Balance

Please excuse my absence from the discussion. I have read the past few weeks of discussion and have a couple points that I would like to raise for consideration.

1) The author's intent versus the reader's interpretation.
Would you buy a painting because of the way it makes you feeling or for the way the artist was feeling at the time of its creation (if you could find this out)? From my own experience and from reading the experience of other writers, sometimes the writer doesn't know the full depth of meaning that is being produced on the page. For example, Stephen King's Dark Tower series has already had two companions written by other people. He's admitted that even he didn't realize some of the symbology occurring within his books that has been pointed out in the companion volumes. I also have an artist friend. Her medium is oil paint. She, too, has been asked what her paintings mean, what she was thinking/feeling at the time of creation. When she asked me what I thought of this, I said I didn't want to know what she was feeling. It matters to me what I am feeling. This is what will allow the art to continue to resound with me.

I think it's more important what you, the reader, feels and thinks about what you are reading. Everyone will be different, including the author. No one can hope to approach the mindframe of that of the author at the time of creation. That is the beauty of written material; it is open to individual imagination.

2) Good and evil and the church and daemons.
Yes, I do see a great deal of Paradise Lost in The Golden Compass trilogy. But I also see alot of other things too, possibly derived and mutated from the Adam and Eve story (as Paradise Lost is). Some recent films, including The Matrix trilogy, Equilibrium and V for Vendetta, have pointed out the tendency of human society to block out all that is bad at the sake of good. Bad is 'bad'. Good is sacrificed to be rid of the bad. Western society, and dare I say Christianity, has a horrible habit of not seeing human nature as a whole (of not seeing anything as a whole). Eastern religions tend to accept and incorporate the wholeness of human nature as a sense of balance. Ying/Yang, God/Goddess, Earth/Air, Fire/Water, etc., without labelling one aspect as 'bad'. Both are needed to be whole. Balance is needed.

I think (if I may dare) that Pullman is illustrating Christianity's desire to separate the good from the bad in human nature. Through the creation of the daemons, Pullman has enabled the human whole to be fractured for the sake of the 'good'. It would not be easy to illustrate the urgency and intimacy that Lyra feels with her daemon if it, instead, was an invisible aspect of her soul. I believe the daemons are a writer's tool to make the reader realize the value of diversity within the human soul, to identify with the character's plight.

One last point:
Yes, Garden Girl, I, too, felt Lyra's character lacking. I was not able to identify with her. Is it her ignorance? Her stubbornness? Her uncanny ability to be incredibly annoying? Was it possible to make her stubborn and tenacious without being annoying? I don't know.
Further the discussion.....