Phillip Pullman's Novels: Life Imitating Art

Philip Pullman's novel The Golden Compass is about Dust; more importantly, it is about the story of a little girl, her parents, and how fate, destiny, and the theory of existence intertwine. The three sides to this battle is a family one, the father who wishes to destroy Dust because he believes the Dust to be evil. The mother who is working for the Magisterium who wishes to experiment with Dust for the Magisterium. Then there is the daughter who wishes to simply do what is best for everyone. Much to the dismay of the Magisterium the father, within the first twenty pages, confirms the existence of Dust and his intent to study it and even change dimensions with it.

One of the basic concepts of the book is that each person is paired with a daemon. The daemons are not from hell or evil beings. They are actually mystical creatures that contain part of each persons soul. When a daemon feels pain so does the person attached to it. For example, when Lyra's daemon gets attacked she yell, "Don't! Please! Stop hurting us!"(page 65). The idea of a person having part of their soul within another entity strikes a discord within some religious groups. The soul is taught to be many different things depending on the religion, but they all usually agree that the soul is a single thing that belongs to a single person. Pullman, being not only a writer for entertainment but an outright Atheist, disregards these teachings and even twists the actual Bible for his novel: "He turned to Chapter Three of Genesis, and read:... your daemons shall assume their true forms, and ye shall be as gods"(page 273). This disregard for Biblical text, the attitude Lyra has towards authority figures, and the overall conflict within the family leaves many authority figures with devout faith to oppose The Golden Compass.

One such religious group that seemed to react more than the rest is the Catholic church. A large Catholic group called the Catholic League actually went so far to form a boycott against Pullman's work. Coincidently, the Catholic church happens to share some of the same hierarchy and dogmatism with the group called the Magisterium, the same group that is trying to suppress the knowledge of Dust. The Magisterium and its followers will even take a life or two if it will further their agenda of keeping Dust a secret. Even before Lord Asriel returns with his proof of the existence of Dust we see a member of the Magisterium trying to kill Lord Asriel by "[putting] poison in the wine"(page 6). With the mother leading the Magisterium in the Dust issue we see many dealing in betrayal, blackmail, bribery, and murder.

The Magisterium becomes aware of Dust's existence and quickly labels it as evil, because the Bible directly refers to Dust's existence as the original sin, which is why the father is on a quest to find the origin of Dust and destroy it: "The Magisterium decided that Dust was the physical evidence for original sin." (page 273) In an oddly parallel reaction, Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass became popular it began to receive a lot of opposition. Much of this opposition was preemptive, even from people who had not read the book. Much like the Magisterium, many religious groups were telling people about the danger of reading this book without finding out for themselves, They simply agreed and followed blindly. It has been proven time and time again through history that when someone with authority hears of someone encouraging the action of questioning authority the usual stance is to try and keep that person quiet. The events within The Golden Compass proves that is some cases life tends to imitate art.

The Magisterium tries to keep the knowledge of Dust to themselves and to keep people like the father from spreading the word of its existence. We see religious groups, especially the Catholic League, working to keep people from reading Pullman's work. This parallelism between book actions and real world events only begs the question of why would religious groups want to restrict such things as literary art. All though The Golden Compass is obviously fiction the themes of questioning authority and the Magisterium being in a position of political power seems to trouble these religious groups. Is life imitating art at this point or is Phillip Pullman in some way showing that his art is imitating life?