His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass

In brief replacement of The Magicians by Lev Grossman which I will post about in the very near future, I decided that I'll read one of the other novels within the same category that I really enjoyed and highly recommend for everyone to read once for it's really interesting concepts and characters. I will also later update on The Black Magician trilogy by Trudi Canavan because even though it was listed under "heroic journey" I still believe that it fits very well within "spiritual education". I think it's a little obvious that I really enjoy these kind of books. With that being said, Phillip Pullman's novel really impressed me for I was going into reading this with a little bit of skepticism. I tend to do that when regarding extremely popular books and yes, that also includes the Harry Potter series (yet another novel fitting within this particular category). I was pleasantly surprised, however, when I found that his writing and theories tickled the philosophical section of my mind. This is especially true since it was recommended by classmates who, in my opinion, did not uphold the same intellectual standards as I did at the time I first read it (eighth grade). One has to wonder if they really "got it" or just wanted to seem smart when the students with higher aptitudes began raving about the book but I digress.

The first concept that quickly intrigued me was the idea of deamons. Auto-correct is telling me it's spelled wrong but it was spelled that way for a reason. Playing off the idea of animal familiars the accompany witches or those of magically spiritual faith, deamons are beings that oft times take the form of an animal or creature that are attached to their human. The deamons form upon maturity will be that of an animal that bests represents their human's core personality. This closely related to Harry Potter's concept of a patronus that will shield the person from harm portraying the creatures that is most identifiable to their personality. Before maturity, the deamon has the ability to change into a form that is most handy at the time. The part I most liked about this is the fact that the deamon can't be more than a certain distance away from their human for they share a kind of bond, almost like an invisible string, that keeps them physically together as well. Children, in this sense, "wear their hearts on their sleeves". However, once that tie is severed the child loses a piece of themselves and inevitably loses their creativity and soul.

I find this to be of a driving factor for learning about one's spirit than the actual golden compass itself that is SUPPOSED to be the catalyst for the plot to move forward. True that with great power comes great responsibility and knowing when to use her special gift is a huge step in Maturity for Lyra but being aware of the big bad world seems to me to be a more important message. Bring aware of the fact that keeping your soul and child-like wonder in tact is more important than abiding by popular society's rules appears to be a better message than "know when to tell people that you can read the special compass of all knowledge". That and the message of is it really safe to be messing with higher beings other than yourself? Is it worth it to break children's innocent souls to find the matter in which to literally kill God? Exactly what forces are we dealing with here? All of these questions that the novel invokes into the minds of the audience is the reason I too began raving about this book to others. I was just disappointed when the two following novels really didn't uphold to the same level the first one did.