Ramblings on the Similarity Between Pullman’s Conception of Death/Afterlife, and the Traditional Christian Conception.

One thing that struck me as interesting was Pullman’s choice to make ghosts dissolve and become one with the universe after they are freed from the Land of the Dead.  The matter that they were composed of spreads out into the world and become the basis for other life to build itself off of.  It seems quite contrary to the general anti-religious themes in Pullman’s work, bringing to mind right away Genesis 3:19 “for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return”.  Although he clearly doesn’t hold the same interpretation of the afterlife as Christians do, it seems undeniable that this piece of Christian scripture influenced his conception of the final state of human existence in HDM.  In many ways this interpretation is just a corporeal manifestation of the Christian notion of the afterlife.  The matter that the ghosts are made of is analogous to the christian conception of the soul.  In living organisms this matter comes into being through the natural processes of the world, through the repurposing of matter that has existed in millions of different states before.  Likewise the soul comes into being by the divine creative powers of God, in other words, matter comes into being through the natural functions of the corporeal world, while the soul comes into being by the natural functions of the divine realm.  After a person has lived his life in Pullman’s story he dies and goes to the Land of the Dead and then after leaving there they are able to return to the world, to the dust that they came from.  In like manner the soul, after being trapped for a whole in the world, a place it doesn’t belong (analogous to the Land of the Dead), it is able to pass back into the realm of the divine and return to God.  

Another interesting parallel between these two death narratives is the similarity between Lyra/Will and Jesus.  In some Christian traditions, before the coming of Christ to earth, all the souls of man were trapped in Hell regardless of the good or bad that the person had done in life.  After the coming of Christ, it is believed that all souls in Hell at the time of His resurrection were brought into Heaven.  This is very similar to how until Lyra/Will cut the window out of the Land of the Dead, all souls were trapped there, but when Will cut the window they were saved and allowed to go to there they belonged.  In Pullman’s narrative all subsequent souls that arrive at the Land of the Dead are able to pass on to the universe if they can tell the harpies a true story.  This is similar to how all subsequent people who died after Christ came to Earth were able to go to Heaven if they were faithful good people, however if the were not, they would go to Hell, just like how if a person can’t tell the harpies a good story they stay in the Land of the Dead.

For a story so critical of Christian Theology, Pullman’s alternative interpretations seem to rely quite heavily on many established Christian ideologies, at least in their most general forms if not in their specific.