The Golden Compass

The title of Philip Pullman's fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials is a reference to John Milton's seventeenth-century epic Paradise Lost. Paradise Lost is a retelling of the story of the Fall of Man...

Imagination is something that is dangerous for Lyra precisely because she lives in a dangerous world where she is part of the plans and machinations of dangerous characters, such as her father,...

The Golden Compass and the two books following it make up the His Dark Materials trilogy. That entire series earned a number 8 ranking on the Top 100 Banned and Challenged Books list for 2000–2009....

I think that this could be referring to the more sophisticated concepts that are hidden in fantasy. The story is about villains and animals, and it is easy to see how some people could be...

The Golden Compass is a fairy tale in that it is set in a parallel universe to our own, outside of human history, an alternative world that allows for fantastic creatures such as intelligent bears,...

Clearly, given that every human character in the novel has a daemon, there are lots of daemons in the novel and even the most superficial reading will reveal a wide range of daemons. However, here...

As far as technology, Philip Pullman creates an interesting dichotomy in The Golden Compass. The technology employed by any inhabitants of Lyra's Oxford seems to be simultaneously crude, simple,...

The protagonists of fantasy novels are often orphans or children who are left without much supervision by absentee families. In The Golden Compass, Lyra Belacqua is not, in fact, an orphan, but she...

Love and loyalty emerge early on in the story as Lyra realizes her "uncle" Asriel, whom she "admires" and fears, is about to be poisoned by the Master, who has slipped a powder into his wine. She...

This story is a metaphor against organized religion, not against God. I know this sounds strange, but you should think about it in terms of how human beings apply the supposed principles of...

The Golden Compass is told in third person, not the second person, with omniscient narration. This means the author can move around among characters and places to get inside different characters'...