Posted in Response 6 on Nov 2nd, 2009 No Comments »
In Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, The Golden Compass, the two bear characters, Iofur Rankinson and Iorek Byrinson have extremely different and powerful personalities that are drawn out and exaggerated during their gruesome battle. From the moment the two bears met, Iofur was cocky and hoping to kill Iorek and flaunt his success by [...]
Posted in Response 6 on Nov 2nd, 2009 No Comments »
Mrs. Coulter is, perhaps, one of the most complex characters in the novel. One hardly ever knows what to think of her. She is initially presented as some sort of temptress who is able to lure children away from their families. Later, she practically enchants Lyra with her charm and cleverness. She is presented, then, [...]
Posted in Response 6 on Nov 2nd, 2009 No Comments »
Simply the nature of Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass makes it impossible to tell good from bad, dark from light. The reader can only fall on the side of the protagonist, Lyra, or against her. Characters such as the terrible bear Iorek Byrnison or the witch Serafina Pekkala tend to be cast as heroes [...]
Posted in Response 6 on Nov 2nd, 2009 No Comments »
The Golden Compass
In The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman, Lord Asriel in the beginning of the book was very convincing as the guardian Uncle who had Lyra’s best interest at heart, but he wasn’t very involved in her life otherwise. He didn’t really play the parent card, but left that up to the people at [...]
Posted in Response 6 on Nov 2nd, 2009 No Comments »
Dust is a very important fixation in Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass. Defining Dust, for which the meaning is constantly hinted to throughout Lyra’s journey, is not revealed to Lyra or the reader until the very end of Pullman’s novel. Pullman is creating an ever-growing sense of mystery about Dust until its dramatic reveal as [...]
Posted in Response 6 on Nov 2nd, 2009 No Comments »
In The Golden Compass the lines between good and evil are often blurred. Mrs. Coulter is an example this mixed message. Throughout the story her actions assume she is aligned with the dark side. The fact there is no explanation of Dust and what is truly going on in the end allows for a misperception [...]
Posted in Response 6 on Oct 30th, 2009 No Comments »
In Philip Pullmans novel “The Golden Compass” a human cannot exist without its daemon. Throughout the novel you see the different variations of daemons and just how strong a daemon’s presence is in the story. You quickly learn that a daemon is a part of the human’s body, mind and soul. It feels what its [...]
Posted in Response 6 on Oct 29th, 2009 No Comments »
Stuck between conflicting worlds and ideologies, Lord Asriel embodies the identity of the novel’s anti-hero. His character becomes the combination of evil versus good; desire and abstinence. Asriel presents false facades of his character, never revealing his true actions and his secret desires. Therefore, his actions and inability to suppress his selfish desires lead to [...]
Posted in Response 6 on Oct 28th, 2009 No Comments »
In the secondary world of the Golden Compass, Philip Pullman introduces new and exotic characters to a relatively familiar world. Characters such as witches, daemons, and talking bears exist alongside humans. With the introduction of these beings comes a system of containing them.
The witches and bears inhabit categories of their own, and mostly keep to [...]
Posted in Response 6 on Oct 28th, 2009 No Comments »
When reading Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass, it becomes clear almost instantly that Lyra is a heroic character. She has many qualities that we expect in our heroes, such as courage and a sense of justice, but she also has some negative traits that make her a very unique heroine.
Lyra almost immediately asserts herself as [...]