Lord Asriel was a tall man with powerful shoulders, a fierce dark face, and eyes that seemed to flash and glitter with savage laughter. It was a face to be dominated by, or to fight: never a face to patronize or pity.
This characterization of Lord Asriel highlights the dark and polarizing aspects of his nature. Lord Asriel is powerful and in many ways Lyra finds him inspiring. Yet over the course of the novel it becomes evident that some of his actions are aligned with Oblation Board’s sinister plans. Still, Lord Asriel appears to be acting out of a genuine belief in what is right rather than out of self-interest or greed. Yet by the end of The Golden Compass, the lack of compassion that motivates Lord Asriel’s “fierce, dark face” and “savage laughter” comes to the fore. When Lyra accidentally brings Roger to Lord Asriel, he heartlessly severs the child from his dæmon in order to further his studies.
This was her world. She wanted it to stay the same forever and ever, but it was changing around her, for someone out there was stealing children.
This quote reveals the fleetingness of childhood as a central theme of the novel. Lyra, like many children, feels anxiety as she discovers that nothing stays the same forever. For a time she is able to blame the changes that she is experiencing on a specific circumstance that she hopes will go away. But soon she must accept that the nature of the world is for things to change.
When you're young, you do think that things last forever. Unfortunately, they don't. Lyra, it won't be long—a couple of years at most—before you will be a young woman, and not a child anymore. A young lady.
The Master shares with Lyra this wisdom about growing up in an effort to convince her to leave her childhood home at Jordan College. For Lyra, leaving Jordan College means accepting that the world she grew up in is not permanent. This is the very first step that she must take in order to accept her destiny and meet bigger challenges in the future. In this sense, leaving Jordan College represents Lyra’s departure from childhood and her growth into a young lady. This departure also foreshadows an even greater departure that Lyra will have to make at the end of the novel: from this world to an entirely unknown one.
Lyra cried out in alarm, and then in fear and pain, as Pantalaimon twisted this way and that, shrieking and snarling, unable to loosen the golden monkey's grip. Only a few seconds, and the monkey had overmastered him: with one fierce black paw around his throat and his black paws gripping the polecat's lower limbs, he took one of Pantalaimon's ears in his other paw and pulled as if he intended to tear it off. Not angrily, either, but with a cold curious force that was horrifying to see and even worse to feel.
In this quote Pullman develops the themes of vanity and authority. The cause of the skirmish is Lyra’s insistence on wearing a side pouch at Mrs. Coulter’s cocktail party. Mrs. Coulter forbids Lyra from wearing the pouch because she thinks it looks ridiculous. In this way, Mrs. Coulter feels entitled to impose her own vain preferences on others. When Lyra disobeys, Mrs. Coulter dominates her by sending her dæmon to attack Pantalaimon. It becomes evident that Mrs. Coulter establishes her authority by using others to perform cruel acts on her behalf.
“Now, when I got her in the boat,” he went on, “I had the most grim shock I'd ever known, because that young woman had no daemon.” It was as if he'd said, “She had no head.” The very thought was repugnant. The men shuddered, their daemons bristled or shook themselves or cawed harshly, and the men soothed them. Pantalaimon crept into Lyra's arms, their hearts beating together.
This quote sets the reader up to understand Lyra’s feelings when she later encounters bears, who have no dæmons. The revulsion that Lyra feels towards intelligent beings that do not have dæmons is not unique to Lyra: all of the grown men around her also experience a chilling response of disgust when they hear Farder Coram’s story. It appears that in Lyra’s world, a human without a dæmon is simply impossible to imagine. The disgust this generates in the adults contrasts sharply with the compassion that Lyra must eventually develop in order to understand and work with other beings.
“But suppose your daemon settles in a shape you don't like?”
“Well, then, you're discontented, en't you? There's plenty of folk as'd like to have a lion as a daemon and they end up with a poodle. And till they learn to be satisfied with what they are, they're going to be fretful about it. Waste of feeling, that is.”
While Lyra is on the ship to Norroway she befriends a sailor named Jerry, who helps her to understand the importance of self-acceptance and authenticity. Jerry says that to wish that you were somebody that you are not would be a “waste of feeling.” Instead, people must learn to be “satisfied with what they are.” This theme of authenticity will be of central importance in the battle between Iorek Byrnison and Iofur Raknison. Both Lyra and Iorek are able to defeat Iofur because he denies his true nature as a bear and wishes he were human.
“My armor is made of sky iron, made for me. A bear's armor is his soul, just as your daemon is your soul. You might as well take him away” —indicating Pantalaimon—”and replace him with a doll full of sawdust. That is the difference. Now, where is my armor?”
The Golden Compass narrates Lyra’s encounter with new realities, each one more distant and strange than the last. In order to fulfill her destiny, Lyra must learn to empathize with other beings whose lives are very different from her own. When she first encounters Iorek Byrnison, she feels a deep unease because he has no dæmon. However, Iorek later explains to Lyra that while he does not have the bond that humans with their dæmons, as a bear he has a bond with his armor that is just a strong. This is an important moment for Lyra in her process of learning that other people’s truths are just as valid as her truth, and that in order to work with them she must have empathy and understanding.
The little boy was huddled against the wood drying rack where hung row upon row of gutted fish, all as stiff as boards. He was clutching a piece of fish to him as Lyra was clutching Pantalaimon, with her left hand, hard, against her heart; but that was all he had, a piece of dried fish; because he had no dæmon at all. The Gobblers had cut it away. That was intercision, and this was a severed child.
Here both Lyra and the reader encounter a severed child for the first time. Pullman draws a parallel between Lyra’s actions and the actions of the severed child in order to highlight the importance of the bond between humans and their dæmons. As Lyra often does when she is scared, she clutches Pantalaimon close to her chest as she enters the fish shack. In this way, she comforts herself as she faces the unknown. The boy also clutches something to his chest, but all he has to comfort himself is a piece of fish, dried out and dead. Through this comparison, Pullman dramatically demonstrates what the process of intercision does to a person. The imagery of the “gutted fish” also serves as a stark metaphor for a person who is left without a dæmon.
In Lyra's heart, revulsion struggled with compassion, and compassion won.
Lyra’s victories are based on her ability to bring many different kinds of people together. In the process she comes across people who she does not understand at first, and some of those people even scare Lyra with their different ways. Revulsion is what a person feels when they see something different and are scared of it. In order to accomplish her goals Lyra must defeat the feeling of revulsion, and in this quote Pullman tells the reader exactly what kind of feeling can serve as an antidote to revulsion: compassion. Compassion is the feeling of sympathy towards somebody who is suffering, and it is the feeling that drives Lyra to take huge personal risks to save others from horrid fates.
Serafina Pekkala considered, and then said, “Perhaps we don't mean the same thing by choice, Mr. Scoresby. Witches own nothing, so we're not interested in preserving value or making profits, and as for the choice between one thing and another, when you live for many hundreds of years, you know that every opportunity will come again. We have different needs. You have to repair your balloon and keep it in good condition, and that takes time and trouble, I see that; but for us to fly, all we have to do is tear off a branch of cloud-pine; any will do, and there are plenty more. We don't feel cold, so we need no warm clothes. We have no means of exchange apart from mutual aid. If a witch needs something, another witch will give it to her. If there is a war to be fought, we don't consider cost one of the factors in deciding whether or not it is right to fight. Nor do we have any notion of honor, as bears do, for instance. An insult to a bear is a deadly thing. To us... inconceivable. How could you insult a witch? What would it matter if you did?”
The Golden Compass is filled with diverse beings, including witches, bears, and humans. Each of these beings is characterized by distinct behaviors and motivations. Each of them has a unique culture. In this quote, Serafina Pekkala lays out in plain terms what makes witches witches. The perspective of living for hundreds of years allows them to take life as it comes. Their social organization of mutual aid gives them the freedom to make decisions based on what is right and not based on what is profitable.
By presenting a diversity of beings Pullman presents the reader with different forms of social organization and different value systems. Just like Lyra, the reader may initially be put off by forms of living that are so different from our own. But Pullman presents these differences as an opportunity to learn from a wealth of diversity. In this way, the reader joins Lyra on her journey to learn from the different kinds of people she encounters.
