized by Lyra. That attitude and that mission sure
> strike me as constituting a superb description of an evangelist. In
> fact, Gomez actually contemplates "staying to evangelize this world"
> when he finishes his mission. Another argument supporting Gomez's
> being a symbol is that, if he is a symbol, that symbol must relate to
> what he is trying to do, namely, destroy Sin -- kill Lyra. Evangelism
> does relate to Sin. So, as a hypothesis, I suggest that Pullman may
> have created Father Gomez as a symbol for religious evangelism (or
> evangelists), caricatured as crusading against Sin.
>
> Yet Gomez's role is so peripheral in the story -- any symbolism here
> is really gratuitous -- that the hypothesis might well be wrong. Many
> other relatively minor characters in the story do not seem to be
> symbolic, so it isn't necessary that Gomez be a symbol. I am
> undecided.
I belatedly figured out who Father Gomez really is. As I said before,
the hidden story told by the surface story is an amalgam of (1) C. S.
Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, (2) Milton's Paradise
Lost, and (3) basic Christian theology. The first of these -- the
Lewis book -- is a thinly veiled evangelical work designed to save
young readers from Sin. I am now certain that Pullman is using Father
Gomez to symbolize C. S. Lewis.
:}
Giles
One element of symbolism I found in the Lands of the Dead stretch of
the story was the similarity between Lyra and Will rescuing the dead
from harpy-ville and the story of Jesus and the harrowing of Hell,
where Jesus got most of those who had been in Hell prior to him out on
a technicality.
To use your symbolic map, the reverse story Pullman tells has Lyra,
symbol of sin/knowledge and daughter of the Satan figure, having lost
her 'soul' (dying in a sense, even though she gets better) and
releasing the multitudes to their final recycling. An almost total
inverse of the JC yarn. Note that they only escape the harpies by
telling them true stories - literally 'the truth has set them free'
and the princess of lies (heh) realises further how useful the truth
can be.
Similarly, the instruments you mention as lacking strong symbolism
themselves can be seen as truth/superstition/the scientific method.
The aleithiometer is even at one stage stolen by sir
Snake-as-a-Daemon, whose name I can't recall (it's to the advantage of
the powerful to keep their inferiors ignorant). The subtle knife
itself is broken before the story ends, and it's the amber spyglass in
the hands of a scientist that finally figures out what's happening to
all the dust anyway.
Leonard F. Wheat
You have provided some excellent additional insights. I'm not
familiar with the story of Jesus and the harrowing of hell. Perhaps
you could elaborate and perhaps provide a biblical citation.
You are definitely on to something when you refer to "Ye shall know
the truth and the truth shall set you free" in relation to the
appetite of the Harpies for truth.
You are likewise right about the alethiometer, knife, and compass
being respectively related to truth, superstition, and the scientific
method. The same thought belatedly occurred to me, and I prepared a
revision of the last paragraph elaborating. The knife is not
superstition per se -- superstition is symbolized by the specters --
but is something related to superstition, best described as the QUEST
for superstition. The compass might well be, as you suggest, the
"scientific method," although we should perhaps look for a slightly
different meaning that provides parallelism with the knife's meaning.
The knife isn't likely to mean "the superstitious method," since
superstition is characterized by the absence of method. It would be
better to describe the compass as the QUEST for knowledge.
Your point about the knife's being broken at the end of the story is
well taken. Truth (the alethiometer) prevails, and the knife is
vanquished by compass.
A couple of other ideas also occurred to me belatedly. I said that
the angel Xanaphia had overtones of wisdom but that symbolizing wisdom
didn't make sense in terms of the hidden story. Since Zephaniah,
whose name is the prototype for Xanaphia, was an Old Testament prophet
(one of 12 so-called minor prophets), and since the prophets were
thought to spout wisdom, Xaphania could be a symbol for either the
prophets collectively or Zephaniah in particular.
The witch Seraphina Pekkala's first name obviously is derived from
"Seraphim." In Christianity and Judaism, the Seraphim are an order of
angels who guard God's throne. They are associated with another
order, the Cherubim, and the two orders are immortalized in the hymn
"Holy, Holy, Holy." I'm reasonably sure Pekkala is also based on
something, although Pullman might have concocted it as a sort of
stereotypical Finnish name, since the witches make their home up
around Finland. Seraphina does not symbolize angels, however, because
the angels "symbolize" themselves. What she might symbolize is
another prophet. It is the witches who prophecy that a new Eve (Lyra)
will come, be tempted by a serpent (Mary Malone), and eat from the
Tree of Knowledge.
Edd Edmondson
> You are likewise right about the alethiometer, knife, and compass
> being respectively related to truth, superstition, and the scientific
> method.
'alethiometer, knife, and spyglass', right?
> The witch Seraphina Pekkala's first name obviously is derived from
> "Seraphim." In Christianity and Judaism, the Seraphim are an order of
> angels who guard God's throne. They are associated with another
> order, the Cherubim, and the two orders are immortalized in the hymn
> "Holy, Holy, Holy." I'm reasonably sure Pekkala is also based on
> something, although Pullman might have concocted it as a sort of
> stereotypical Finnish name, since the witches make their home up
> around Finland. Seraphina does not symbolize angels, however, because
> the angels "symbolize" themselves. What she might symbolize is
> another prophet. It is the witches who prophecy that a new Eve (Lyra)
> will come, be tempted by a serpent (Mary Malone), and eat from the
> Tree of Knowledge.
The name (all of it, Serafina and Pekkala) came from the Helsinki
telephone directory. Whether it was chosen for some deeper symbolism is
perhaps a matter of debate however.
(http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/childrenandteens/story/0,6000,650988,00.html
amongst other links)
--
Edd
Ross TenEyck
>You have provided some excellent additional insights. I'm not
>familiar with the story of Jesus and the harrowing of hell. Perhaps
>you could elaborate and perhaps provide a biblical citation.
I don't remember if there's a Biblical cite or not; but the idea
is that since people can only be saved and go to Heaven through
Jesus, what happened to all the people who died before Jesus?
A traditional answer to this is that they all went to Hell, but
only in a sort of holding area. When Jesus died, he went to Hell
himself for the couple of days he was dead, generally kicked ass,
and then took all the virtuous people with him to Heaven.
When Dante was on his tour, Virgil pointed out several landmarks
that dated from the harrowing.
It's conventional enough theology to be referenced in the Apostles
Creed:
And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord; who was conceived
by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under
Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; **he descended
into hell;** the third day he rose again from the dead; he
ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God
the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the
quick and the dead.
--
================== http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~teneyck ==================
Ross TenEyck Seattle, WA \ Light, kindled in the furnace of hydrogen;
ten...@alumni.caltech.edu \ like smoke, sunlight carries the hot-metal
Are wa yume? Soretomo maboroshi? \ tang of Creation's forge.
Leonard F. Wheat
Thanks for the correction. At least I was right (in an uncertain sort
of way) about Pekkala's being chosen to represent Finland, home of the
witches. But I'm still wondering whether the name Serafina didn't
catch Pullman's eye because of its resemblance to Seraphim. Pullman's
basing other names on biblical names -- Israel and Zephaniah, among
possible others -- suggests to me that there may have been a little
more to it than the Helsinki directory.
Does anyone have any ideas about where the inspirations for the names
Coulter, Belacqua, and Farder Coram might have come from?
Leonard F. Wheat
> [re: long allegorical stuff]
>
> themselves can be seen as truth/superstition/the scientific method.
> The aleithiometer is even at one stage stolen by sir
> Snake-as-a-Daemon, whose name I can't recall (it's to the advantage of
> the powerful to keep their inferiors ignorant). The subtle knife
> itself is broken before the story ends, and it's the amber spyglass in
> the hands of a scientist that finally figures out what's happening to
> all the dust anyway.
I have revised the material under my last heading to incorporate your
suggestions and some additional ideas of my own. Here is the revised
version:
THE ALETHIOMETER, THE KNIFE, AND THE SPYGLASS
At least three other "things" (contrasted with persons) besides Dust,
specters, windows, and the three main worlds are symbols. The three
things are the title instruments of the three books of the trilogy:
the golden compass, the subtle knife, and the amber spyglass. (In
Europe, Book 1's title is Northern Lights, not The Golden Compass, but
the alethiometer has the same vital Book 1 role on both continents.)
The three instruments symbolize truth and the two warring approaches
to the acquisition of truth -– the religious approach, leading to
superstition, and the scientific approach, leading to knowledge.
The alethiometer is a truth-telling instrument, and knowledge is what
makes it operate. We cannot doubt that the alethiometer is a well
designed symbol of truth. Truth is what both sides seek in the war
between religious superstition and knowledge.
Will's "subtle knife" opens windows to other worlds. The windows, we
have seen, symbolize churches and sects. That means the knife is an
instrument for creating new religions, new sects. The knife,
therefore, would seem to symbolize the religious impulse, or the
belief that "truth" must be learned from churches and consists of what
nonreligious people regard as superstition. Or, we might say, the
knife represents deference to religious authority in the search for
truth. (Pullman, were he inclined to spell out the knife's symbolism,
would probably phrase the idea differently, but my own words should be
reasonably accurate.) The knife's being an instrument of superstition
explains why, in the hidden story, it must be destroyed. It must be
destroyed to prevent the creation of new churches and the
superstitions that go with them. God and the Christ (the Authority
and Metatron) have died. Their legacy, the churches and religious
superstition, must die with them.
As for the spyglass, it is used to see dust, which represents
knowledge. So we might say that, just as the knife represents the
religious impulse, the spyglass represents the scientific impulse, or
an insistence that truth be based on reason and empiricism.
Alternatively, we could say that the spyglass symbolizes the
scientific method, contrasted with the religious method.
Although the knife and the spyglass do not precisely symbolize
superstition and knowledge -– specters and dust are the precise
symbols -– the two instruments nonetheless do represent the two
versions of truth that are at war. And at the end of the story we
learn which side wins. The knife is destroyed, and dust is falling on
everyone.
Robert Carnegie
>, Leonard F. Wheat <lenw...@earthlink.net> writes
I have trouble not thinking of Farder Coram as an Irish priest.
I can just about manage not to think of him as one of the priests in
_Father Ted_. Still, isn't he just one of the gyptians, but old and
full of venerable wisdom?
Belacqua - some sort of Latin, I expect. Coulter is Scottish, I think;
there is half a column of persons named Coulter in /my/ phone
book. And incidentally, Azrael is a closer match for Lord Asriel, but
I forget who Azrael or Asrael actually is. Was Azrael the name of a
demon invented by Isaac Asimov?
And as for Father Gomez being C. S. Lewis himself, if that was the
author's intention then perhaps he would have more closely
resembled C. S. Lewis himself, who was not a priest, not
Catholic, a writer, Irish rather than Spanish, and, as far as I am
aware, very seldom murdered children. Rather, Will and Lyra are,
in a way, a new Adam and Eve, Mary seems cast as serpent if you
want to read it that way, and Father Gomez is the worm in the
apple, or the curse of death on Adam and Eve - and this time they
escape.
I forget, did you have some specific symbolism in mind for the
atomic bomb?
Robert Carnegie at home, rja.ca...@excite.com at large
--
I am fully aware I may regret this in the morning.
Robert Carnegie
Johnston <rgorma...@telusplanet.net> writes
I'm sure we're all sorry about that.
The catch with man-made heavens, I think, or the better society, or
just the good life, is that they are not self-supporting; they have to
be worked at, to be rebuilt constantly. It is worth doing.
And if, ten billion years in the future, this planet no longer exists
and none of us are remembered, and, much much later, nothing
is alive in the universe any more, well, was it worth it? Well, you
can say Yes, or you can say No; and, ten billion years from now,
you won't be any better off for saying No, because we /will/ all be
over, whatever you said. Nor is there any good now in saying No.
So the correct answer is Yes; it's worth it - because we believe it's
worth it. It was good while it lasted. Those who do not believe
that it's worth it can make alternative arrangements.
Leonard F. Wheat
> lenw...@earthlink.net (Leonard F. Wheat) writes:
>
> >You have provided some excellent additional insights. I'm not
> >familiar with the story of Jesus and the harrowing of hell. Perhaps
> >you could elaborate and perhaps provide a biblical citation.
>
> I don't remember if there's a Biblical cite or not; but the idea
> is that since people can only be saved and go to Heaven through
> Jesus, what happened to all the people who died before Jesus?
>
> A traditional answer to this is that they all went to Hell, but
> only in a sort of holding area. When Jesus died, he went to Hell
> himself for the couple of days he was dead, generally kicked ass,
> and then took all the virtuous people with him to Heaven.
>
> When Dante was on his tour, Virgil pointed out several landmarks
> that dated from the harrowing.
I'm glad you mentioned Dante. In THE DIVINE COMEDY he provided a
somewhat different answer to the question: what happened to all the
people who died before Jesus? Dante had three guides in his tour of
hell, purgatory, and heaven. Respectively, they were the Latin poet
Virgil, Dante's beloved Beatrice, and St. Bernard. Virgil, who guided
Dante through hell and into purgatory, died in 19 B.C. Hence, through
no fault of his own, he was not a Christian. So he could not advance
to purgatory and heaven. Once he completed his task of guiding Dante
as far as purgatory, Virgil had to return to hell.
Virtuous though Virgil was (or at least claimed to be), he was not be
taken by Jesus to heaven. He was still in hell in AD 1321, the year
Dante finished writing THE DIVINE COMEDY.
But things could have been worse for Virgil. Hell has 9 circles or
rings that lie progressively deeper in the earth. The deeper you go,
the greater the offence of the sinner and the more severe the
punishment. Satan, or "Dis," is the worst offender, so he is being
punished in the 4th (last) subcircle of the 9th (last) circle.
Virgil, on the other hand, gets to spend eternity in the first circle,
called Limbo.
Referring to his fellow inmates of Limbo, including unbaptized
infants, Virgil tells Dante: "They did not sin, and yet, though they
have merits, that's not enough, because they lacked baptism, the
portal of the faith that you embrace. And if they lived before
Christianity [as Virgil did], they did not worship God in fitting
ways; and of such spirits I myself am one. For these defects, and for
no other evil, we now are lost and punished."
>
> It's conventional enough theology to be referenced in the Apostles
> Creed:
>
> And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord; who was conceived
> by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under
> Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; **he descended
> into hell;** the third day he rose again from the dead; he
> ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God
> the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the
> quick and the dead.
That brings back dreary memories from age 10, when I had to sit
through many weeks of "confirmation class" before being confirmed into
the Methodist Church. I embarrassed the hell out of Reverend Steele,
who taught the class, by asking naive questions about what a virgin
was. Steele could only blush and mumble that Joseph did not "know"
Mary before Jesus was born. Because I didn't understand what he
meant, I kept pressing for a better explanation. Ultimately we got
over that hump (invitation to wisecrack?) and learned the Apostles
Creed, which we had to recite individually during the Sunday morning
church service on the day we were confirmed.
Christian theologians had several theories explaining why, given the
fact that God is omnipotent (unlimited in power), Jesus had to die and
go to hell before anyone could be "saved" and delivered to heaven.
After all, God was the Judge and the figurative keeper of the gates of
heaven. All he had to do was say, "Come in." The only logical theory
explaining why Jesus had to die and descend "into hell" was that God
is not really omnipotent. Jesus had to go down into hell to do battle
with and defeat Satan before the righteous could be saved.
Karnak17
>Other considerations reinforce the deduction that the windows and
>specters symbolize the churches and their superstitions. It is well
>known that Pullman is an atheist and wrote the Dark Materials trilogy
>as a rebuttal to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. At the end of
>Pullman's story, there exist myriads of windows that must be closed.
>In the context of an atheistic story, what is it that needs to be
>closed?
What you say makes me think of The Wood Between the Worlds from "The Magician's
Nephew", a sort of in-between place where nothing actually happens, but from
which one has access to all the other worlds in existence, including our world
and Narnia.
It seems similar to the world of Cittigazze as you describe it. It sounds as
though Cittigazze might be Pullman's version of Lewis' Wood.
I can offer no opinion on what this might mean, as I did not make it too far
into Pullman's trilogy, but TMN doesn't take more that a couple of hours to
read, if you are interested in checking it out.
Karnak17
>Sure, but the best we can possibly do will still far short of a
>heaven, and in the long run it will still all fall to ash. Of course
>at the moment my mood may be shaped by sitting alone in the house
>as the person I am closest to tries to breath in a hospital a thousand
>miles away, and doesn't succeed all that well. Still, if heaven
>depends on us building it...fat chance.
>
I am sorry to hear it. I went through the same with my father, and know how
painful such a situation is. I wish the best for both of you.
Karnak17
>Heaven's not a big attraction. But if it means we also have a Hell, nobody
>should want it.
If it is C.S. Lewis' opinions which are being discussed, however, *his*
beliefs, as detailed in "The Great Divorce", was that heaven and hell were
primarily spiritual states which each soul chooses for himself. "Hell" is
choosing to cling to selfishness and smallness, and "Heaven" attained by
letting go of the pettyness, selfishness, hatred and pride, which keeps us from
God, one another, and our own higher potential.
Therefore, "Heaven" and "Hell" as Lewis conceptualized them in TGD, can be said
to definitely exist already, here on Earth, as psychological or spiritual
states of being. The only difference would be that Lewis thought of such
states as continuing into an Afterlife.
Ross TenEyck
He also added the idea that Heaven is real, but Hell isn't particularly...
Hell is a state of mind. Earth is sort of halfway in between; more real
than Hell, but still only a pale shadow of Heaven; c.f. Amber.
Craig Richardson
(Ross TenEyck) wrote:
>It's conventional enough theology to be referenced in the Apostles
>Creed:
>
> And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord; who was conceived
> by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under
> Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; **he descended
> into hell;** the third day he rose again from the dead; he
> ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God
> the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the
> quick and the dead.
I have nothing to add to the main point, just a plug for the sadly
defunct Chaosium game "Credo". For those not already familiar with
it, it's about inter-faction power struggles culminating in everyone
trying to stack the Council of Nicea, and the result of the game is
expressed in (usually) a somewhat, um, different, Apostle's Creed.
--Craig
--
Craig S. Richardson Things I've learned recently:
<crichard-tacoma at -Ichiro is not a coin.
worldnet dot att dot net> -Ichiro is not a battery.
Stephan Lemonjello Jr. on r.s.bb. 2004/08/23
Edd Edmondson
> I have trouble not thinking of Farder Coram as an Irish priest.
> I can just about manage not to think of him as one of the priests in
> _Father Ted_. Still, isn't he just one of the gyptians, but old and
> full of venerable wisdom?
> Belacqua - some sort of Latin, I expect. Coulter is Scottish, I think;
> there is half a column of persons named Coulter in /my/ phone
> book. And incidentally, Azrael is a closer match for Lord Asriel, but
> I forget who Azrael or Asrael actually is. Was Azrael the name of a
> demon invented by Isaac Asimov?
Azrael is an Islamic archangel, and an angel of death.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azrael
--
Edd
Leonard F. Wheat
> In article <b5f71a25.04082...@posting.google.com
> >, Leonard F. Wheat <lenw...@earthlink.net> writes
> >Edd Edmondson <eddedm...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> >news:<cgfk21$cl4$1...@news.ox.ac.uk>...
> >> > >Does anyone have any ideas about where the inspirations for the names
> >Coulter, Belacqua, and Farder Coram might have come from?
>
> I have trouble not thinking of Farder Coram as an Irish priest.
> I can just about manage not to think of him as one of the priests in
> _Father Ted_. Still, isn't he just one of the gyptians, but old and
> full of venerable wisdom?
Yes, he is the senior, and wisest, of the gyptians (gypsies).
> Belacqua - some sort of Latin, I expect.
If we want to get into etymology, "Bel" means pretty or beautiful, and
"aqua" (or "agua" in spanish) means water. But "pretty water" doesn't
make any sense. So there must be some other derivation.
> Coulter is Scottish, I think;
> there is half a column of persons named Coulter in /my/ phone
> book. And incidentally, Azrael is a closer match for Lord Asriel, but
> I forget who Azrael or Asrael actually is. Was Azrael the name of a
> demon invented by Isaac Asimov?
Beats me, but it sounds like you may be onto something. I hope we
hear from some Asimov experts. There must be a few around here.
>
> And as for Father Gomez being C. S. Lewis himself, if that was the
> author's intention then perhaps he would have more closely
> resembled C. S. Lewis himself, who was not a priest, not
> Catholic, a writer, Irish rather than Spanish, and, as far as I am
> aware, very seldom murdered children.
I was being facetious. But then maybe so are you.
> Rather, Will and Lyra are,
> in a way, a new Adam and Eve, Mary seems cast as serpent if you
> want to read it that way, and Father Gomez is the worm in the
> apple, or the curse of death on Adam and Eve - and this time they
> escape.
>
> I forget, did you have some specific symbolism in mind for the
> atomic bomb?
Nope. It's not actually called an atomic bomb, but it does show a
similarity. I suspect that, given that the Church invented it, it's a
Spirit Bomb. I gave some thought to the bomb's possible symbolism but
couldn't find anything symbolic. It's story role is to dig the pit
into which Satan (Metatron) falls. In Milton's "Paradise Lost," God
is the architect of hell and the creator of the pit, which has a lake
of fire at the bottom, but the creation of the pit is not described.
Milton takes the "lake of fire" from the New Testament's book of
Revelation (19:29, 20:10, & 20:14), but the lake isn't at the bottom
of a pit and it's creation is not described. In Revelation 12:7,
where Satan is ejected from heaven, he is merely "thrown down to the
earth," not into a pit. So, because there is no biblical pit for
Satan, there can't be any pit-creating object that the bomb could
symbolize.
In Revelation 11:7, "the beast that asends from the bottomless pit" is
mentioned but, again, nothing creates the pit.
Leonard F. Wheat
Thanks. I was obviously wrong about the "Israel" derivation. Angel
of death provides a good analogical fit for Lord Asriel. He
symbolizes Satan, who in Pullman's upside down version of theology
throws Jesus (Metatron) into the pit, so that makes him a figurative
angel of death.
Leonard F. Wheat
I now have a plausible theory about where Mrs. Coulter's name comes
from. Mrs. Coulter is a religious fanatic doing fanatical religious
dirty work. She sounds a lot like a certain extreme right-wing
Republican, anti-abortion, pro-public-school-prayer, evangelical
newspaper columnist named Ann Coulter. I had heard of Ann Coulter and
had a vague, but uncertain, recollection that she was a Rush Limbaugh
type. But I'd never read anything by her -- she's not in my newspaper
-- so I decided to check, using Google. Here's a couple samples of
her opinions:
The following is lifted from one of Coulter's syndicated columns:
"Airports scrupulously apply the same laughably ineffective airport
harassment to Suzy Chapstick as to Muslim hijackers. It is
preposterous to assume every passenger is a potential crazed homicidal
maniac. We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones
cheering and dancing right now.
"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and CONVERT THEM
TO CHRISTIANITY. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing
only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we
killed civilians. That's war. And this is war." (Emphasis added)
Second-hand Ann Coulter material, taken from somebody else's column:
"Republicans and conservatives say the darnest things.
"First, Ann Coulter. Don't think I am obsessing over here just because
this is my second mention of her in two weeks. (Click here to see the
first.) I don't recall having written about her madness before these
latest strikes. But it was hard to resist returning to the subject
after reading an account of a lecture she delivered to the
impressionable minds of Northwestern University. She took the
predictable potshots at liberals. And then she proclaimed that the war
on terror is a "religious war." She explained, in a way:
"This is a religious war, not against Islam but for Christianity, for
a Christian nation. When this nation was founded, there was nothing
like it. Our founders said there is a God and we are all equal before
God. The ideal of equality and tolerance is like nothing that has ever
existed in the world before. That, too, is a Christian value. The
concept of equality, especially when it comes to gender equality, was
not invented by Gloria Steinem. It was invented by Jesus Christ. As
long as people look long enough, they will always come to
Christianity."
Those words admirably reflect the mind-set of Pullman's Mrs. Coulter.
The trouble is, I don't know if he had access to her as a model. THE
GOLDEN COMPASS (or NORTHERN LIGHTS in the UK) was published in 1995,
which means it was written no later than 1994. I'm not sure Ann
Coulter was around back then. And even if she was, Pullman might not
have known about her. I doubt that her column runs in any British
newspapers.
Ross TenEyck
>On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 18:14:27 +0000 (UTC), ten...@alumnae.caltech.edu
>(Ross TenEyck) wrote:
>>It's conventional enough theology to be referenced in the Apostles
>>Creed:
>>
>> And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord; who was conceived
>> by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under
>> Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; **he descended
>> into hell;** the third day he rose again from the dead; he
>> ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God
>> the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the
>> quick and the dead.
>I have nothing to add to the main point, just a plug for the sadly
>defunct Chaosium game "Credo". For those not already familiar with
>it, it's about inter-faction power struggles culminating in everyone
>trying to stack the Council of Nicea, and the result of the game is
>expressed in (usually) a somewhat, um, different, Apostle's Creed.
I have it, and it's great fun as an historical exercise. We only
tried actually playing it a couple of times, though, and it seemed
a bit lacking as a game.
But I've heard other people give it good testimonials as a game,
so perhaps we were just unlucky, or something.
how...@brazee.net
On 25-Aug-2004, karn...@cs.com (Karnak17) wrote:
> Therefore, "Heaven" and "Hell" as Lewis conceptualized them in TGD, can be
> said
> to definitely exist already, here on Earth, as psychological or spiritual
> states of being. The only difference would be that Lewis thought of such
> states as continuing into an Afterlife.
But if Hell is permanent, then why have it?
Giles
> > [re: long allegorical stuff]
> >
>
> > Similarly, the instruments you mention as lacking strong symbolism
> > themselves can be seen as truth/superstition/the scientific method.
> > The aleithiometer is even at one stage stolen by sir
> > Snake-as-a-Daemon, whose name I can't recall (it's to the advantage of
> > the powerful to keep their inferiors ignorant). The subtle knife
> > itself is broken before the story ends, and it's the amber spyglass in
> > the hands of a scientist that finally figures out what's happening to
> > all the dust anyway.
>
>
> As for the spyglass, it is used to see dust, which represents
> knowledge. So we might say that, just as the knife represents the
> religious impulse, the spyglass represents the scientific impulse, or
> an insistence that truth be based on reason and empiricism.
> Alternatively, we could say that the spyglass symbolizes the
> scientific method, contrasted with the religious method.
A couple of complimentary points:
The knife works by damaging the natural order of worlds with negative
effects within those worlds. It is supposed to be wielded by one who
has been damaged by it (the loss of the finger). The purpose it ended
up being used for in Cittegazze was both to steal from others and, by
the proceeds of those thefts, maintain an existing power structure.
Cutting has already been seen as a negative in The Golden Compass with
the daemon-rending of the gobblers. I agree with it as the
superstitious impulse, with a side order of 'driven by self damage and
averice'. Even Will must sacrifice his heart's desire in order to
complete its destruction.
The spyglass, by contrast, is non-invasive. It affects nothing,
damages nothing, but is in itself a source of knowledge. It looks for
truth, but doesn't seek to create its own.
The compass, strangely enough, can be operated intuitively by an
innocent, but not by the experienced who must study and practise for
decades. I'm not quite sure what this means, but it could involve the
lack of indoctrination in a particular worldview. Both clergy and
rebels can use it, with great efforts, and both have accumulations of
dust that might possibly interfere with its interaction with other,
more talkative dust. Lyra, in state of innocence, finds it easier to
attain the clear state needed for its reading, because she is
unencumbered by the amount of dust experienced by the experienced.
The only thing I have problems with is the use of the word 'Church' in
your essay. I'd go with 'unproveable belief structure' myself, which
has fewer physical and Christian connotations, or even 'defined
religious outlook'. But that's just me.
Cheers,
-Giles
Ross TenEyck
In the book in question -- Lewis' _The Great Divorce_ -- Hell is self-
chosen. Anyone, at any time, can leave Hell and enter Heaven; in the
end, those that remain in Hell are those who deliberately and consciously
reject Heaven.
Leonard F. Wheat
>
> One element of symbolism I found in the Lands of the Dead stretch of
> the story was the similarity between Lyra and Will rescuing the dead
> from harpy-ville and the story of Jesus and the harrowing of Hell,
> where Jesus got most of those who had been in Hell prior to him out on
> a technicality.
>
> To use your symbolic map, the reverse story Pullman tells has Lyra,
> symbol of sin/knowledge and daughter of the Satan figure, having lost
> her 'soul' (dying in a sense, even though she gets better) and
> releasing the multitudes to their final recycling. An almost total
> inverse of the JC yarn. Note that they only escape the harpies by
> telling them true stories - literally 'the truth has set them free'
> and the princess of lies (heh) realises further how useful the truth
> can be.
I have added two sections to the essay to incorporate the idea of
resurrection and your idea about "the truth has set them free":
LEAVING THE LAND OF THE DEAD
The belief in a celestial heaven as a place of salvation was not part
of earliest Christianity, back when Christianity was still a sect
within Judaism. To be sure, the earliest Christians, along with the
rest of the Jews, believed heaven existed. But heaven was not a place
where the souls of the righteous lived on after the mortal body died.
Instead, it was a domed vault where God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit,
angels, and a few saints and prophets lived among stars and other
heavenly bodies. As Christianity spread into the Hellenistic
(culturally Greek) world, and as a promised Kingdom of Heaven on earth
kept failing to appear, a new religion gradually evolved. This new
religion, Christianity, differed from Judaism in that (among other
differences) the Christians had assimilated the Greek idea of an
afterlife in heaven.
The original Christian sect within Judaism began with the Jewish
belief that existing society with its earthly kings and kingdoms would
soon be replaced by God's kingdom on earth –- the Kingdom of God, also
called the Kingdom of Heaven. A messiah would come and with him all
sorts of tumult and destruction, marking the end of worldly kingdoms.
Then God would literally reign on earth. The Kingdom of God would be
an earthly paradise.
Jesus believed that the end was near and that the Kingdom of God was
just around the corner. His constant message was: "The time is
fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in
the gospel" (Mark 1:15). Eventually, Jesus came to believe that he
himself was the messiah and that, after first being taken up to
heaven, he would descend on a cloud, attended by angels, on Judgment
Day. Then, in accordance with the belief of many (not all) Jews, the
dead would be resurrected and judged alongside the living. Jesus
would be the judge; he would separate the "sheep" (righteous) from the
"goats" (sinners), casting the latter into "the eternal fire prepared
for the devil and his angels" (Matthew 25:41). The righteous would be
rewarded with citizenship in the earthly -– not heavenly -– Kingdom of
God.
Now we get to the point. It concerns the resurrection of the dead.
Before Judgment Day, the dead would simply be dead, or else in
Judaism's sheol, a netherworld of mere existence, offering neither
reward nor punishment. Then Jesus, the Christ ("Christos" is Greek
for messiah), would come and return the dead to life -– life in either
hell or the Kingdom of God on earth. Christianity's Apostles Creed
incorporates this belief in the following words (not fully
standardized): "He descended unto hell. On the third day He arose
from the dead. He ascended unto heaven, where he sitteth at the right
hand of God, the Father Almighty, from thence [sometimes "whence"] he
shall come to judge the quick and the dead." The "quick" are the
living; the "dead" are the arisen dead. Jesus (not God) "shall come
to judge" both the living and the resurrected dead. Hence the creed
continues, "I believe in . . . the resurrection of the body."
When Lyra and Will go to the world of the dead, they go not to hell
but to a place having characteristics of hell, sheol, and the Greek
Hades. It is a place where the dead live on as ghosts when mortal
life ends and from which they can be resurrected on Judgment Day.
Judgment Day comes when Lyra leads them out past the harpies. The
judge is not the Christ but the harpies, who allow anyone who tells
them a true story -– truth -– to exit. Lyra's act of freeing the dead
symbolizes the Resurrection of the Dead, an event that many of today's
Christians (mostly conservatives and fundamentalists) still believe
will occur with a Second Coming of the Christ.
"THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE"
The harpies' act of judging the ghosts is another symbolic event. A
famous quotation from John 8:32 reads, "Ye shall know the truth, and
the truth shall make you free." When the land of the dead was
created, the Authority empowered the harpies to see and feed on the
worst in the ghosts who came down. Suddenly the harpies hear Lyra
telling true stories about her life on earth. They are enthralled.
Asked why, the harpy leader, No-Name, replies: "Because she spoke the
truth. Because it was nourishing. Because it was feeding us.
Because we couldn't help it. Because it was true" (AS 284).
The harpies threaten to keep the ghosts where they are, but Lyra gets
help from Tialys, a Gallivespian who has accompanied her. He
negotiates a deal with the harpies. The harpies will have the
assignment of guiding back to the surface all ghosts who come to the
land of the dead. In payment, the ghosts will tell them true stories
from their lives. Telling the truth to the harpies will set the
ghosts free. When they get to the surface, they will dissolve into
atoms and be "gone into the air and the wind and the trees and the
earth and all the living things" (286).
This is how the harpies come to know the truth. And the truth sets
the ghosts free. They reach the surface and are "alive again in a
thousand blades of grass, and a million leaves; . . . falling in the
raindrops and blowing in the fresh breeze; . . . glittering in the dew
under the stars and the moon" (287). This freedom is truly what our
atoms, our real "souls," experience when we die.
Robert Carnegie
m05.news.cs.com>, Karnak17 <karn...@cs.com> writes
But Cittigazze (I'm not checking the spelling) isn't an unformed or
uninhabited world. It's a nexus - of a sort - but that's because it's
the one world which invented the subtle knife that cuts windows
between worlds. It isn't deserted; it's post-catastrophe, overrun
with Spectres which drift onto adults and late adolescents and eat
their souls - so we see adult refugees fleeing the cities, since
Spectres treat cities as pantries, and bands of parentless children
roaming around raiding candy stores.
The Spectres also seem to stay at ground level and avoid hills,
although Mrs Coulter, by means whose explanation I may have
overlooked, can make them do what she wants them to do.
Robert Carnegie at home, rja.ca...@excite.com at large
--
I am fully aware I may regret this in the morning.
Karnak17
Hell, according to"The Great Divorce", is being shut up within the dungeon of
your own mind. Therefore, Hell will continue for as long as the mind
continues.
For those who believe in an immortal soul, that means that logically Hell will
continue after death, but I don't think Lewis regarded the souls in Hell as
being immortal in the sense that souls in Heaven are.
According to TGD, the person's real self shrinks and atrophies until there is
eventually no real soul left in the person to either resist or enjoy their sin,
only a sort of disagreeable automaton. That is the point beyond which there is
no hope, for you cannot choose Heaven and reject Hell if there is no "you" left
to do the choosing.
Karnak17
If it is a nexus between worlds, through which can be accessed myriad windows
to other worlds, then it serves the same function in interworld travel that The
Wood did in Lewis' universe.
The part about multitudes of windows accessing multitudes of worlds being
present in both series, and representing spirituality in both series, appears
to be the part that Leonard F. Wheat finds interesting. The Wood, despite it's
superficial dissimilarities, seems to fit into the theme LW is trying to
develop. So I suggested he check it out.
It isn't deserted; it's post-catastrophe, overrun
>with Spectres which drift onto adults and late adolescents and eat
>their souls - so we see adult refugees fleeing the cities, since
>Spectres treat cities as pantries, and bands of parentless children
>roaming around raiding candy stores.
>
>The Spectres also seem to stay at ground level and avoid hills,
>although Mrs Coulter, by means whose explanation I may have
>overlooked, can make them do what she wants them to do.
Okay. But LFW wrote that Pullman intended Cittigaze to represent the Wardrobe.
He seemed undeterred by the fact that the Wardrobe was not a city overrun by
soul-eating spectres (unless the fur coats were more than they appeared).
Since the Wardrobe is not a world and only a single window to a single world,
and the Wood is a world and accesses an infinite number of other worlds, the
Wood might serve as a closer allegorical counterpoint to Cittigazze, for LFW's
purposes.
Robert Carnegie
m>, Giles <gbo...@paradise.net.nz> writes
>
>The compass, strangely enough, can be operated intuitively by an
>innocent, but not by the experienced who must study and practise for
>decades. I'm not quite sure what this means, but it could involve the
>lack of indoctrination in a particular worldview. Both clergy and
>rebels can use it, with great efforts, and both have accumulations of
>dust that might possibly interfere with its interaction with other,
>more talkative dust. Lyra, in state of innocence, finds it easier to
>attain the clear state needed for its reading, because she is
>unencumbered by the amount of dust experienced by the experienced.
That's not quite it. I think the text is inconsistent as to who can use
an alethiometer, and how, and how many of them actually exist,
but the last word on the subject, to Lyra from the angel, who
always tells the truth, is that Lyra got to use the alethiometer by
"grace" - I think that's the actual word used; that by rights she
shouldn't have been able to do it, but the Dust and the angels
needed to have her do it, so they broke the rules in her favour.
Apart from that, childish innocence and/or purity and clarity of mind
probably helps, but study is necessary as well.
Leonard F. Wheat
You overlooked the explanation because it's easy to overlook: it's
there, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Pullman needed to
make Mrs. Coulter immune to the specters so she could operate in the
world of Cittigazze, but the excuse he contrived is a bit too
contrived. On page 274 of SK, Coulter is conversing with Sir Charles
Latrom, a.k.a. Lord Boreal. (He's the guy with the serpent daemon,
and she calls him Carlo.) He asks, "How do you command the specters?"
"Simple," she said. "They know I can give me more nourishment if they
let me live than if they consume me. I can lead them to all the
victims their phantom hearts desire. As soon as you described them to
me, I knew I could dominate them, and so it turns out."
And who are these potential "victims" she can lead them to? And how
can she find these victims? No answers. You might say that, as one
of the Church's leading purveyors of superstition, she knows where to
find superstitious people. But that explanation would apply only in
her own world, Lyra's world. In Cittigazze, the only available
victims are the adults who have fled from the cities to the hills to
avoid the specters. What special talent does Coulter have that
enables her to lead the specters to the adults? Again, no answer.
Maybe the secret is that she teaches them how to fly, but how? Page
279: "She raised her arms and made them forget that they [the
specters] were earthbound, so that one by one they rose into the air
and floated free like malignant thistledown." Is she a magician?
A related question is this: If she can command the specters, why does
she go the the trouble of poisoning Sir Charles when she could command
the specters to eat him?
Leonard F. Wheat
Your hypothesis that Cittigaze symbolizes the "Wood Between the
Worlds" from a different book is interesting. But it overlooks
something important. Pullman has been quite open about his intent to
refute "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe." That makes it
apparent that Lyra's world, Cittagazze, and Will's world respectively
symbolize Narnia, the wardrobe, and the children's world.
To be symbolized, the wardrobe need not be a "world." Being a PLACE
is close enough. One good analogy is all it takes to make a good
symbol. Cittigazze can represent the wardrobe because both it and the
wardrobe are places that must be PASSED THROUGH to get from the first
place to the third.
I don't follow your reasoning when you say that the wood is a "closer
allegorical counterpoint to Cittigazze" because "the Wood . . .
accesses an infinite number of other worlds." That feature makes the
Wood less analogous to Cittigazze, not more analogous. Both the
wardrobe and Cittigazze provide access in just two directions (at
least until we get to book 3).
Another consideration is that (a) Lyra's world is designed to be
analogous to Narnia and (b) Will's world is designed to be analogous
to ours. Narnia is filled with supernatural beings, including a
humanoid lion and a witch. Correspondingly, Lyra's world is filled
with supernatural beings, including humanoid bears and witches -- and
nothing else, if I recall correctly. Animal for animal, witch for
witch. Will's world, on the other hand, is devoid of supernatural
beings, just as the children's world is (unless you count Jesus).
Since Lyra's world and Will's world clearly symbolize two of the three
places from LWW, it stands to reason that Cittagazze symbolizes the
third place, the wardrobe.
In saying that the wardrobe is not a "world," you unreasonably
minimize its importance. The wardrobe is, after all, the only one of
LWW's three places to be mentioned in the title of "The Lion, the
Witch, and the Wardrobe."
Robert Carnegie
<ten...@alumnae.caltech.edu> writes
>how...@brazee.net writes:
>>On 25-Aug-2004, karn...@cs.com (Karnak17) wrote:
>
>>> Therefore, "Heaven" and "Hell" as Lewis conceptualized them in TGD,
>can be
>>> said
>>> to definitely exist already, here on Earth, as psychological or spiritual
>>> states of being. The only difference would be that Lewis thought of
>such
>>> states as continuing into an Afterlife.
>
>>But if Hell is permanent, then why have it?
>
>In the book in question -- Lewis' _The Great Divorce_ -- Hell is self-
>chosen. Anyone, at any time, can leave Hell and enter Heaven; in the
>end, those that remain in Hell are those who deliberately and consciously
>reject Heaven.
Which sounds more like some versions of Spiritualism.
Funny stuff, Spiritualism. As in, laugh out loud. I have before
me, and I think I've quoted before now, a copy of _Life in the World
Unseen_ (an omnibus of "scripts" _Beyond This Life_ and _The
World Unseen_), as told to Anthony Borgia by the late Monsignor
Robert Hugh Benson, previous author of _The Necromancers_,
a book whose title surely must be either unfavourable to
Spritualists, or ironic. According to the flyleaf and Mr. Borgia, "On
passing into the spirit world, Monsignor Benson found that the
views he had expressed in his book were substantially incorrect."
It isn't all such fine hilarity, but taken as a whole it /is/ a scream.
And the damned /are/ damned, in a sort of region of dark
doldrums, but they could get up and walk out of it if they worked
at it.
Karnak17
>Your hypothesis that Cittigaze symbolizes the "Wood Between the
>Worlds" from a different book is interesting. But it overlooks
>something important. Pullman has been quite open about his intent to
>refute "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe." That makes it
>apparent that Lyra's world, Cittagazze, and Will's world respectively
>symbolize Narnia, the wardrobe, and the children's world.
All the comments I have heard from Pullman on the subject have criticized the
Narnian series as a whole. His criticism of Lewis preferring death over life
was specifically aimed at the ending of "The Last Battle", as were his
complaints about the (supposed) damnation of Susan Pevensie for liking clothes
and boys. He also despised the ending of "The Magician's Nephew", the book I
am discussing, because a character is cured by a magic apple from Narnia rather
than by doctors, science, and research. And he has spoken at length about the
way in which his ending to HDM is meant to counteract Lewis' ending to his
series, in TLB.
I have therefore no doubt that "His Dark Materials" was meant to counter the
Narnian series as a whole, rather than just LWW. You yourself say as much in
your essay, so I am puzzled--nay, floored--by your present objections.
>To be symbolized, the wardrobe need not be a "world." Being a PLACE
>is close enough. One good analogy is all it takes to make a good
>symbol. Cittigazze can represent the wardrobe because both it and the
>wardrobe are places that must be PASSED THROUGH to get from the first
>place to the third.
>
>I don't follow your reasoning when you say that the wood is a "closer
>allegorical counterpoint to Cittigazze" because "the Wood . . .
>accesses an infinite number of other worlds." That feature makes the
>Wood less analogous to Cittigazze, not more analogous. Both the
>wardrobe and Cittigazze provide access in just two directions (at
>least until we get to book 3).
You know best. I had gathered from your description of Cittigazze that it
resembled the Wood. But not having read HDM, I am no judge.
>Another consideration is that (a) Lyra's world is designed to be
>analogous to Narnia and (b) Will's world is designed to be analogous
>to ours. Narnia is filled with supernatural beings, including a
>humanoid lion and a witch. Correspondingly, Lyra's world is filled
>with supernatural beings, including humanoid bears and witches -- and
>nothing else, if I recall correctly. Animal for animal, witch for
>witch. Will's world, on the other hand, is devoid of supernatural
>beings, just as the children's world is (unless you count Jesus).
>Since Lyra's world and Will's world clearly symbolize two of the three
>places from LWW, it stands to reason that Cittagazze symbolizes the
>third place, the wardrobe.
>In saying that the wardrobe is not a "world," you unreasonably
>minimize its importance. The wardrobe is, after all, the only one of
>LWW's three places to be mentioned in the title of "The Lion, the
>Witch, and the Wardrobe."
Er. . . I'm not trying to "unreasonably minimize" anything. I'm sure the
Wardrobe is very important. But it is not a world, not an intermediate
stopping off point the characters land in when traveling between Narnia and our
world, and doesn't contain windows to multitudes of other worlds. When I read
your essay, I got the impression that Cittigazze *was* all these things.
Therefore, the Wood sprang to mind. If Cittigazze does not in fact possess
these qualities, then it doesn't resemble the Wood after all, so please
disregard my comments.
Leonard F. Wheat
In further reflecting on the plot and characters of the Dark
Materials trilogy, I have come up with two more characters that
symbolize different characters from Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and
the Wardrobe.
Two of the armored bears –- Iorek Brynison and his adversary,
Iofur Raknison -– are symbolic, and in a strange way. Their
antecedents are Anslan and the Witch, the two title characters from
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Since the LWW characters, in
turn, represent the Christ and Satan, you could say that Iorek and
Iofur are also secondary (indirect) symbols for the Christ and Satan.
Having two symbols for one thing is not without precedent in allegory.
Stanley Kubrick, in his allegorical film 2001: A Space Odyssey, has
secondary symbols for lower man, higher man, God, and the death of
God. For example, both Hal-Discovery (the computer brain and its
spaceship body) and the wine glass symbolize God, and both meet their
demise, symbolizing God's death.
Iorek Brynison is the more important of the two bears. The
first analogy between him and Aslan is that Irorek lives in Lyra's
world, the world that symbolizes Narnia, which is the world where
Aslan lives. The second analogy is that both Iorek and Aslan are
intelligent, talking animals. The third analogy is that both
befriend, help, and ultimately save the lives of children.
But these analogies are just the starters. The really powerful
analogy is that both Iorek and Aslan, like the Christ, die and are
resurrected. Your skeptical eyebrow might well have lifted at that
assertion, for Iorek does not literally die. But he does die
figuratively. He is separated from his soul, which is what supposedly
happens when a person dies. Iorek's soul, and every armored bear's
soul, is his armor (GC 172, 197, 277). Mrs. Coulter has managed to
drug Iorek, causing him to lose emotional control, kill another bear
who challenged him, and become an outcast. His depressed state allows
conniving humans to get him drunk and steal his armor when he passes
out. This reduces him to virtual slavery; he works strictly for food.
For Iroek, this predicament is a state of hell. After dying on the
cross, the Christ descended into hell. Then, according to the
Apostles Creed, the Christ arose from the dead. So it is with Aslan.
He dies (loses his armor-soul) and descends into a figurative hell.
Then, with Lyra's help, Iorek regains his armor –- regains his soul.
Thus does he arise from the dead.
A fifth analogy reinforces the already strong symbolic connection
between Iorek and Aslan. Aslan, we have seen, uses his powers to
restore other dead animals to life. Iorek, after his "resurrection,"
helps Lyra restore psychologically dead children to life. Mrs.
Coulter's "gobblers" have kidnapped many children and separated them
from their souls (daemons) with her "silver guillotine." Just as
Aslan died metaphorically when he was separated from his soul (armor),
the children have died metaphorically when separated from their souls
(daemons). Lyra finds and uncages the caged daemons, gets them back
to their owners, and engineers an escape for the children. But she
needs help from Iorek (and the witches) when she and the other
children are about to be recaptured. So Iorek, like Aslan, has helped
restore other dead beings to life, although his role is admittedly
weaker in this respect than Aslan's.
The other prominent armored bear, Iofur Raknison, has gained Iorek's
rightful position as king of the armored bears. Iorek can't
single-handedly take on all of the armored bears, but Lyra tricks
Iofur into accepting a one-on-one fight to the death with Iorek.
Iorek wins. Given that Iorek symbolizes Aslan, this battle seems to
represent the struggle between Aslan and the White Witch. Iofur,
therefore, symbolizes the White Witch.
* * * * * * * *
A few other potential symbols remain, but none of them really
seem to symbolize anything. First, we have the witches and the chief
of the friendly clan, Serafina Pekkala. But witch clans are on both
sides in the battle between knowledge and superstition. I see nothing
the witches could symbolize. Second, there are the cliff-ghasts.
They don't discriminate between the good guys and the bad guys when
deciding who to attack and eat, so its hard to see how they could
symbolizes anyone from religion or irreligion. Third, the gyptians
and their leader, Farder Coram, are important players on the side of
good. But what could they possibly symbolize? Fourth, the
balloonist, Lee Scoresby, is also important in the ranks of the good.
But who or what could he represent?
In all cases, we are looking for referents that can be found
in (1) The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, (2) Paradise Lost, or
(3) traditional Christian theology. If anyone has any ideas, I'd like
to hear them, complete with whatever analogies relate the potential
symbol to whatever it might symbolize.