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Hero For Christ

The Golden Compass: A Philosophical Book Review



by Christopher Sunami, Columbus Philosopher, 12/26/07

The Golden Compass

I've resisted writing on this book (I've read the book but not seen the film) on the theory that I should not give something I disliked so intensely any extra press. However, since my boycott has done little to stop the work's popularity, I hereby present this little piece of digital ink:

Out of the hundreds, if not thousands of books I've read in life, this was the first and only one to ever make censorship seem --if only briefly! --like a good idea to me. The fault does not lie in author Pullman's rich and often luminous prose, but in the ugliness of his ideas.

More than enough has been said, I presume, on Pullman's agressive and evangelical anti-theism, which is fairly muted in this series' first book, but which flowers into the sequels into a viciously blasphemous and offensive screed against all religion. Even the first book, however, falls victim to Pullman's other (though perhaps not unrelated) great flaw, his unremitting bleakness.

It is common in children's fairy tales for there to be villainous characters who are easily read as stand-ins for the child's parents: Step-parents, guardians, evil kings and queens, witches and giants and so-forth. Typically, however, the child also has "real" parents who, dead or absent though they may be, are loci of goodness, kindness and benevolence within the universe of the story.

In Pullman's book, however, the child protagonist's own parents are the chief villains of at least the first book, thus creating a situation where the child has nowhere to turn, lacking even the standard-issue orphan's escapist fantasy of the lost yet idealized parents. It is difficult not to read this dark vision of parenthood as a psychological extension or underlier of Pullman's rejection of religion, with his idea of a fraudulent god finding echoes in his portraits of a malevolent mother and father.

The protagonist is even more alone, however, than this already bleak setup might indicate. Over the course of the series, every major character with good or positive traits, particularly those that serve the protagonist in any sort of mentoring role, meets a brutal and violent death, typically right in front of the child herself. In the end, Pullman's only vision of atheistic redemption is more killing, followed by the prepubescent heroine's initiation into sex, followed by --if memory serves me correctly --the death of one or both of the newly minted lovers.

In the end, I would describe one of the most glaring weaknesses in Pullman's anti-religion argument as the unwelcoming ugliness and brutality of his vision. If that is a universe without God, who would wish to live within it? Grade: F

See Also:

  1. Pop+Philosophy
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