Reviewed by Kalon T.
Phillip Pullman's The Golden Compass follows a young Lyra Belacuaya from Oxford England. The world is a changed place-- the author hints at a time period of the early 1900's --although it is far removed from that historical reality. People in this world have a developed a rendition of themselves in animal form that follows them everywhere and they share each other’s minds. These creatures have come to be called Daemons. Lyra comes from a carefree life of fun and games and is soon thrown into a life of mystery, danger, and fear. I feel that her journey from a carefree child to a strong willed young women can be described best through this poem "Into this wild abyss" by John Milton:
Into this Wild abyss,
The womb of nature and perhaps her grave
Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,
But all these in their pregnant causes mixed
Confusedly, and which thus myst ever fight,
Unless the almighty maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more worlds,
Into this wild abyss the wary friend
Stood on the brink of hell and looked a while,
Pondering his voyage...
This poem describes her journey through the book, it tells of her struggle to find her place in this danger that she has to face in the cold arctic tundra of the North. Through her journey, she faces many perils including Gobblers, a group that travels the globe abducting children for unknown experiments. She must find out for herself whether she is destined to win or lose this battle of good and evil, without even knowing she is evolved at times. Throughout the novel Lyra battles her way through various obstacles which block her way of success in discovering her destiny. Along the way, she encounters many creatures that would make the ordinary man cringe in fear such as armored bears that rule the tundra of the North, witch clans that will attack without notice swooping down from the sky and releasing a shower of arrows on their enemy's, and worst of all the Tarter's, a tribe that has a savage tradition of drilling holes into each other’s head without killing the person.
I found that there were two key components in this book; one that stuck out to me. The major one that presented itself bluntly throughout the book was Lyra's transformation from being a carefree adolescent child through her journey into being a responsible and mindful young woman. She learns to mature and realize how her actions affect those around her. This is captured wonderfully when she saves her best friend Roger from being killed by the Gobblers, then continues on to bring him to her father who she thinks is a safe person to deliver Roger to. She suddenly realizes how great of a mistake she has made because she had the intention of keeping him safe, while her father’s plans were to use Roger in his own experiments and eventually leading him to his death.
The other element-that really didn't make sense until the end of the book- which stood out for me was Pullman's way of incorporating religion into the plot development and how everything has an underlying meaning relating back to the church. The main idea in the book revolves around an elementary particle that is known as "Dust," and the mystery that goes along with it of what it is and what its purpose is. The way that the author portrays dust is that it is a form of seeing Original Sin. When children are born they don’t have any signs of dust but as they progress through life they start obtaining more and more of it. With all this mystery around it Pullman also incorporates how the Magestirium has abused its power through the past, keeping things such as dust secret from the common man while trying to find as much as they can about it without worrying the general public.
This, for me, was what stood out the most because there are so many classic scenarios throughout the book that relate back through history into the times when the Catholic/Christian church's would rule each empire they were a part of, and would conduct catastrophic events to maintain power, such as the Crusades of the Christian Church. This was best illustrated in the book through the Magestirium hiring the General Oblation Board a.k.a. the Gobblers to kidnap children and conduct such horrible experiments on children that would cut away their daemons that in our terms is as bad as cutting away a person's soul. I found that the way the author took that history and incorporated it into the book in an interesting way was compelling to read from both the perspectives of young teenagers as well as adults. Even if one doesn’t get some aspects of the book, there is a wonderful story for everyone in every age group.
