The Golden Compass is suppose to be Philip Pullman's response to C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Both novels have many similarities and if one knows what to look for it is somewhat obvious that Pullman is mocking Lewis in his in-depth novel The Golden Compass. Both novel's have a main character that is a female protagonist. In Pullman's case it's Lyra. Her story is similar to the children in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Like them, she has been placed in the care of people other than her parents. Both stories also have settings that involve an element of spiritualism. With Lucy, she found the entrance to Narnia in the back of a wardrobe. In The Golden Compass, Lyra finds nothing in the wardrobe she is hiding in. It is a plain wardrobe.
The beginning of this book actually reminded me of Harriet the Spy. Lyra is hiding in a wardrobe and spying on the meeting that her uncle is the main speaker for. He has asked her to watch the face of the Master, who ironically has attempted to kill him in order to protect Lyra from her fate. It is when children begin disappearing in the novel that a stark comparison between the White Witch and the Gobblers can be made. She was turning citizens of Narnia to stone and the Gobblers were kidnapping children.
The spiritual elements of each story are interesting also. Lewis subtly places religious themes and ideas throughout his novel, it is only as an adult that one finds the abundance of religious text. It seems from the first page of The Golden Compass Pullman is forcing the reader to acknowledge it. The human characters all have daemons and it is the children who's daemons are seduced that disappear. Pullman's attempt to make his opinion of C.S. Lewis's work apparent was successful.
As much as I like Lewis's works, I have to admit that he throws religion in one's face as much as Pullman is trying to take religion away. Even as a child I knew that Aslan was a representative of Christ and well, most of Lewis's critics are usually calling him out as writing Christian "Propaganda." Both are highly religious, though their goals are quite different.
ReplyDelete