“This wild abyss”: The trope of home in Philip Pullman’s his dark materials trilogy

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article discusses His dark materials trilogy by Philip Pullman, setting his concepts of home, which I regard as bearing a resemblance to Ernst Bloch’s Heimat or homeland, in the context of a 2002 interview with him and against the background of Bloch’s “atheism in Christianity”. I ask whether, against numerous odds, the protagonists Lyra and Will reach home, in Bloch’s understanding, and suggest that Pullman introduces a further dimension. The two characters eventually come to understand that their atoms will be reunited with each other in the universe. To my mind this, not the temporal worlds or even the republic of heaven advocated by Pullman, is the culmination of the trope of home in the series. Such a reunion will constitute their true, spiritual abode. I therefore differ from the broadly Marxist, earthbound and socially directed, perspectives expressed by Bloch and Jack Zipes.