"His Dark Materials"
Oct. 25th, 2007 08:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
asterrocThis post is spoiler-ful, so if you haven't read Phillip Pullman's series His Dark Materials, including the books "The Golden Compass"/"Northern Lights" (US/UK), "The Subtle Knife", and "The Amber Spyglass", you should stop reading this now. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
l0stmyreligi0n (or however you sp3ll it) keep reading since you said you want to know what I think on this; ayashi bookmark this and come back when you're done.
I've finally finished "reading" the series (unabridged audiobooks, narrated by Pullman, with a cast for the voices of the characters), and there's a few ideas that are stuck in my head that I wish to explore - I kinda wish I were in an English class and could get credit (and motivation) for writing essays about these books. I've titled the latter two below ambiguously so if you don't want spoilers DON'T CLICK.
Please pardon any name misspellings - I know how to pronounce them unlike someone reading the text version, but I don't know how to spell them. I appreciate spelling corrections, as well as specific quote/chapter references, since I'm not about to go back through 32 CDs worth of material (9, 9, and 14 respectively - let me know if you want to listen to the series and we can talk shipping or ripping).
The Nature of Daemons
Daemons are introduced in the very first book of the series, and are originally described as being soul-like. All humans in Lyra's world have them, with children's daemons taking the form of any animal they wish, and adults' settling down in a single form that characterizes the person's personality. Other sentient beings may or may not have daemons - armoured bears do not, witches do. (However, witches are semi-human, having a human father and witch mother.)
The form of the daemon reflects an adult's personality or a child's mood. They are sounding boards for their humans, and also act as a conscience (ref: the witch Serafina Peccola, Book 3 last chapter or so, talking to Pantalimon). However, the initial impression of daemons being souls is belied by the disappearance of daemons upon the deaths of their humans, as is described early as when Lyra and Roger enter the catacombs of Jordan College in Book 1 (Chapter # & quote?). In the fights against the Tartars at Bolvanger, we see that this is reciprocal: when a human dies, his daemon disappears, and if a daemon is killed and disappears his human dies. If the daemon is the soul, it should not disappear or be destroyed by the death of the human, but pass on to the afterlife.
Although it is merely implied that daemons are destroyed at the person's death, the human's separation from the daemon is confirmed when Lyra and Will enter the World of the Dead in Book 3. There they are told by the boatman that daemons are not allowed to pass the river (Lethe, presumably) separating the "holding areas" from the true World of the Dead, and Lyra is forced to leave Pantalymon behind. We find out here that daemons are not actually unique to humans in Lyra's world, but that all humans have daemons, but that in Will's world the daemons are either internal or external and hidden (Serafina Peccola and Mary Malone at the end of Book 3). If daemons were the soul, once Will and Lyra entered the World of the Dead they should have encountered nothing but daemons, but instead they encounter wispy human-like forms without their daemons.
Moreover, it is possible to be separated from one's daemon and remain living, again implying that the daemon is NOT the soul. Witches posess the secret to do this willingly, without pain. For normal humans, moving physically apart from one's daemon is painful. Mrs. Coulter and her General Oblation Board ("Gobblers") develop a procedure in which a human can be "severed" from his or her daemon; most who are not killed outright by the process lose the will to live, and the few survivors live a life similar to that of zombies, with no motivation or will power, simply following directions. (Book 1 Bolvanger, and Book 2 Mrs. Coulter going to Cittegazze.) It is this procedure of severance that begins to reveal the true nature of the daemon, other than the soul.
The daemon is related to Dust (dark matter, Shadows, sroth). Children whose daemons have not yet settled have small amounts of dust (Lord Azriel's photograms early in Book 1, the Zarif Atal in Book 3), while adults have large amounts of dust. The GOB was investigating whether severance would prevent the build up of Dust, which they associated with Original Sin - Eve's, Adam's, and therefore mankind's, fall from grace by accepting the serpent's temptation of Knowledge of Good and Evil. See item 3, the witches' prophesy, for more discussion of this.
In Cittegazze, the spectres are shown to feast upon some intangible feature of adults. The same quality makes adults vulnerable to spectres that allow them to see the spectres in the first place; children are not only safe against the spectres, they are also unable to sense them. The passage into adulthood is confirmed by the vulnerability to spectres. While it is only speculated at the time that spectres are consuming the daemon, this is confirmed in the great battle of Book 3, in which Pan and the as-yet-unnamed daemon of Will are threatened by the spectres as Lyra and Will are on the verge of adulthood. Individuals touched/consumed by the spectres remain physically alive - for a time. They retain no personality or motivation to move, and remain where left by the spectres, unmoving, unblinking, and not even eating, until they soon die - akin to most severed individuals, and most of the people in the World of the Dead.
It is my understanding that the daemon represents some self-identity. It has been shown above that the daemon is not the soul. The daemon is related to adulthood, original sin, consciousness (as this is what Dust/Shadows/sroth are eventually shown to represent in Book 3), self-knowledge (as implied by the original sin / knowledge connection), and sexuality. The daemon is NOT the soul - it disappears upon death and cannot pass into the underworld. Loss of the daemon can result in physical death in some situations, but not always. (Aside: a person's death is also anthropomorphized in the Suburbs of the Dead, and is also separate from the daemon.) As a child, our self-identity is not stable, but when we reach adolescence we begin to discover who we are, and for most of us by adulthood we know for sure. Without our self-identity, we can live, but we are nothing. And when we die, who we are dies with us.
I have no solid conclusion here, since I'm not writing this for an English class but to try and help my own understanding. I want to know when daemons come into being - when the person is born? or when they start thinking? How are they formed?
The Master of Jordan College's Prophesy
In Book 1, I think right after giving Lyra the aleitheometer, the Master of Jordan College predicts (I think he was talking to the housekeeper woman? or maybe the Librarian?) that Lyra will betray someone close to her. At the end of Book 1, Lyra's rescue of Roger from the Gobblers turns sour, as Lord Asriel takes him further North and uses the act of severing Roger from his daemon to rip a hole between the worlds. Lyra herself feels this is her greatest betrayal, as she set out to save Roger, and instead led him to be destroyed by her own father.
Interestingly, Asriel himself apparently has a method where he can bend the universe to his will, and he actually requested a child be brought to him to use in this experiment. He is shocked when Lyra arrives on his doorstep, saying "No! I didn't ask for you!" (or something to that effect, please correct me) But then he sees Roger behind Lyra, and is mollified - setting up Lyra's accidental betrayal of Roger.
But a true betrayal must be a conscious act, and therefore Roger is not Lyra's great betrayal, but instead Pan must be. Besides the simple statement that Pullman makes, "thus fulfilling the Master of Jordan College's prophesy" (etc., please correct me), it is clear that here Lyra is aware of her actions. It is the role of humans in her world to stay close to their daemons, and yet Lyra consciously goes against that norm in pursuit of the dead Roger himself. She betrays the very nature of herself as a vibrant energetic lively young girl, to wish her own death to herself and travel across the water with the boatman. Betraying who she is is the only way she can cross the water, the only way she can even get in the boat. At first Pan fights, clinging to her desperately as Lyra sobs, but in the end even her own self-identity understands she must do away with herself to make things right with another, and Pan ceases to protest.
Lyra is deeply aware of her betrayal of Pan, watching him the whole time the boat drifts away so she will never forget the image of him. What she is less aware of is that for the only time in her life she is truly putting aside everything that is herself in the pursuit of another - in fact, the one she "betrayed" earlier.
The Witches' Prophesy
In the first book when asking about the witches, the clerk (name?) asks Lyra to pick the cloud pine branch that Serafina Peccola used once, and using her aleitheometer Lyra easily does so.
...incomplete section here. Notes: Original Sin, the nature of Dust/sroth, Eve's temptation and fall from grace, Lyra reading the aleitheometer by Grace according to the angel Xaphania (Zaphania?) implies a God...
For more info, try
http://www.bridgetothestars.net/index.php?p=FAQ (
http://www.hisdarkmaterials.org/
Okay, everything before that cut I wrote on Oct 18, and then I just now realized I'd never posted this, and I've kinda dried up on the last subject, but I wanted to make sure my thoughts on items 1 and 2 got up and viewed, so I'm just going to post this as is.
l0stmyreligi0n (or however you sp3ll it) keep reading since you said you want to know what I think on this; ayashi bookmark this and come back when you're done. I've finally finished "reading" the series (unabridged audiobooks, narrated by Pullman, with a cast for the voices of the characters), and there's a few ideas that are stuck in my head that I wish to explore - I kinda wish I were in an English class and could get credit (and motivation) for writing essays about these books. I've titled the latter two below ambiguously so if you don't want spoilers DON'T CLICK.
Please pardon any name misspellings - I know how to pronounce them unlike someone reading the text version, but I don't know how to spell them. I appreciate spelling corrections, as well as specific quote/chapter references, since I'm not about to go back through 32 CDs worth of material (9, 9, and 14 respectively - let me know if you want to listen to the series and we can talk shipping or ripping).
The Nature of Daemons
Daemons are introduced in the very first book of the series, and are originally described as being soul-like. All humans in Lyra's world have them, with children's daemons taking the form of any animal they wish, and adults' settling down in a single form that characterizes the person's personality. Other sentient beings may or may not have daemons - armoured bears do not, witches do. (However, witches are semi-human, having a human father and witch mother.)
The form of the daemon reflects an adult's personality or a child's mood. They are sounding boards for their humans, and also act as a conscience (ref: the witch Serafina Peccola, Book 3 last chapter or so, talking to Pantalimon). However, the initial impression of daemons being souls is belied by the disappearance of daemons upon the deaths of their humans, as is described early as when Lyra and Roger enter the catacombs of Jordan College in Book 1 (Chapter # & quote?). In the fights against the Tartars at Bolvanger, we see that this is reciprocal: when a human dies, his daemon disappears, and if a daemon is killed and disappears his human dies. If the daemon is the soul, it should not disappear or be destroyed by the death of the human, but pass on to the afterlife.
Although it is merely implied that daemons are destroyed at the person's death, the human's separation from the daemon is confirmed when Lyra and Will enter the World of the Dead in Book 3. There they are told by the boatman that daemons are not allowed to pass the river (Lethe, presumably) separating the "holding areas" from the true World of the Dead, and Lyra is forced to leave Pantalymon behind. We find out here that daemons are not actually unique to humans in Lyra's world, but that all humans have daemons, but that in Will's world the daemons are either internal or external and hidden (Serafina Peccola and Mary Malone at the end of Book 3). If daemons were the soul, once Will and Lyra entered the World of the Dead they should have encountered nothing but daemons, but instead they encounter wispy human-like forms without their daemons.
Moreover, it is possible to be separated from one's daemon and remain living, again implying that the daemon is NOT the soul. Witches posess the secret to do this willingly, without pain. For normal humans, moving physically apart from one's daemon is painful. Mrs. Coulter and her General Oblation Board ("Gobblers") develop a procedure in which a human can be "severed" from his or her daemon; most who are not killed outright by the process lose the will to live, and the few survivors live a life similar to that of zombies, with no motivation or will power, simply following directions. (Book 1 Bolvanger, and Book 2 Mrs. Coulter going to Cittegazze.) It is this procedure of severance that begins to reveal the true nature of the daemon, other than the soul.
The daemon is related to Dust (dark matter, Shadows, sroth). Children whose daemons have not yet settled have small amounts of dust (Lord Azriel's photograms early in Book 1, the Zarif Atal in Book 3), while adults have large amounts of dust. The GOB was investigating whether severance would prevent the build up of Dust, which they associated with Original Sin - Eve's, Adam's, and therefore mankind's, fall from grace by accepting the serpent's temptation of Knowledge of Good and Evil. See item 3, the witches' prophesy, for more discussion of this.
In Cittegazze, the spectres are shown to feast upon some intangible feature of adults. The same quality makes adults vulnerable to spectres that allow them to see the spectres in the first place; children are not only safe against the spectres, they are also unable to sense them. The passage into adulthood is confirmed by the vulnerability to spectres. While it is only speculated at the time that spectres are consuming the daemon, this is confirmed in the great battle of Book 3, in which Pan and the as-yet-unnamed daemon of Will are threatened by the spectres as Lyra and Will are on the verge of adulthood. Individuals touched/consumed by the spectres remain physically alive - for a time. They retain no personality or motivation to move, and remain where left by the spectres, unmoving, unblinking, and not even eating, until they soon die - akin to most severed individuals, and most of the people in the World of the Dead.
It is my understanding that the daemon represents some self-identity. It has been shown above that the daemon is not the soul. The daemon is related to adulthood, original sin, consciousness (as this is what Dust/Shadows/sroth are eventually shown to represent in Book 3), self-knowledge (as implied by the original sin / knowledge connection), and sexuality. The daemon is NOT the soul - it disappears upon death and cannot pass into the underworld. Loss of the daemon can result in physical death in some situations, but not always. (Aside: a person's death is also anthropomorphized in the Suburbs of the Dead, and is also separate from the daemon.) As a child, our self-identity is not stable, but when we reach adolescence we begin to discover who we are, and for most of us by adulthood we know for sure. Without our self-identity, we can live, but we are nothing. And when we die, who we are dies with us.
I have no solid conclusion here, since I'm not writing this for an English class but to try and help my own understanding. I want to know when daemons come into being - when the person is born? or when they start thinking? How are they formed?
The Master of Jordan College's Prophesy
In Book 1, I think right after giving Lyra the aleitheometer, the Master of Jordan College predicts (I think he was talking to the housekeeper woman? or maybe the Librarian?) that Lyra will betray someone close to her. At the end of Book 1, Lyra's rescue of Roger from the Gobblers turns sour, as Lord Asriel takes him further North and uses the act of severing Roger from his daemon to rip a hole between the worlds. Lyra herself feels this is her greatest betrayal, as she set out to save Roger, and instead led him to be destroyed by her own father.
Interestingly, Asriel himself apparently has a method where he can bend the universe to his will, and he actually requested a child be brought to him to use in this experiment. He is shocked when Lyra arrives on his doorstep, saying "No! I didn't ask for you!" (or something to that effect, please correct me) But then he sees Roger behind Lyra, and is mollified - setting up Lyra's accidental betrayal of Roger.
But a true betrayal must be a conscious act, and therefore Roger is not Lyra's great betrayal, but instead Pan must be. Besides the simple statement that Pullman makes, "thus fulfilling the Master of Jordan College's prophesy" (etc., please correct me), it is clear that here Lyra is aware of her actions. It is the role of humans in her world to stay close to their daemons, and yet Lyra consciously goes against that norm in pursuit of the dead Roger himself. She betrays the very nature of herself as a vibrant energetic lively young girl, to wish her own death to herself and travel across the water with the boatman. Betraying who she is is the only way she can cross the water, the only way she can even get in the boat. At first Pan fights, clinging to her desperately as Lyra sobs, but in the end even her own self-identity understands she must do away with herself to make things right with another, and Pan ceases to protest.
Lyra is deeply aware of her betrayal of Pan, watching him the whole time the boat drifts away so she will never forget the image of him. What she is less aware of is that for the only time in her life she is truly putting aside everything that is herself in the pursuit of another - in fact, the one she "betrayed" earlier.
The Witches' Prophesy
In the first book when asking about the witches, the clerk (name?) asks Lyra to pick the cloud pine branch that Serafina Peccola used once, and using her aleitheometer Lyra easily does so.
...incomplete section here. Notes: Original Sin, the nature of Dust/sroth, Eve's temptation and fall from grace, Lyra reading the aleitheometer by Grace according to the angel Xaphania (Zaphania?) implies a God...
For more info, try
http://www.bridgetothestars.net/index.php?p=FAQ (
http://www.hisdarkmaterials.org/
Okay, everything before that cut I wrote on Oct 18, and then I just now realized I'd never posted this, and I've kinda dried up on the last subject, but I wanted to make sure my thoughts on items 1 and 2 got up and viewed, so I'm just going to post this as is.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-10-27 01:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-22 04:32 am (UTC)When I was reading it, I was given the impression that people weren't of 2 parts (body and daemon/soul) but 3 (body, daemon/soul, ghost). I looked at it as the spectres destroying the soul (thus being something that would kill someone, or would kill them eventually), but that also being the reason that the ghosts in the 3rd book could fight the spectires - they have no soul for them to devour. I do find your thought of a daemon = identity interesting though, and it makes sense the way you describe it, but I thought there were a few points in the books where it seemed to equate a daemon to a soul, and making a distinction between your soul and your ghost.
I read one of your comments on your other post referring to The Boston Globe review and I wish I hadn't put my book away so I could check if it was Grace or grace by which Lyra was able to read the aleitheometer :P
no subject
Date: 2007-12-22 04:47 am (UTC)Someone else replied telling me it was "grace," but I wouldn't mind confirmation someday. It weakens my argument, but does not nullify it.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-22 01:07 pm (UTC)