Not long after the Roping, an injured Gyptian spy returns
from a reconnaissance mission. He tells Farder Coram that a man
named Lord Boreal is involved in the Gobblers’ work and that the
children have been taken to the Arctic region known as Lapland.
With Farder Coram’s help, Lyra learns how to use the alethiometer,
with which she can predict the future and learn information about
anything in the past or present. The Gyptians decide to take Lyra
north with them. Their first stop is at the home of the representative
of the Lapland witches, Dr. Lanselius. He tests Lyra to see if she
can find something belonging to a witch named Serafina Pekkala,
who once knew Farder Coram. Dr. Lanselius tells Farder Coram that
Lyra has a major part to play in the destiny of their world. Dr.
Lanselius also mentions an armored bear in town named Iorek Byrnison.
Lyra helps Iorek find his armor, and Iorek agrees to join
the party of Gyptians. In the meantime, the Gyptians have hired
an aeronaut from Texas named Lee Scoresby, who owns a balloon. Together, they
head for Bolvanger, where the Gobblers work.
With the help of Iorek Byrnison, Lyra goes ahead of the
Gyptians to a village, where she finds Tony Makarios and learns
that the Gobblers are cutting children’s daemons away from them.
She brings Tony back to the camp, but he dies. Tartars attack the
Gyptians, steal Lyra, and bring her to Bolvanger, where the other
children are being kept. Scientists there weigh and measure Lyra
and Pantalaimon and study the effect of Dust on humans and their
daemons. Lyra finds Roger and begins to plan their escape. With
the help of Tony Costa, Lyra and Roger find the severed daemons.
Serafina Pekkala’s daemon, Kaisa, rescues the severed daemons and
tells Lyra that the Gyptians are on their way.
Mrs. Coulter arrives. Lyra, eavesdropping, hears about
how the scientists cut daemons from children. She also hears that
Lord Asriel is being held captive by the armored bears. Lyra is
caught, and the men try to cut Pantalaimon away from her. Mrs. Coulter
intervenes and rescues Lyra. She tells Lyra that the cutting, also
called intercision, is a good thing.
Lyra leads the other children to freedom. They run from
the building just as the Gyptians and Iorek Byrnison arrive, and
a battle between the wards of Bolvanger and the Gyptians ensues.
Analysis: Chapter 6–Chapter 17
While traveling north to rescue Roger, Lyra meets a number
of interesting characters. John Faa is the Lord of the Gyptians,
a group that bears some similarity to gypsies in our world. In fact,
the name John Faa comes from a fifteenth-century English song about
a gypsy prince. Lyra also meets Iorek Byrnison, an armored bear.
Iorek is fundamentally different from the humans in the story, as
evidenced by the fact that he has no daemon, which means he has
no soul. Iorek and all of his people may not have souls, but they
have intelligence—and opposable thumbs. Many scientists point to
the development of the opposable thumb as the step that allows beasts
to evolve into humans, so the armored bears’ opposable thumbs may mean
that their evolution is not yet complete.
Because Pullman’s work is anti-Church in nature, his heroic
figures are often those outside of the purview of Christianity.
The Gyptians, for example, are a nomadic and irreligious society.
They live on the outskirts of society and are often shunned and
mistreated, but they are heroes nevertheless. They are kind to Lyra
and to other children. They decide to rescue all the children, not
just their own, from the Gobblers, even though the “landlopers,”
as they call non-Gyptians, have often been cruel to them. In order
to highlight the inherent fallibility of religion, Pullman inverts
expectations and stereotypes. The witches, who have traditionally
symbolized darkness and evil, are transformed here into religious
symbols of freedom and power.
Lyra’s encounter with Dr. Lanselius proves that there
is something special about Lyra. Lanselius says that Lyra must fulfill
an important task without knowing what she’s doing. This means that Lyra
must remain innocent until after she has accomplished what she is
meant to do. Lanselius’s gift of the alethiometer is a powerful one. Alethia means
“truth” in Greek, and meter means “measure.” These
meanings suggest that the alethiometer is a tool for measuring the
truth. When Lyra learns how to use the alethiometer, she discovers
that it will tell her what has happened, what is going on now, and—sometimes—what
will happen in the future. She reads its messages by going into
a sort of trance that resembles religious meditation. In doing so,
she appears to be connecting with some power outside of herself.
Although Pullman questions organized religion, he does not believe
that humans are the most powerful beings in existence. As Lyra’s
meditations prove, he believes that humanity is subject to powerful
nonhuman forces.
Lyra’s discovery of Tony Makarios helps her to understand
that the Gobblers are cutting children’s daemons away from them
in a procedure they call Intercision. Intercision is like castration,
in which a young boy’s testicles are cut off so that he never reaches male
maturity. Intercision also recalls female circumcision, in which a
girl’s clitoris is removed so that she cannot experience the full intensity
of sexual pleasure. Both castration and female circumcision are
religious in origin. Both practices respond to a religious demand
that some natural part of a person be removed in order to prevent
sexual pleasure. Intercision is also religious and anti-sexual. It
is performed by the General Oblation Board, which is a branch of the
Church in Lyra’s world, and it is intended to prevent the onset
of “upsetting emotions” and allow children to grow up without ever feeling
passion. Lyra knows Intercision is wrong, although she isn’t exactly
sure why it’s wrong. For Pullman, sexual experience is an essential
part of becoming a full-grown human, despite the confusion and pain
it can cause.
Summary: Chapter 17–Chapter 23
Just as it seems that Lyra and the children have escaped,
Mrs. Coulter arrives and tries to seize her. Roger and Lyra fight
her off, and Lee Scoresby rescues the two children and Iorek Byrnison
in his balloon. Lyra finally meets Serafina Pekkala, a beautiful
witch queen. With the help of her clan, Serafina guides the balloon
toward Svalbard, where the armored bears are holding Lord Asriel
prisoner. Lyra learns that Iorek is the rightful king of the bears
but has been exiled for killing another bear. The king of the bears
is now Iofur Raknison.
Suddenly, cliff ghasts attack Lee’s balloon and the witch
clan. Lyra is thrown out of the balloon and discovered by armored
bears, who bring her to Svalbard, where she is put in a dungeon.
Lyra wants to force Iofur to fight Iorek, since only by fighting
and killing Iofur can Iorek reclaim his kingdom. But Iofur won’t
fight Iorek because it would be undignified for the king to fight
an exile. But in the dungeon, Lyra remembers that at Jordan College
she heard that Iofur Raknison is desirous of a daemon. Lyra convinces
Iofur that she, Lyra, is Iorek’s daemon and that if Iofur fights
Iorek and wins, Lyra will become Iofur’s daemon. Iofur and Iorek
fight, and Iorek tricks Iofur and kills him. Iorek is restored as
the king of the bears.
Roger, Iorek, and Lyra go to the fortress where Lord Asriel
is being held captive. While captive, Lord Asriel has been doing
experiments with Dust. When they arrive, Lord Asriel panics until
he sees Roger. Lyra tells Lord Asriel she knows he is her father.
Lord Asriel tells Lyra that Dust is what makes the alethiometer
work. He says that a man named Rusakov noticed that Dust clustered
around adults, and not around children. He tells her the story of
Adam and Eve and explains that Dust is another word for original
sin, or Adam and Eve’s knowledge of themselves. Mrs. Coulter thought
that cutting children’s daemons away might keep children free from
sin. When daemons are cut away, enough energy is released to create
a door to another world. Lyra tries to give Lord Asriel the alethiometer,
but he refuses it. After Lyra goes to bed, Lord Asriel kidnaps Roger.
Lyra realizes Lord Asriel is going to cut Roger’s daemon away in
order to harness the loose energy and open a door to another universe.
Iorek brings Lyra to the frozen mountaintop where Lord
Asriel has taken Roger, and Lyra battles Lord Asriel for her friend.
She and Roger struggle free, but Lord Asriel still manages to sever
Roger from his daemon. The sky is torn open and Lyra can see into
another world. Mrs. Coulter appears and Lord Asriel asks her to
come to the new world with him. He tells her that he’s going to
find the source of Dust and destroy it. Mrs. Coulter refuses to
come. Lord Asriel walks away into the other world. Lyra decides
that if Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter hate Dust, then it must be
a good thing. She and Pantalaimon decide to go and look for the
source of Dust. They leave Roger’s body in the snow on the mountaintop
and walk into the sunny new world.
Analysis: Chapter 17–Chapter 23
When Iorek and Lyra are first getting to know each other,
Iorek tells Lyra that armored bears can’t be tricked, but that Iofur
is different. Because Iofur is so intent on being human instead
of bear, he can be tricked. For this reason, Lyra succeeds in her
ploy to get Iofur to fight Iorek, and Iorek succeeds in tricking
Iofur during the fight and killing him.
Iofur thinks that being human means having a daemon and
being admitted into Mrs. Coulter’s social circles, but in fact being
human means acquiring vices and flaws. In Pullman’s books, it is
precisely these flaws and vices that make human life interesting
and valuable. Iofur’s quest to attain human status is understandable,
even if it leads to his downfall.
Almost as soon as Lyra arrives at Bolvanger, Lord Asriel
tells her the story of Adam and Eve. For the Church, this story
is the tragedy that explains all evil and sorrow in the world. For
Lord Asriel, the story of Adam and Eve is the story of the beginning
of human experience. Just as Adam and Eve ate from the fruit and
gained knowledge, children make the transition from innocence to
experience in order to become fully developed human beings. If Adam
and Eve hadn’t eaten the fruit, the human race would be like the
nurses at Bolvanger: bland, boring, incurious, and utterly complacent.
Lyra is the opposite of the people at Bolvanger who have undergone
Intercision. She is vivacious, disobedient, and exciting.
Lord Asriel also explains Dust to Lyra. Dust is consciousness,
or awareness of the world around you and all of its possibilities.
Children do not attract Dust because they are still innocent and
are thought to have trouble understanding the world. Adults, because of
the knowledge they have gained through maturation, do attract Dust.
Once you become an adult, a fully conscious being, you are capable
of sinning, or doing bad things knowingly. The Church authorities
in Lyra’s world equate Dust with original sin. They would like to
eliminate Dust, thereby eliminating the human capacity to sin. But
Pullman suggests that the capacity to sin (and the ability to choose
not to sin) is essential to the very idea of humanity. Without that
capacity, humans would be zombies.
Lord Asriel explains the many worlds theory, which posits
that an infinite number of worlds exist. All of the worlds in the
universe stem from the same core, but at every instant, millions
of worlds are splintering apart. If, for example, an apple hanging
loosely from a branch in our world did not fall, our world might
remain the same. But in another world, the loosely hanging apple
might fall, causing our world and that world to diverge in subtle
ways. Every time two outcomes exist, a new world is created. Lord
Asriel wants to break down the barriers between the worlds, which
he accomplishes by killing Roger. When Lord Asriel leaves, he walks
into another world that may or may not resemble our own. When Lyra
follows him, she takes the same risk. Lyra’s conversation with her
father echoes John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost.
In Paradise Lost, Milton tells the story of Satan,
an angel who led other angels in a rebellion against God. Satan
and his fellow rebels wanted freedom and power. They were defeated
and cast out of Heaven. In Milton’s poem, Satan, bent on revenge,
plots to destroy God’s perfect world, Eden, which Adam and Eve blissfully
inhabit. He plans to trick Adam and Eve into disobeying God and
eating from the tree of knowledge. Milton was a deeply religious
man, but many readers have noticed that Satan is, at least initially,
a seductively interesting and passionate character. In his trilogy,
Pullman draws on Milton’s Satan for inspiration. Both Milton’s Satan
and Pullman’s Lord Asriel are gentlemanly, powerful, and suave.
But while Milton bemoans the fall from grace caused by Satan, Pullman
hails it as the moment when humans gained freedom.