"The Golden Compass"

Paper Summary:

This paper reviews "The Golden Compass" by Phillip Pullman and, in particular, looks at how daemons are the most interesting personification of spirits and how they create a powerful image and striking experience for the readers. It examines how the daemons, or the spirits, go through the transition in a similar manner as the human soul, from the complicated emotional state to a more mature state. It also examines how, through this representation, Pullman mirrors the very important element of human life: how the inner souls are perceived in reality and how the mechanics of daemons works. Daemons or spirits can be bad and good, and that is representative of the inner personality of the individual, which can care, love, deceive, torture, and betray.

From the Paper:

"The Golden Compass is the first book of the trilogy that Phillip Pullman wrote. This book, like many other fantasy books of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, earned many controversies with respect to Pullman's treatment of good and bad, evil and spiritual. In the series, Pullman exhibits his atheism in the character portrayal and he does so by justifying and arguing that many books and literature that are written for children are from the point of perspective of Christian believes and is in a way directed and assertive for children in the following of the good or bad in their lives. However, with his Dark Materials, Pullman argues that things are not that simple as many Christians could like to believe and would like to see in the books that their children need or ought to read. In fact, Pullman goes as far as saying that children should experience and build up their own sense of good or bad and they should not be protected by the religious outcomes of the faiths and beliefs."

More papers on "The Golden Compass":

• Comparison Essay # 103644 : "The Golden Compass" and "The Wind in the Willows"
• Analytical Essay # 133047 : "The Golden Compass" and "The Wind in the Willows"
• Analytical Essay # 28639 : "Daemons"

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