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the-silvertonguewitch · 3 years

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Musings on Lyra’s journey in TSC

I’ve been thinking a lot about Lyra’s journey in the second and (upcoming) third book of the Book of Dust series. Especially about the hints and clues from TSC pointing to some eventual “sacrifice” (to get Pan back, to enter the red building) in the final book. Beware: spoilers for TSC below.

I don’t think that Will and Lyra reunite, or see each other again. Pullman could’ve made it work at some point, but not after TSC. Lyra’s journey there is too dependent on Will not coming back.

Let me explain. Lyra and Will could’ve chosen to stay together. They could’ve made the choice to live a very shortened life together. We know why they didn’t: as Will puts it, one of them would’ve died young, leaving the other grief stricken, and it would’ve meant two lives wasted. On the flipside, they would’ve loved each other deeply and intensely – probably more deeply and more intensely than most, since they would’ve known from the beginning that their years together were counted – and it would’ve been, all in all, two short lives well spent.

Again, they could’ve chosen that. Instead, at the end of TAS, they decide to give a life without each other a chance.

But what’s been life for Lyra so far, eight years later? She’s a student at St-Sophia, a good one, gets good grades, is probably somewhat interested – but doesn’t sound passionate – about what she’s studying. Friends at school? There’s Miriam – more a casual class buddy than a real intimate BFF. Lovers? There’s Dick Orchard, though from the look of it their relationship erred more on the “friends with benefit” side (and at some point, it’s strongly implied that Lyra never touched Dick’s daemon Bindi, contrasting the deep, soul-like connection she had with Will). She forbids herself from getting too close with boys she might fall in love with (coughMalcoughcom) out of fear of being unfaithful to Will’s memory. All in all, it’s exactly like what she tells Farder Coram: “I thought all the danger was over… Everything, the good as well as the bad, it was all over. There was nothing left but learning and… Well, just that, really.” (TSC, p. 280) She adopts the new trendy way of thinking of Brande and Talbot, one of cold rationality, hard facts, a black and white representation of the world, because Brande and Talbot’s philosophy deny the reality itself of every traumatic experience she had to go through between 11 and 13: the knowledge of who her parents were (as well as the lack of closure in her relationship with both of them), being almost separated from Pan in Bolvangar, Roger’s death, coming across soul-eating specters, having Pan ripped out of her heart, loosing Will. If daemons don’t exist, if there’s no land of the dead and no specters, if love is nothing but a fancy of the mind, then Lyra can’t be hurt by these things, unless by deluding herself into believing that they’re real. Her fascination with Brande and Talbot is a coping mechanism, and it could almost work, except that it’s the perfect recipe for a bleh, bland life.

Fact is, TSC’s Lyra probably, consciously or not (but more consciously than not, I’d wager), regret parting from Will. If she had gone with him into his world, she’d be in pretty bad shape by now but so what? She would’ve been happy. Happier, at least. Fulfilled.

I even wonder if that isn’t one of the reasons behind her estrangement with Pan. Going with Will would’ve meant choosing love over life, and what is a person’s daemon, if not that person’s “life”, in animal form? Why else would daemons disappear when their person dies? Why else would they be forbidden from crossing into the land of the dead?

And so, maybe, her journey in the TSC is about discovering that the choice she made in TAS wasn’t a “wrong” one after all. That she can still live a wholesome, fulfilling life, and that she can still love as deeply as she once did with Will. That she can still hope.

This doesn’t mean that Lyra will love Malcolm “more” than Will, nor the other way around (that Malcolm would merely be the “second choice”, the best she could hope for if she can’t be with Will). Pullman pulls tricks like these all the time. He did it with Jim and Sally, and with Ginny in The Broken Bridge, and now he’s doing it with Lyra too: protagonists falling deeply in love with someone, loosing that love, and unexpectedly finding another love. That “other” love is never presented as “more” or “less” than the first, because that’s not the point. The point is that there’s always hope.

Strangely enough, Lyra and Malcolm’s journeys in TSC have quite a few parallels with Lyra and Will in TSK (and somewhat in TAS too, though I expect the third installment of TBoD to have more parallels with TAS specifically). Only this time, Lyra is Will and Malcolm is Lyra. Lyra is the one without a daemon, the odd one out, the one who makes herself invisible, who’s desperately looking for a lost loved one, who can’t return home, who finds comfort in letters written by someone she cares for, who gets her hand badly wounded in a fight. Malcom is the one searching for Dust rose oil, the straight-face liar, the slightly obnoxious, the one who gets out of sticky situations all the time but still ends up drugged and passed out in a train (but not in a suitcase at least). I’m not sure where the story is going with this or what’s the purpose of these parallels, though I’d guess that they contain some hints and clues of what’s gonna happen in the last BoD. Lyra’s journey doesn’t only boil down to romance either. Romantic love, and all other kinds of love, is just a part of Lyra’s lost “shadow”. Or Lyra’s lost “Dust”, as I believe that that’s what the “shadow” refers to in the poem of Jahan and Rukhsana. Malcolm concludes that Rukhsana’s stolen shadow = Lyra’s daemon Pan, but I’m not sure if Pullman isn’t pulling another trick on us, because –

“Nevertheless, that shadow-colored cat on the moonlit lawn…” (TSC, 143)

“As if Gottfried Brande was some kind of enchanter who made you forget everything you used to love, everything mysterious, all the places where the shadows are.” (TSC, 175)

“You’re expecting the sun to describe shadows. The sun has never seen a shadow.”

“But the world is full of shadows.” […] “I came here”, Pan said, “because reading your novel persuaded my Lyra that the things she believed in were false. It made her bitterly unhappy. It was as if you’d stolen her imagination and taken away her hope with it.” (TSC, 360-361)

I could probably quote more, but you get the picture. It seems like what Lyra hopes to find in the red building is Dust/shadow particles – meaning that she, too, knows that *something* was taken from her – and she hopes to find it there, specifically, probably because she’s already unconsciously linked the red building to the world of the Mulefas, where the flow of Dust was so abundant and where she and Will kissed for the first time.

All that to say, Rukhsana’s stolen shadow = Lyra’s stolen imagination/Dust. Or so I believe for now. We’ll see.

It’s complicated, though, because in the poem, Rukhsana must make a great sacrifice to get her shadow back, and likewise Lyra’s told by that alchemist in Prague that she’ll have to make a great sacrifice to get Pan back – and even then, that she’ll get him back, but “not in the way” she’d expect. We also learn from Dr. Strauss’s journal that entering the red building costs a life. Another sacrifice, another place.

For Pan, I have my own guesses. The “sacrifice” will either be 1) Lyra giving up absolute rationality, which means she’ll also have to face all the traumas she’s been repressing and discounting as “not real” so far, or 2) Pan will return to Lyra, but as an invisible part of her or hidden inside of her, like peoples’ “daemons” from Will’s world. They’ll never part again, but Lyra will lose the companionship that she had with an external part of herself. Hence Pan not returning to her “in the way she thinks”.

Actually, I’d think that we could see 1) and 2) both. In TSC, Lyra questions the realness of daemons and it would be almost too easy to deny their existence altogether if they weren’t visible. Obviously TBoD will not end with Lyra now enlightened with the understanding that Pan never existed and was just a “projection of the mind”, so for Pan to disappear inside of her, and for her to truly believe in his existence regardless, would point to some significant change of faith, which is probably what the books are building up to anyway.

The “sacrifice” needed to enter the red building is even murkier. From Strauss’s journal, it’s sort of implied that Strauss and Cariad were the “payment” for the rose specimens given to Hassall, so I’m not sure if the sacrifice “pays” for an entrance into the building, or if it pays for the knowledge of what’s inside it. Besides, Lyra and Malcolm are probably both going in – or, rather, Malcolm was sent there by Oakley Street with the official purpose of gathering information while Lyra is traveling to Karamakan with the intent of entering the building, so they both seem set up to parallel Dr. Hassall (Malcolm) and Dr. Strauss (Lyra), respectively; however, once they reach the place they’ll obviously both go in, so the “life payment” might not be required.

How they’ll trick their way into leaving the red building is another matter. Again, I’d expect some nods and callbacks to TAS, especially the part where Will and Lyra managed against all odds to escape from the world of the dead. Back then they had the knife and Lyra’s imagination (part of the deal was that they’d tell stories to the harpies in exchange for their help at finding the way out). Might be that Lyra’s newly returned talent at storytelling comes in handy this time again. Or maybe – and this is just a very big MAYBE –

The story she will tell in the red building is the poem of Jahan and Rukhsana. Oh, but what if it must be a true story? Well actually, it is, and Lyra and Malcolm are right there to prove it. How “true” the story is, that’s like asking how true to reality a metaphor is. It’s a matter of perception, or rather, imagination.

#HDM metas #his dark materials #the secret commonwealth #lyra silvertongue #lyra belacqua #malcolm polstead #my metas #hdm spoilers

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