I recently finished reading the "His Dark Materials" trilogy to my wife. (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass) While certainly thought-provoking and entertaining, I can't help but feel that the work is intellectually dishonest. Spoilers abound, so I'll put the rest behind a cut tag.

The trilogy draws from some of the premises set forth in Milton’s “Paradise Lost”, specifically, a war in heaven against an authoritarian God. Beyond this, Pullman’s work is mostly an attack against dogmatic religion, specifically the Catholic Church.


The charge of intellectual dishonesty comes from several points, so I’ll need to set up some background first. It is the contention in the novel, that God is not the creator of the universe, but merely its first sentient being. The entire structure of heaven and hell is an elaborate ruse, designed to consolidate temporal power for the “Authority” (God) and eventually as God becomes senile, his lieutenant Metatron (also from Milton). The afterlife is presented as a dim gray existence akin to the Underworld of Classical Greek mythology. Souls are eternal here, tormented psychologically by harpies (whose existence is just a given. No explanation is given for their own immortality or their omniscience regarding their charges foibles)

The main characters release these souls from this afterworld, returning them to the material world, where their “atoms become part of the world”. In essence, they are given oblivion. This is presented as a rapturous experience.

Now for the dishonesty. Pullman takes what on the surface seems to be a battle between atheism and theism, or at the very least humanism versus organized religion, but he does not arm the combatants fairly, nor does he employ balanced tactics.


First. He demonizes the opposition. Every member of the Magisterium (his Vatican analog) is presented a zealot. In the furtherance of power, they are to a person, capable of lying, murder and the torture of children. There is no sincere or likeable character in the lot. The protagonists essentially face an army of straw men of the most blatant sort.
Conversely, the likeable characters are those who are completely secular (the scholars), naturalistic (the bears, and the witches, who also have pagan elements), or areligious (The gyptians, a gypsy analog). These people show selflessness, kindness, devotion and honor.

Second. He tears down a construct he does not like, using the same tools that were used to build it. Specifically, he replaces the supernatural “lies” of the Magisterium by using completely new (and wholly invented) supernatural elements. The elements he creates are designed to fill the gaps in the thing he is destroying. Since he does not want the Authority (God) as the creator of life, he invents a barely-explained natural phenomenon called Dust, the source of all consciousness. These are free-floating particles created by life and sustaining conscious thought. No explanation is give to its existence; it just is.
He does not like heaven and hell. So he creates an alternative afterlife, because a real heaven would ruin his premise. And since he doesn’t even want the lie he has posited to have validity, he creates his own alternative: oblivion. The souls of the afterlife overwhelmingly find oblivion a joyous and rapturous experience. Only a few misguided adherents of the Magisterium’s structure elect to remain in the Underworld.
His characters seek to create a “Republic of Heaven”, a made afterlife. But even after the harpies are tamed, no attempt is made by the souls of the underworld to turn their eternal world to a paradise. Instead, they choose complete destruction of their being. No explanation is ever given why there is an Underworld at all. It’s merely a place for people to suffer as a result of the Authority’s lies.

Third, his arguments are narrowly targeted, but presented as if they were universal. In other words, his narrative is structured as if the conflict were between atheism and theism. But in reality, it is targeted at the Judeo-Christian dogma, and almost exclusively at the Catholic Church. He has posited a vast multiverse, filled with innumerable beings both human and non-. Yet in all this multiplicity of beliefs and cultures, his examples of the “enemy” could only be applied to his Vatican analog. His story of the Authority and the Magisterium could not remotely be replied to Buddhism for example. Or Shinto. Or Baha’i. For that matter, they are barely applicable to Judaism.
In seeking to tear down a specific dogma, he attacks all dogma, lumping them together but without referencing the others.
Finally, in order to make the book marketable, he creates analogs of his targets, since specifically naming them would hurt the sales of the book. (He does reference them obliquely, but not until the middle of the trilogy, by which one can assume you have already bought the set.)

To sum up, Pullman decides to attack a particular dogma. To do so, he demonizes it, conflates it with unrelated dogma, and replaces it with something made up whole cloth to fill in the gaps left by the destruction. He uses the same tools (the supernatural in its broadest sense) to both refute and replace. This is deconstruction of the most dishonest order.

There is a reason why the film adaptation of the Golden Compass removes all religious elements and presents the story as a straight fantasy. It would not otherwise be marketable. The story itself is entertaining. The methodology is deceitful.

I could not in good conscience recommend this story to young readers, who have not yet sufficiently developed the ability to spot literary chicanery.