by Kevin Hurley

scar Wilde once wrote, "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." That is not exactly a full vote of confidence for mankind, but it is a good deal more than what the postmodernists offer. In His Dark Materials a popular fantasy trilogy aimed at young adults, British author Philip Pullman offers quite considerately to take away such useless artifacts as religion, sin, spirituality, and God, replacing these old, dirty things with spiffy, ultramodern materialism, sensualism, multiple worlds, evolution, physics, neat gizmos, and thoughtful Dust. The Amber Spyglass, the third and final book of the trilogy, promises to resolve the epic battle between science and God, evolution and creationism, and church and state, but what we really get is a whimpering apocalypse in which the Authority simply blows away into pleasant nothingness after being released from his cage. The most offensive aspect of this unholy trilogy, however, is not that it is geared toward impressionable young people, nor that it reiterates the usual boring arguments of postmodern atheism, but that it attempts to burrow itself into children's deeply held spiritual beliefs, perverting and destroying them, while co-opting many of Western civilization's most beautiful stories and myths to clap a pretty mask over the author's repulsive ideas. It is one thing to side openly with Satan and his companions; it is quite another to libel the angels of God by reducing them to pale copies of Greek and other pagan gods—repressed, sensual beings who seek to torture and rule over mankind.

In this long farrago of weird ideas and ridiculously mercurial characters, Pullman establishes one premise early on: there is no God. This is revealed explicitly only in The Amber Spyglass, when Balthamos, one of the evil-good angels, says,

This is naturalistic philosophy, pure and simple, the notion that the physical world is all there is, and it shows how easily naturalism slips into occult metaphysics. The statement is a perfect synopsis of postmodernist thought and dogma and a vivid demonstration of its hostility toward the Judeo-Christian God. There is no mention of any other false gods or even other religions such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and most forms of paganism. Evidently, these are no threat to postmodernist thought. We learn that creation simply happened (the big bang) and that some of the leftover waste material evolved into Dust, which became the foundation of all consciousness (meaning that there is no such thing as original sin). The evil Authority is male, of course, and Satan is a misunderstood female angel who seeks only the truth. Also, although almost every important character changes nature and motivations at least two or three times in the trilogy, and the apparent point of this book changes course two or three times as well, this quote is never questioned or doubted, nor even defended by the Authority, His pagan angels, or His Church.

Pullman gets away with these sneaky tricks by loading up on child-pleasing daemons, armored bears, ghosts, witches, priests, physicists, shamans, gypsies, and scholars, and borrowing from Greek myths and classical literature such as The Aeneid, The Odyssey, Paradise Lost, the writings of William Blake, and, of course, the Bible. He deftly meshes postmodern beliefs with passé fantasy motifs such as multiple worlds; convergence of science, religion, and culture; big battles; and lots of cool magical weapons, spells, and occult gizmos.

For reasons that will be made clear later on, there are no real villains in the trilogy. The two lead characters are children, Lyra Silvertongue and Will Parry. Lyra is from a bizarro England about fifty to a hundred years behind the real England, and is a natural liar and manipulator. She possesses a rare instrument called an aelthiometer, a compass that allows her to ask Dust any form of question and get a "true" answer. Lyra—whose real name is Eve—has a great destiny before her, as described by some witches: "Without this child, we shall all die. So the witches say. But she must fulfill this destiny in ignorance of what she is doing, because only in ignorance can we be saved." That, we soon surmise, will be no problem, as this saga is chock-full of ignorance.

Will is from modern-day England and is blunt, honest, and a natural warrior. He possesses the Subtle Knife, which can cut through any substance, including other worlds and even the Authority and his angels. Academic and religious scholars in Lyra's world simultaneously discover the mysterious, aforementioned particle known as Dust, which apparently surrounds everything (like the Star Wars Force) except children who have not reached puberty. The Church in all the various worlds fears Dust, believing it to be vestiges of Original Sin, and under the auspices of Mrs. Marisa Coulter—Lyra's mother—seeks to find a way to cut Dust away from children, to prevent them from receiving Original Sin. Unfortunately, this process has the bad side effect of killing the children. Lord Asriel—Lyra's father—wants to harness the power of Dust to create an opening into all worlds so that he can destroy God, the first cause of all evil and repression throughout the universe. Needless to say, the Church and God's angels find out about this and seek to destroy Asriel and the "Republic of Heaven" he has built, which has attracted millions of followers throughout the many universes. Baruch, an angel on Asriel's side, puts it as follows:

We learned the truth about the Authority. We learned that he has retired to a chamber of crystal deep within the Clouded Mountain, and that he no longer runs the daily affairs of the Kingdom. Instead, he contemplates deeper mysteries. In his place, ruling on his behalf, there is an angel called Metatron. . . . Metatron is proud . . . and his ambition is limitless. . . . The Authority considers that conscious beings of every kind have become dangerously independent, so Metatron is going to intervene much more actively in human affairs. They intend to move the Authority secretly away from the Clouded Mountain, to a permanent citadel somewhere else, and turn the mountain into an engine of war. The churches in every world are corrupt and weak, he thinks, they compromise too readily. . . . He wants to set up a permanent inquisition in every world, run directly from the Kingdom. And his first campaign will be to destroy your Republic. . . .

Obviously, Metatron is an appallingly blasphemous portrait of Jesus (although Pullman pretends that the character is the biblical person Enoch), but Asriel is a merciful rebel and decides not to destroy God. As one of his trusted lieutenants says, "We're not going to invade The Kingdom. . . . The Kingdom of Heaven has been known by that name since the Authority first set himself above the rest of the angels. And we want no part of it. This world is different. We intend to be free citizens of the Republic of Heaven." Asriel decides to form a United Universe and become the first Secretary General of the Universe—a sort of winged Kofi Annan.

The Amber Spyglass focuses on Will and Lyra's misbegotten journey to the land of the Dead, to see Will's dad and Roger, Lyra's late best friend. Once there, Lyra and Will decide to free the dead from this prison, thus fulfilling Lyra's destiny. Lyra says, "What I got to do, Roger, what my destiny is, is I got to help all the ghosts out of the land of the dead forever. Me and Will—we got to rescue you all. I'm sure it's that. It must be. And because Lord Asriel, because of something my father said . . . 'Death is going to die.' he said. I dunno what'll happen, though." Virtuous girl that she is, she checks with her trusty aelthiometer to find the answer, and it tells her:

This is what'll happen . . . and it's true, perfectly true. When you go out of here, all the particles that make you up will loosen and float apart, just like your daemons [physical manifestations of souls] did. If you've seen people dying, you know what that looks like. But you daemons en't nothing now; they're part of everything. All the atoms that were them, they've gone into the air and the wind and the trees and the earth and all the living things. They'll never vanish. They're just part of everything. And that's exactly what'll happen to you, I swear to you, I promise on my honor. You'll drift apart, it's true, but you'll be out in the open, part of everything alive again.

This, then, is the heroic destiny of Lyra and Will: to allow people to return to nothingness, a much better prospect than spending eternal life with a grumpy old fake creator hiding in a mountain. This version of death is entirely consistent with postmodern notions of expanding universes and the like, and since it is also part of Eastern religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism, Pullman is all for it. So, Will uses the Subtle Knife to create a hole through which the ghosts can escape their prison and disappear into nothingness. Metatron, however, spoils this happy ending by invading Asriel's Republic, and all hell breaks loose, with millions of people dying and entire worlds destroyed. Eventually, Will and Lyra lead an army of the dead into battle (Tolkien has officially turned over in his grave at this point) and happen to bump into the cage of the Authority, whom Metatron has kept safely out of harm's way:

He [the Authority] wasn't easy to see, because the litter was enclosed all around with crystal that glittered and threw back the enveloping light of the Mountain, but she [Mrs. Coulter] had the impression of terrifying decrepitude, of a face sunken in wrinkles, of trembling hands, and of a mumbling mouth and rheumy eyes. The aged being gestured shakily . . . and cackled and muttered to himself, plucking incessantly at his beard. . . .

With the best of intentions, Will and Lyra accidentally perform euthanasia on this pathetic blasphemy:

Between them they helped the ancient of days out of his crystal cell; it wasn't hard, for he was light as paper, and he would have followed them anywhere, having no will of his own, and responding to simple kindness like a flower to the sun. But in the open air there was nothing to stop the wind from damaging him, and to their dismay his form began to loosen and dissolve. Only a few moments later he had vanished completely, and their last impression was of those eyes, blinking in wonder, and a sigh of the most profound and exhausted relief.

So, after a huge battle in which millions of lives are lost, the Authority retires to oblivion, Metatron is cast into an endless pit of nothingness along with Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter, Will and Lyra are safe, and we all can get some sleep. But not just yet—another crisis arises when Will and Lyra magically cut into a world where Dr. Mary Malone, a former Roman Catholic nun turned physicist, is researching Dust with the aid of the Amber Spyglass. Dr. Malone has a good deal of advice for the now adolescent and rather randy children: "St. Paul talks about the spirit and soul and body. So, the idea of three parts in human nature isn't so strange. But the best part is the body." Having grotesquely distorted Paul's teachings, she then introduces her companions to materialist philosophy by explaining how badly God pales beside the beauty of science: "I used to be a nun, you see. I thought physics could be done to the glory of God, till I saw there wasn't any God at all and that physics was more interesting anyway. The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that's all."

Now fully aroused by her arguments and freed from any transcendent source of morality, Will and Lyra ask Dr. Malone whether she stopped believing in good and evil after discovering that God does not exist. She responds, "No. But I stopped believing there was a power of good and evil that were outside of us. And I came to believe good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone, or that's an evil one, because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels." Great advice for horny teenagers from multiple universes everywhere. Will and Lyra go off together, and soon enough the postmodern mushy stuff begins: "The Dust pouring down from the stars had found a living home again, and these children-no-longer-children, saturated with love, were the cause of it all." However, Will and Lyra discover that Dust is pouring out of the universe at an alarming rate (to where and how isn't explained) because of all the holes Will and other bearers of the Subtle Knife have been cutting into the various universes—and the two giant explosions Lord Asriel caused. So Will has to close all the holes and destroy the Subtle Knife. This done, Lyra and her daemon decide that her next mission should be to build the Republic of Heaven. Like father, like daughter, like postmodernist.

This, I suppose, is what passes for "can-do" attitude among postmodernists. We do not need God, religion, or morality to console and guide us when we can build a suitable Heaven here and now through science, evolution, magic, and some nifty power tools. Oscar Wilde would probably wonder how we can create stars out of mud from the gutter, but postmodernists such as Pullman believe that with enough polishing, a fallen star can easily replace the Light of the Heavens. And even if it doesn't, foolish people will still buy them for Christmas.

Kevin Hurley is a freelance writer in Indianapolis.

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