His Dark Materials and the Idea of the North, Pt. 1

Here’s a secret about us writers:

            Many of us dread the question, “Where do you get your ideas?”

            It’s just too complicated to answer, and at the same time too simple—both silly and sublime. I’ve probably been asked it a thousand times, and yet I still don’t have a real response.

            Phillip Pullman has also admitted difficulty with the question. Not only with answering it, but with why anyone would ask. As he puts it: “I can’t believe that everyone isn’t having ideas all the time.”

            Now that answer makes sense, at least in Pullman’s case. He’s got more ideas than most of us.

As this anthology began to take shape, one complaint became constant among the contributors: Pullman had provided them with an embarrassment of riches. Or perhaps a confusion of riches. His Dark Materials simply contained too many ideas. There were talking bears to be wrangled, poetic allusions to analyze, and a canvas that stretched across “ten million other worlds . . . all as close as a heartbeat” (TGC 188). And on top of that, the characters’ souls were flitting around outside their bodies. Where was the humble essayist to start?

            As Maureen Johnson fumes within these pages: “His Dark Materials is a kind of symbol scrap yard. . . . There are even symbols imprinted on the symbols (the golden compass itself).” And just as with the alethiometer, the symbols are layered with meanings that change every time the needle stops.

            Luckily, our intrepid essayists weren’t dissuaded by this multitude of ideas. As you will read, they’ve plunged into the scrap yard boldly and with scintillating results. But perhaps it should be unsurprising that even when the needle stops in the same place, the answers change. For example, our three essays about daemons conclude that:

            1) We might one day have our own daemons to talk to.

            2) We wouldn’t really want to have daemons if we could.

            3) We already have daemons here in our own world.

            It’s up to you to decide who makes the strongest case, or to conclude that these contradictory claims can somehow coexist, all as close as a heartbeat.

As the essays rolled in, here’s a question I started to ask myself:

            If His Dark Materials lends itself to so many interpretations, how does it all hang together as one novel? Why doesn’t the story just fly apart under the weight of its many, many ideas?

            Well, I have my own personal theory about that, which I’ll give you now, before I throw you into the scrap yard.

            For me it all starts in the arctic, with the idea of north.