Posted on 12/04/2007 8:49:42 AM PST by NYer
When parents look at the beautiful covers adorning the gift-boxed sets of Philip Pullman's fantasy series, His Dark Materials, they might be forgiven for believing that these books follow in the tradition of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings or C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia. In fact, the publishers are counting on it. The display tables have arrived just in time for Christmas and the release of the screen adaptation of the first volume: The Golden Compass.
What Pullman's promoters desperately hope is that parents will not get beyond the colorful covers, which appear to depict nothing more than an action/fantasy series filled with talking animals, exciting battles, and a child protagonist. What they desperately fear is that parents will discover the dark and sinister philosophy that unfolds within the pages of Pullman's work — a philosophy that condones the killing of children to advance knowledge; disparages virtue and glorifies cunning; and which poses the idea that the solution to humanity's problems is the killing of God. In short, the philosophy that underlies much of Pullman's fiction is Friedrich Nietzsche's — a German philosopher whose work was influential with the Third Reich.
Nietzsche's major philosophical ideas include the Will to Power, the Superman, and the myth of the Eternal Return. While the third idea is hinted at in the last book in the series, it is the first two ideas that fill the pages of His Dark Materials. It is important for pastors and parents to understand these concepts so that they can be prepared to talk about their impact. Briefly, then, I will sketch these ideas, then show how they appear in The Golden Compass and throughout His Dark Materials, and finally demonstrate how these books — aimed at children — attempt to inculcate Nietzsche's worldview.
Nietzsche's View of the Way the World Works
The Will to Power
The main theme running throughout the writings of Nietzsche, gaining full force in his work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, is that life is a demonstration of a will to power. Nietzsche rejected external authority, arguing that since all morality is subjective — a mere expression of the will of others — there is no reason why any one morality should be preferred. What marks humanity, Nietzsche argued, is a desire to assert one's own will, or, in other words, to do that which is right in one's own eyes.
Dana Villa, the Packey J. Dee Professor of Political Science at Notre Dame, explains that Nietzsche's belief in the lack of absolute values — a lack of an objectively "true world" — leads to the destruction of "shared appearances" (291). As a result, to the extent that there are any values in the world, they ultimately find their grounding only in the perspective of the person doing the valuing, and in no other. Nietzsche advocated absolute moral autonomy. To illustrate, Nietzsche, in The Antichrist, defines "the good" as:
All that enhances the feeling of power, the Will to Power, and power itself in man...Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency...The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our humanity. And they ought even to be helped to perish. (128)
Nietzsche scholar George Allen Morgan identifies four key "sins" — lust, thirst for mastery, self-seeking, and cruelty — that, under Nietzsche, are revalued as "goods:" lust is the good which draws toward the future; thirst for mastery drives the powerful to exercise their power over lower people; self-seeking is the source of discriminating taste and causes refinement; and cruelty leads to a lusty vitality (180-181). The masterful types will exert their will to power over lower types, and the extent of their mastery will be measured in their ability to do so. Morgan declares for Nietzsche that "True advance is measured by the mass of humanity sacrificed to 'the growth of a single stronger species of man'"(81). Ultimately, this planned evolution is designed to breed the superman.
The Superman
In order for Nietzsche's ultimate expression of the will to power to arise — the superman — it is first necessary to kill God. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche portrays the murder of God at the hands of The Ugliest Man, who chokes God to death on His own pity.
Theologian Norbert Schiffers explains Nietzsche's position:
With his own instinct for the good, man is strong enough to be ashamed of his belief in the God who alone is good. Even before The Will to Power Nietzsche makes his man with the instinct for the good, his Zarathustra, say that to his eyes and ears God goes against his taste. It is in the power of this instinct and with this taste that Nietzsche says in full awareness: the God of metaphysics, the God of the Moralists, the God, too, of a Christian philosophy — they are dead. (71)
The superman is the embodiment of the will to power and makes up an aristocratic class that rules over Nietzsche's other two types of people: the higher men and the herd classes (Fowler 157). According to University of Warwick philosopher Keith Ansell-Pearson, such a person, freed from any cultural or theological moral restraints, "is master of a free will, and which gives him mastery over himself, over nature, over less fortunate creatures who have not succeeded in achieving sovereignty" (278-279).
With the "repressive" moral power of the dead god removed, the superman is free to express and develop his will to power. The superman stands atop the hierarchy of humanity. To those not yet among his peers, even to those of the "higher men" he would be a being fearful to behold. "Since man must become 'better and worse,' a superman will possess the 'evil' urges to maximum intensity; his kindness would be terrible; the best of us would call him a devil" (Morgan 175). It is Nietzsche's supermen — filled with will to power — that seek the death of God in His Dark Materials.
Bringing Nietzsche to Narnia
His Dark Materials are fantasy novels aimed at the youth market. They tell the story of Lyra and Will, two twelve-year-old children who are major actors in a titanic struggle between God and humanity. The first book, The Golden Compass, seems to deliberately borrow from C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia. In both books, the action begins when a little girl hides in a wardrobe. Both books contain magic and talking animals. When we are introduced to Lyra, she is living at Oxford University — where Lewis went to school and, later, taught Medieval Literature while composing the bulk of his books. It is also the university from which Pullman received his bachelor's degree. Lucy, in The Lion The Witch, and the Wardrobe, rides on the back of Aslan, the Great Lion. Lyra, in The Golden Compass, rides on the back of Iorek, a great armored bear.
But when it comes to morality and redemption, the worlds created by Lewis and Pullman could not be farther apart. Lewis' world is infused with Christian imagery. Within The Chronicles of Narnia, a reader would encounter everything from Creation and Fall, to the death, burial and resurrection of Aslan (the Christ figure), to discipleship, and even The Second Coming and the End of the World. The central idea of Narnia is that there the children can learn to know and love Aslan, so that later, when they have grown up, they might more easily recognize Him (as Jesus) here.
In His Dark Materials, Pullman has crafted a world in which the most natural thing would be to desire the death of God. Pullman stated, in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald, that "My books are about killing God." Like Nietzsche, Pullman needs God to be dead in order to liberate humanity from what Pullman deems a repressive, absolutist morality so that people will be free to be themselves — by which he means to follow their human nature, to be what nature intended them to be without supernatural interference or restraint.
The human embodiment of this oppression is The Church. Pullman cleverly constructs his ecclesiastical universe so that Catholicism and Protestantism can be derided together. He accomplishes this by having John Calvin, in this alternative universe, elected Pope (GC 30). Calvin moves the papacy to Geneva, and then the office is dissolved upon his death, though the institutional structures — such as the Magisterium and the General Oblation Board — are maintained.
The Church is filled with power-hungy zealots. Its leaders are greedy abusers of the poor. As an institution, it is to be feared. The archbishop is described as a "hateful old snob" (GC 84). The Church operates the General Oblation Board which lures children from the streets, and then spirits them away to a place where they become the subjects of a frightening blend of medical and theological experimentation in which their externalized souls are separated from their bodies. Pullman's world is populated by Christians who are inquisitors and witch burners. When the reader reaches the third book, The Amber Spyglass, Pullman introduces a priest, Semyon Borisovitch, who is described as fat, with dirty fingernails, a soiled cassock, and a long, unkempt beard. He is a drunk, his place reeks of tobacco. Pullman stops just shy of revealing Semyon as a pedophile when twelve-year-old Will comes knocking at his door: "The priest kept leaning forward to look closely at him, and felt his hands to see whether he was cold, and stroked his knee" (AS 98). Later, after plying the boy with vodka, the priest hugs Will "tightly" while apparently praying for him. The scene is written to appear creepy, and to build mistrust. And if there is any lingering doubt, Pullman has Mary, an attractive character, tell the children that "The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that's all" (AS 441). If these are God's representatives, then God must be a fraud, unworthy of our allegiance.
Will to Power and the Supermen
The Nietzschean heroes of His Dark Materials who are tasked with toppling God include Lyra and Will, and by the end of the series, even Lyra's parent, Mrs. Coulter and Lord Asriel shed what at first appears to be "bad guy" status to become the first martyrs in the battle to destroy the Kingdom of Heaven to replace it with the Republic of Heaven. Other heroes include Iorek Byrnison — an armored bear whose kingdom has been usurped, and Serafina Pekkala, the queen of a clan of witches. As Pullman draws out each character, it is clear what he finds compelling about them: their rejection of God and the absolute morality God represents, and their will to power. Here is a brief sketch:
Lyra, as her name suggests, is a notorious liar — and she benefits by it. Ma Costas, a Gyptian boat wife, tells Lyra that it is a compliment in their culture to be considered effectively deceptive (GC 112). Lyra maneuvers through the adult world, getting what she wants by manipulation, pretense, and cunning. She occasionally speaks frankly about killing her enemies, or making others do the killing for her (SK 163). She is an apple that has not fallen far from the tree.
Will does not appear until the second book in the series: The Subtle Knife. He is aptly named. Will gets what he wants by determination or force. Will kills people, and threatens to kill Lyra if she gets in his way (SK 61). To get the titular knife, Will must fight the current possessor for it. To the victor goes the spoils or, in other words, might makes right. Learning to use the knife to cut a hole between worlds is Will's epiphany. Lyra describes the scene as seeing an authority descend upon Will — but that it is Will's authority; he is creating it. In a confrontation with angels (who turn out to be weaker than humans), Will says, "If I'm stronger, you have to obey me. Besides, I have the knife. So I can command you: help me find Lyra" (AS 11).
Mrs. Coulter, Lyra's mother, does not ascend to superman status (though she is very close), but from her introduction in The Golden Compass she fits into Nietzsche's "higher man" category. She runs the General Oblation Board for the Church, uses her charm to snatch children, mercilessly experiments on them, uses sex as a weapon, brutally tortures prisoners, and treats others in the Church as inferiors. She is admired by Lyra for her style, grace, power and passion. Readers are encouraged to applaud Mrs. Coulter's defection from the Church, and are expected to overlook her many atrocities (Mrs. Coulter never repents of them) once her love for Lyra is revealed.
Lord Asriel, Lyra's father, is described as an explorer, easily angered and passionate, with "a hatred of priors and monks and nuns" (GC 123). He is a man who is not to be defied. He murders Lyra's friend, Roger, to pull energy from him as part of a successful experiment to build a bridge to another world. Despite that, his raw power excites in Lyra grudging admiration. By the final book, Lord Asriel has assembled a large army that he intends to lead into battle to defeat God — an army favorably compared to the one commanded by Lucifer when there was a war in heaven, eons past. One character notes Lord Asriel's limitless ambition, "He dares to do what other men and women don't even dare to think" (SK 47). Loved and feared, Lord Asriel is a Superman.
Iorek and Serafina represent states of nature. Each wants to be left alone to live life as nature intended. The Church has polluted bear culture; the new king of the bears wants to be baptized as a Christian, and wishes to model his kingdom after the humans. Iorek rejects this move with disgust, ultimately fighting and defeating the weaker bear king. Serafina chronicles centuries of abuse by the Church. She explains that Christianity has always suppressed nature and has been against every good feeling. She declares that if a war breaks out, the witches only need to align themselves against the Church and they will be on the right side.
These are Role Models?
All of these characters embody, to varying degrees, Nietzsche's idea of Will to Power. They reject any morality as having authority over them. They are people of command. Whether the issue is sexual license, lying, torture, or killing — they all feel justified in doing as they will to obtain their desired results. They serve themselves, and they revel in power. These are the role models that Pullman has served up to impressionable children looking for vacation reading. They don't even know it yet, but once Pullman hooks them with the sanitized version represented by the screen adaptation of The Golden Compass — a move that will likely lull many parents into complacency about the books — then he will have the freedom to use his fantasy series to pour into their hearts Nietzsche's terrible lessons.
There is, however, a potential silver lining. Christians can explain that the desire to transcend our own humanity is not, in itself, evil. Nietzsche tried to accomplish that transcendence from below — a weak creature willing itself to power. God, however, can provide it from above. God promises to everyone who comes to Him in faith not some bland sameness, as if we were nothing more than members of the herd, but real true individuality. As Bernhard Welte points out, the Lord has promised to inscribe His name on our foreheads (Rev. 22:4). Welte explains the significance of that promise for believers:
That means that God's name, that is, the superhuman and divine radiance is inscribed on the human forehead as, therefore, the radiance of man himself. It indicates the authentic superhumanity of man. It does not arise from the self-intensification of the finite will, but much more as a pure gift from above, in the setting of the City of which it is written that it descends from heaven, from God, and therefore cannot be constructed from below (57).
[Watch for the Next Article The Golden Compass: Sexualizing Children in the World of His Dark Materials]
Works Cited:
Ansell-Pearson, Keith. “Nietzsche on Autonomy and Morality: The Challenge to Political
Theory.” Political Studies 39.2 (1991): 270-286.
Fowler, Mark. “Nietzschean Perspectivism: ‘How Could Such a Philosophy Dominate?’"
Social Theory and Practice 16.2 (1990): 119-162.
Meacham, Steve. “The Shed where God Died.” Sydney Morning Herald, December 13,
2003, online:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/12/12/1071125644900.html?from=storyrhs.
Morgan, George Allen, Jr. What Nietzsche Means. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1975.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Antichrist. vol.16. The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche. ed. Oscar Levy. New York: Russell and Russell, 1964.
---. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None. trans. Walter Kaufman. New
York: Modern Library, 1995.
Pullman, Philip. The Golden Compass. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1995.
---. The Subtle Knife. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1997.
---. The Amber Spyglass. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 2000.
Schiffers, Norbert. “Analyzing Nietzsche’s ‘God is Dead.’” trans. Robert Nowell.
Nietzsche and Christianity. eds. Claude Geffre and Jean-Pierre Jossua. New York:
The Seabury Press, 1981. 65-77.
Villa, Dana R. “Beyond Good and Evil: Arendt, Nietzsche, and the Aestheticization of
Political Action” Political Theory 20.2 (1992): 274-308.
Welte, Bernhard. “The Ambiguity of Nietzsche’s Superman.” trans. John Cumming.
Nietzsche and Christianity. eds. Claude Geffre and Jean-Pierre Jossua. New York:
The Seabury Press, 1981. 53-57.
The 1984 movie version was such a crashing disappointment because it had such great actors in all the lead roles.
Everything else about that movie was such a joke, however.
I’ve looked over those prequels, pure pulp if you ask me.
1 Thessalonians 5 9Do not put out the Spirit’s fire; 20do not treat prophecies with contempt. 21Test everything. Hold on to the good. 22Avoid every kind of evil.
1 Peter 2 2Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, 3now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.
2 Peter 2
False Teachers and Their Destruction
1But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. 2Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. 3In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.
4For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment; 5if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others; 6if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; 7and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men 8(for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)— 9if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue godly men from trials and to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment, while continuing their punishment. 10This is especially true of those who follow the corrupt desire of the sinful nature and despise authority.
Bold and arrogant, these men are not afraid to slander celestial beings; 11yet even angels, although they are stronger and more powerful, do not bring slanderous accusations against such beings in the presence of the Lord. 12But these men blaspheme in matters they do not understand. They are like brute beasts, creatures of instinct, born only to be caught and destroyed, and like beasts they too will perish.
13They will be paid back with harm for the harm they have done. Their idea of pleasure is to carouse in broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their pleasures while they feast with you. 14With eyes full of adultery, they never stop sinning; they seduce the unstable; they are experts in greed—an accursed brood! 15They have left the straight way and wandered off to follow the way of Balaam son of Beor, who loved the wages of wickedness. 16But he was rebuked for his wrongdoing by a donkey—a beast without speech—who spoke with a man’s voice and restrained the prophet’s madness.
17These men are springs without water and mists driven by a storm. Blackest darkness is reserved for them. 18For they mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of sinful human nature, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error. 19They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity—for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him. 20If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. 21It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. 22Of them the proverbs are true: “A dog returns to its vomit,”and, “A sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud.”
Yah, I think Herbert turned to prequels after the creative fire had left him in his dotage and his son was not his equal.
I do a prison ministry. I just shuddered when someone brought up the thought of our criminals inducted into the army in lieu of sentence. I pictured them, unrepentant, wandering the streets of Fallujah armed and trained. The whole “put the criminals in the army” idea puts way too low a value on our armed forces and the importance of having self-disciplined men in them with good character. The prison planet idea of creating Sardakur is nonsense.
It’s been a good while since I read the book. But as I understand it Salusa Secundus was originally set up as a prison planet, but that ceased long before and the present inhabitants are their descendants. Conditions on this planet are so harsh that you get a “survival of the fittest” thing going. Only the best of the best of these inherently tough guys make it into the Sardukar.
Of course, conditions on Arrakis are even harsher...
BTW, look up how Caecascu (sp?), the Romanian dictator, assembled his secret police, the Securitate. He created a society in which vast numbers of children were put into orphanages, where conditions were hellish. A select group were “rescued” from those conditions and raised to be the Securitate cadre. Utter loyalty.
If all you care about is personal loyalty and willingness to carry out the most barbaric commands without flinching, using criminals has its advantages.
I had forgotten that they were the descendants. I must hang my head in shame for such an inexcusable mistake in my chosen field of “sci-fi-geek-pop-culture-trivia-with-a-pre-1980’s-speciality.”
It’s probably been 30 years, so I could certainly be wrong.
According to Wikipedia, it was still functioning as a prison planet during the time of the Dune story.
I could probably give you a run in that category.
I don’t think that could work in the real world. By the same token, how come Australia is no one’s idea of a hellish society? Aren’t the Aussies proudly descended from the criminal scum of the british empire?
I think that Brin “stole” his idea for the uplift novels from C.S. Lewis in “Perelandra” when the beasts were to be trained into sentience at the end of the novel. Little sparks from a superior thinker to a lesser one.
My pride begins to return . . .
I hadn’t made that connection, but I guess it’s possible.
If so, Brin ran with the idea pretty well.
Criminality is not primarily genetic could be one answer . . .
They're tough enough to survive Fosters.
Yah, memes float around the world of ideas. I think that is why “Dune” is less offensive than “The Golden Compass” appears to be . . . “The Golden Compass” is apparently designed to be a pedagogical sneak attack on Christianity while “Dune” is a more organic creation from the ideas that Herbert had incorporated into his worldview; it wasn’t intended to be a lecture or an attack.
“sci-fi-geek-pop-culture-trivia-with-a-pre-1980’s-speciality.”
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I could probably give you a run in that category.
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Here’s one. I really liked a novel as a kid that involved an interplanetary war and the protaganist was dropped on the enemy planet to be a sabatuer after being made to look like them. One of the things he did was take acid in stencils basically and burn anti-war slogans into the glass of the alien races buildings. Can you name the book? (you’ll get a point for sure since I lost it decades ago and can’t remember it’s name for the life of me!).
Doesn’t ring any bells for me. Sorry.
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Thank you for bringing this up. I’m grateful that so many people are getting the info out about this movie, so that they may avoid it.
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