The Golden Compass

Is The Golden Compass Misdirected? — 4

PULLMAN THE GOD KILLER

In Pullman's story if the Satan figure, Lord Asriel and the fallen angels are going to finally be successful they are going to have to kill God. The rebel angels are bent on getting a special knife because it is the only weapon that can effectively kill God, hence the title of the second book in the trilogy, The Subtle Knife. The young man named Will (depicting Adam) must get the knife to the Satan figure, Asriel, so that he can do God in. The subtle knife is also named 'Æsahættr', which means 'God-killer'. Of course Pullman can only kill God in his imagination and attempt to do so in the imaginations of the millions of children who are reading and watching his God-hating propaganda.

If Pullman is to make killing God palatable for his young and unsuspecting audience, he must make the impossible seem possible by diminishing His eternal power and glory. Next, he must get his mostly young and impressionable audience to sympathize with his cause by diminishing God's goodness and characterizing Him as sinister and evil. He accomplishes both goals in depicting God as evil by having Him claim authority over the lives of others and as a lame fraud, in a way that is similar to the Wizard, in the Wizard of Oz. God is not only depicted as having a beginning like our own but he is portrayed as being doubly weak because he also does not have a future as he shown growing old and senile and is finally murdered at the hands of Lyra and Will (who you will recall, Mr. Pullman would have our children emulate!). in a world that infuses and overdoses our children with far more fantasy than reality, lines are easily blurred between right and wrong and good and evil. Sadly, Phillip Pullman is likely to make huge inroads in the hearts of countless children in his war on God.

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