His Dark Materials

"The three books are incredibly rich and dense—full of allusion and cultural references. I think I could read the passage where they go through the underworld every day of my life and still not feel like I’ve picked up every important aspect or cultural reference in it. Philip is brilliant, of course, and we’re all looking forward to his next book at the end of this year. I was too old to read these books as a child, so I read them as an adult and loved them. They are three of the few children’s books that I read as an adult that made me feel like a child. Our former education officer here—Marilyn Mason—wrote a lot about moral education for children and was in her late fifties when she read His Dark Materials . And she said the same. When Lyra is riding on the polar bear, she said she could imagine snuggling into the polar bear’s fur. So, the first thing is that they are brilliant stories. “The children in these stories are brave, they try hard to do the right thing even though it’s difficult, they’re concerned for others, they’re loving, and they question authority in order to do the right thing. They are just excellent moral exemplars.” The relevance to humanism, however, is in the values that the children model and in the themes that the stories explore. There’s always a worry, when it comes to non-religious morality, that somehow it will become strict utilitarianism and dry consequentialism. The idea is that, somehow, moral education in a non-religious sense might lose some of the story aspect that religious moral education has often had: the parable aspect. I think that that’s complete nonsense. The humanist moral education of children doesn’t lose any of those things. But I agree that moral education has to have warmth and colour and depth and story attached to it. So, I think if you were going to tell children stories, then these stories are brilliant ones. The children in these stories are brave, they try hard to do the right thing even though it’s difficult, they’re concerned for others, they’re loving, and they question authority in order to do the right thing. They are just excellent moral exemplars. Other children’s books often have children behaving in terrible ways. Philip himself has acknowledged that his His Dark Materials is, to some extent, a response to the Chronicles of Narnia which has children behaving in all sorts of slavish ways, obeying authority because it is authority, and setting all sorts of poor moral examples. The children in Philip’s books are thoughtful, intelligent, and morally concerned. They are motivated by love and loyalty. And they are very complex. He doesn’t shy away from the moral complexity, the difficulties of choice, the lesser of two evils. That is also something that comes up in his books. There is no perfect solution, you struggle to truth. They are very real even though, in another sense, they are completely fantastical, as all children’s literature should be. The morals are good. They are about seeking an integrated, honest, eyes-wide-open life. The theme is good too: the defeat of God, the defeat of authority, the opening of our eyes to the realities of the universe and living facing it squarely on. Philip’s mind is too broad and the story is too wide-ranging to be confined to any one worldview! He is a member and a patron of Humanists UK and all the messages in his novels and all the themes are very humanist ones. But he’s not preachy. Good children’s authors can’t be preachy. I guess the messages are there for those who want to hear them and discern them. His stories are full of what you might call religious themes. He famously loves Blake. He uses creative and very spiritual language in his writing and deals very well with the intangible. But I think we’re wrong to associate those elevated ideas and cultural concepts purely with religion. As Richard Norman says, that language isn’t just religious language. It’s an essential part of human experience—that religions have purloined and that we have got to reclaim. I think Philip does that really well. Philip’s ideas about sin, in particular, and right and wrong, and the nature of the human being are really important. They are a powerful part of his stories, although they’re definitely subtext for children and not right there in the text. He nevertheless got into a bit of trouble for them. His books were banned in Catholic schools and decried by Catholic educationists because they killed God—the ‘Authority’ in his books—and also because of the perspective they take on sin and the human person. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter For example, a veil is thrown over it, but there’s a point in the book where it seems as if Lyra and Will are physically intimate. It’s done in a very natural sort of way and it’s portrayed as this wonderful and beautiful thing, because what human beings are about is the connections between us. The idea that Philip is representing is that the point of human life is to develop, to grow, to mature. That can be intellectual—in thinking about the world in a curious and realistic way—and it can also be emotional—living an integrated life, self-actualising. It’s about being the best person you can be and living to the fullest that you can live. “If you want salvation from outside, you have to believe you’re not capable of it yourself” If there is no other world in which completeness will be attained by human beings in the life to come, whatever completeness there will be will have to be attained in this life. The key concept is that we should try to achieve our fullest development. The view, in Philip’s books, is that we have the resources in us for this. His narrative romanticises it. We are cosmic beings and there’s this dust that binds us all together and is part of our life force and gives us consciousness. We open our eyes and we are part of the universe. The Magisterium, in his books—which he says is not necessarily the Roman Catholic church but certainly reminds me of it and I think reminded the Roman Catholic church of itself—is an organisation that is dedicated to preventing that sort of self-realisation, that self-development and that self-actualisation. They have a view that people are fallen. They have the same Adam and Eve story in this fictional universe that Christianity has in our world. Eve is the great villain which, of course, pans out into woman as the great villain. And everything stereotypically about women, like that sense of human nurturing and self-development that we’ve talked about is also completely out of the question. The Magisterium is, like the Roman Catholic church in our world, run by men and they want to prevent this sort of full physical, emotional and mental development. And so, quite specifically in the first book, they have invented a way to essentially stop puberty—although it’s heavily coded in the text. They cut human beings off from their demons, in this plot that they have. It’s all an attempt to stunt this human development and hold people back, instead of being able to realise their fullest self. To tie them back, instead, to a vision of human beings as in need of saving by an external source. It’s self-development versus salvation from outside. If you want salvation from outside, you have to believe you’re not capable of it yourself. Of course, no human being can be completely self-sufficient. We are all embedded in human relationships and social contexts and all the rest of it. But what’s important, I think, is to understand that the help that we can seek is from other people, not from nonhuman sources. That’s the difference."

"This is one of my favourite books. Lyra feels like a natural successor to Matilda. She is a character of action. She isn’t sitting in a corner reading. She is out there and she is having a real effect on her story. She isn’t being buffeted by forces and having to rebel against them, she is out there actively seeking an adventure. I read this when I was eleven and starting secondary school. I remember her really sticking with me not least because she lies so much. Much has been said about her name Lyra and the word lyre. I used to lie quite compulsively, I think bookish people often do. I know it is quite common, children lie. I used to tell really silly ones that I was always going to be caught out with like “we’re moving to Australia”. So, I think this is a valuable thing for a child to see. One of the great things about Pullman is that he never idealises children. They are allowed to be what they are. Children are incredibly cruel, clever, devious, they hate getting into trouble and will lie to get out of it. Pullman presents all that with such love and admiration and that’s what I think makes him such an appealing writer and what makes Lyra such an appealing character. “One of the great things about Pullman is that he never idealises children. They are allowed to be what they are” Joan Aiken and Diana Wynne Jones also wrote brilliant heroines before Northern Lights , but I do feel that Lyra is unique in heralding the first rebel girl in literature and for being so celebrated for this by the author. Aside from the incredible settings and the wild adventures, what I responded to was Lyra and the fact that she lied and those lies got her into trouble. Then she lied again to get out of trouble and this, consequentially, got her into even more trouble. I related to Lyra and saw a lot of hope in her growth. I think reading this book was a step towards my becoming more self-critical as a person, to be presented with a character that was so flawed and yet I loved her so much. This character is flawed and yet is still worthy of attention. When you are young you don’t spend much time reflecting on your actions. This is perhaps why teenage years are such a shock because suddenly all you can think about is, “oh god what did I say, what did I do?”"