My take on the His Dark Materials trilogy
I read Philip Pullman’s young adult fantasy trilogy over the last couple of weeks, mostly to see what all the fundies were complaining about, and found his views to be surprisingly in step with my own, though we do disagree on some points.
I won’t summarise the plot etc, assuming that most of the people who read this blog will have already borrowed the books from Brehaut at some stage. But to summarise the main themes I picked up, in question-and-answer form:
Question - what if God, and/or the establishment representing God, was bad (ie oppressive and cruel)?
Answer - good people would be obliged to rebel.
Question - if there was no God, what would give life its meaning?
Answer - life is inherently valuable, and it’s even better when you can help others, and be kind and loving, and live in harmonious relationship with other people and the natural world.
I think Pullman does a brilliant job of portraying a scenario in which the traditional good/evil power balance is reversed, and the good guys are put in the position of Satan. I can absolutely see why some people get so worked up about His Dark Materials; the novels pull no punches in their condemnation of organised religion as an inhuman, anti-creative force of oppression, and they’re obviously designed to provoke. The thing is, good and evil are present in recognisable form in the books - they just have different names. As a Christian I believe God is on the side of the weak and oppressed, and stands for freedom and creativity and happiness, and to me it’s self-evident that a person’s actions determine whether he or she is siding with good or evil.
Christians need to ask ourselves the kind of questions His Dark Materials poses. We need to consider our answers carefully and examine our beliefs to decide what is good and what is inconsistent.
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January 18th, 2008 at 8:37 am
That’s very well put; I’d agree with you wholeheartedly. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of some of his inversions of values (that liars and murderers are somehow more trustworthy than others) but on the whole, yes, it made me think a lot.
I was interested that he came to the same conclusion regarding the fall as I have; namely, that it was/is a prerequisite to being fully human, and therefore probably both good and necessary in God’s eyes. (Although it’s interesting to contrast this story with Lewis’s Perelandra.)
January 18th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
As a Christian I believe God is on the side of the weak and oppressed, and stands for freedom and creativity and happiness, and to me it’s self-evident that a person’s actions determine whether he or she is siding with good or evil.
As a non-Christian I believe that God doesn’t look after the weak and oppressed, except when they think so subjectively.
January 19th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Ah, Perelandra - I thought about that quite a bit when they were discussing the fall in HDM. The funny thing about Lewis was that his definition of Christian (in his fiction books, anyway), was not so much a person who explicitly called themselves such, but rather embodied Christ’s values, e.g were kind, helped them, etc. Which specific god they worshipped seemed a bit unimportant (i.e the last battle).
That kind of lines up with what Pullman says at the end - instead of forcing obedience and suppressing normal, good parts of being human, we should be kind to others, using our minds as well as we can and generally aiming to push further (if that makes sense); all that sort of thing.
So I saw a bit of correlation, despite the wildly differing story lines sympathies of each author. It’s clear Pullman and Lewis, in the same room, would have Had Words. And I have to say, I agree thoroughly with those aspects of each of their works.
Despite Pullman’s apparent bitterness against the church, I loved the books because it was an absorbing world (yes, Narnia 2.0, just different), but also because I can see where he’s going and felt it was a valid thing to do.
I’d rather someone admitted they were - for example - a cold-hearted, nefarious blood-sucking bastard and got on with it, rather than avoiding the issue or pretending they were someone else. (Disclaimer: that’s not what I think of either author).
So, yeah. Loved the books. Would quite like to buy them one day when I have money.
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:07 am
Cool.
January 23rd, 2008 at 12:52 pm
I agree with you. I am, however, rather intrigued to see the film version … I’m not sure if Americans will be able to make a series of films which have as their central premise the idea of a rebellion against God. I imagine the themes will be somewhat altered. Have you seen it? I’m waiting for it to come out on DVD, just in case it is disappointing. Somehow things are less disappointing on small screens, even if they are rubbish.
By the way, have you read Eragon or seen the movie? Book: flawed but very enjoyable. Film: ouch.