 | | | Dakota Blue Richards stars as Lyra in "The Golden Compass (©2007 Laurie Sparham / New Line Cinema) | |
Why “His Dark Materials”?
The title of Philip Pullman’s novels — along with many quotes featured in the series — comes from John Milton’s famous epic poem “Paradise Lost.” |
* With new material not available in the print edition
A mysterious, truth-telling compass, shape-changing creatures, ferocious, armored bears racing across snow-covered landscapes, and a scrappy 11-year-old named Lyra Belacqua as the heroine — all that and more are promised in
The Golden Compass, a film scheduled for release this December and based on the first volume in Philip Pullman’s
His Dark Materials, a Carnegie award-winning series for young adults. But there’s more to these books than a well-told adventure story. Here’s the scoop on this immensely praised but controversial trilogy.
What’s the series about, and why is it so popular? His
Dark Materials is an adventure trilogy by British author Philip Pullman (see sidebar for where to find plot summaries). The first volume, known under two titles —
The Golden Compass and
Northern Lights — was published in 1995. The popularity of the books is partly owed to the excellent writing, complex characters, compelling story, and sophisticated themes. The books raise complex questions about love, life, faith, good and evil, choice versus fate, serving self versus serving others, and more.
Why might the series be anti-Catholic? The Christian Church featured in the world of the novels — a parallel world to our own — is portrayed as a powerful group of misguided, sin-obsessed individuals bent on oppressing truth, knowledge, and “every good feeling.” The group is often referred to as “the Magisterium.” In this world, the Authority — the God of Christianity, and also a representative of authority in the general sense — is a tyrannical liar who only pretends to have created the universe and who, by the time the trilogy’s ultimate battle is waged, is a pitifully frail old man who is relieved that someone has come along to put an end to his existence.
The character Mary Malone, a former nun introduced in the second book of the trilogy, sums up what would appear to be the author’s view: “The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that’s all.”
Is the author anti-God? Given the views expressed through the series, and Pullman’s outspoken atheism, one might expect the answer to be an unequivocal “yes.” “I’m trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief,” Pullman told
The Washington Post in 2001, and in 2003 he told the
Sydney Morning Herald: “My books are about killing God.” In the 2007 interview with Beliefnet, however, he discusses how although the action of killing a (false) god appears in the books, the books are about saving the divine (which in the books appears not in the Authority, but in “Dust,” or consciousness, which the Church of the books aims to destroy).
