Summary
While waiting for Iorek’s arrival at Iofur Raknison’s palace, Iofur’s subjects prepare him for battle. They sharpen his claws and bring him new armor. Lyra watches this process and begins to worry that she has condemned her friend to a fight that he cannot win. She consults her alethiometer about what to do, and the alethiometer tells her for a second time that she must simply trust in Iorek. The alethiometer even seems to be annoyed that Lyra asks the same question twice.
As Iorek arrives, Lyra goes to meet him outside the palace gates. She tells Iorek about her deception of Iofur, and apologizes for setting Iorek up to fight with a bigger, better-equipped bear. Iorek responds with amazement that Lyra was able to trick Iofur, and gives her a new name to commemorate her feat: Lyra Silvertongue. He tells Lyra that all he wants is to battle with Iofur, and that she has done well to arrange the duel.
The battle begins with characteristic panserbjørn fanfare. Iorek proclaims to the spectators that if he wins he will be their king and Iofur’s palace will be thrown to the sea. Iofur proclaims that if he wins, Iorek will be erased from history, his name forever forbidden from being mentioned. After the proclamations of the terms of the battle, the bears attack each other. Each manages to wound the other, but soon Iorek seems to be in a losing position, with one of his forepaws badly injured. Lyra becomes very worried that Iorek is going to die. Iofur also realizes that he is soon going to win the battle and he begins to taunt Iorek. However, Iorek, inspired by Lyra’s deception of Iofur, has only been pretending to be injured. While Iofur taunts Iorek, Iorek takes the opportunity to strike hard with his supposedly injured paw. He kills Iofur, eats his heart, and proclaims himself king of the panserbjørne.
The rest of the bears immediately begin to tear down the palace, but Lyra intervenes and insists that they release Iofur’s prisoners first. She tends to Iorek’s wounds, as Iorek does not trust anybody else to do so. Exhausted, Lyra decides to sleep until Iorek has a moment to plan their next moves.
A bear wakes Lyra up upon Iorek’s orders and brings her to meet Roger. The bear gives them fresh seal meat to eat, and the two childhood friends recover some energy. The bear then brings Lyra and Roger to a meeting between Iorek and his subjects.
Soren Eisaron, a panserbjørn elder who was thrown out of favor by Iofur’s court, updates Iorek on everything that has happened while he was in exile. Iorek and Lyra learn that Iofur drugged the bear that Iorek killed. This is why he insisted on insulting Iorek until Iorek was mad enough to kill him, resulting in his exile. Moreover, it is Mrs. Coulter herself who provided the drugs that Iofur used. Mrs. Coulter has been visiting Iofur since before Iorek’s exile. According to Iorek’s new advisors, Mrs. Coulter planned to build a second station, similar to Bolvangar but worse, in Svalbard. She was going to slowly consolidate her power over Iofur and turn the panserbjørne into her slaves, their only purpose being to guard her research center.
Iorek instructs Lyra to consult the alethiometer. First, she asks about Lee Scoresby and Serafina. After Iorek and Roger fell out of the balloon and Iorek went running toward Iofur’s palace, Lee’s balloon went flying high into the sky, where Iorek is sure he must be safe. Later, a clan of witches attacked Serafina’s clan, but it is unclear who they are or with whom they are allied.
Next, Lyra asks about Mrs. Coulter. The alethiometer reveals that Mrs. Coulter is on her way in a heavily armed zeppelin with a squad of Tartar warriors. She knows that Iorek and Lyra are on Svalbard, but she does not know that Iofur is dead. Her plan is to take control of Svalbard immediately and kill Lord Asriel herself. As Lyra reads the alethiometer, she goes deeper into concentration than she normally does. She discovers that Mrs. Coulter wants Lord Asriel dead because she is intent on being the first to build the bridge to other worlds. Lyra must deliver something to Lord Asriel, and Mrs. Coulter wants that thing first. However, for the first time, Lyra begins to think that what she must deliver to Lord Asriel is not the alethiometer, but something else entirely.
Iorek, Roger and Lyra set out once again further north, accompanied by a regiment of heavily armed panserbjørne. On the journey, Lyra recalls something that Soren Eisaron told her about her father’s time in Svalbard. Lord Asriel is a cunning man. Within a few months of arriving in Svalbard as a captive, he convinced the bears to build him a big house, high on a hill, supplied with enough instruments and books to create a laboratory.
When Lyra arrives at her father’s home in exile, Roger accompanies her in, while Iorek and the bears wait outside. Upon seeing his daughter, Lord Asriel becomes inexplicably angry and frightened. However, when he sees Roger, he quickly calms down. Roger notices this, and while bathing, he tells Lyra that he is more afraid of Lord Asriel than he ever was of Mrs. Coulter.
Lord Asriel sends Roger to bed and asks Lyra to join him in his library to talk. At first, Lyra gets angry with her father because he never told her that she was his daughter. She feels that he is ungrateful for everything she has gone through to bring him the alethiometer. However, though he seems entirely uninterested in the device, he appears to be calmly satisfied with her arrival. She demands that he tell her about Dust. He explains that it is an elementary particle, which means that it is indivisible, like a proton or electron. Once a Russian scientist proved that Dust really exists, the Church had no choice but to work it into its doctrine. The official stance of the Church regarding Dust is that it is physical evidence of Original Sin.
Lyra does not know what original sin is, so Lord Asriel reads a chapter from the Bible to explain the concept. He reads to Lyra about how Eve and Adam eat an apple from the tree of knowledge. However, in this Golden Compass version of the Bible, upon eating the forbidden apple, Eve and Adam’s dæmons take on their fixed form. The Church now believes that when they ate the apple, Adam and Eve began to attract Dust. Because of this ominous association of Dust with sin, very few people are willing to do research on the sensitive matter.
Lord Asriel explains to Lyra that her mother found an opportunity to build power based on everybody’s fear of Dust. With so few people brave enough to research the issue, it was extremely easy to secure funding and support from the Church. If she failed, or if word got out about the cruelty of her research, the Church could pretend that she was a renegade or a heretic. But if she made great discoveries, the Church could take credit.
Because people begin to attract Dust when their dæmons take on fixed forms, Mrs. Coulter believed that by severing the link between child and dæmon they could prevent a person from becoming sinful. While the Oblation Board simply wants to prevent individuals from being affected by Dust, Lord Asriel seeks to prevent Dust from entering the world altogether. In his research, he found evidence that Dust flowed into their world through the North Pole from another parallel world. He believes that if he can build a bridge to that world, he can cut off Dust from its source, bringing an end to sin and suffering.
Lyra does not know how to process all of this information. But she feels sure that she does not love her father, although she does have a somber respect for him. He leaves her in the library, and does not take the alethiometer with him, telling Lyra that it is useless to him, and that she may keep it for herself.
Analysis
In this section, Iorek regains his honor in Svalbard by killing Iofur. The battle is highly symbolic: Iorek’s victory represents the victory of authentic bearhood over Iofur’s shameful desire to be a human. This victory is not only significant for panserbjørn society. It also serves as an allegory about the importance of self-acceptance and authenticity more broadly. Iofur’s denial of who he is turns out to be his greatest weakness and leads to his undoing.
During the duel, Pullman repeatedly uses natural imagery to describe the bears’ bodies, comparing the animals to mountains, rocks, metal, and the sea. Bears have essential differences from humans; most importantly, they do not have dæmons that accompany them. More than once, the narrator of The Golden Compass reminds the reader that dæmons are what separate humans from animals. By comparing the bears’ immense strength to forces of nature, Pullman highlights that the bears rely on base instincts rather than relying on emotion and reason, as humans do.
When Lyra finally catches up with Lord Asriel, Pullman uses their conversation to provide the reader with important information about the nature of Dust. Dust is a physical particle that enters Lyra’s world from a parallel one. Its discovery caused great controversy. At first, the Church denied the existence of Dust. Finally, when there was too much evidence to deny it, the Church worked Dust into its official teachings. By elaborating on the relationship between the Church and Dust, Pullman also offers a commentary about the way that conservative religious institutions have tried to suppress scientific discoveries in our own world.
When Lord Asriel reads a section of the Bible to Lyra, Pullman alludes to a story that actually exists in the Christian Bible some readers may know. He also alludes to the concept of Original Sin. Original Sin is the idea that ever since Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden, humanity has been characterized by an innate sinfulness.
While Lord Asriel is critical of the Church in many ways, he seems to accept its doctrine that Dust is the physical manifestation of Original Sin. In this sense, Pullman characterizes Lord Asriel as too naive to develop his own theories independently of what the Church teaches. Lyra, on the other hand, is willing to throw away everything she knows about the Church to find a more profound truth. Pullman contrasts Lord Asriel’s naive acceptance with Lyra’s deeper questioning. In so doing, he hints at the dangers of accepting institutional doctrine without also searching for one’s own truth.
Throughout The Golden Compass, Pullman uses similes, metaphors, and parallelism to draw a connection between light and physical matter. As Lord Asriel explains his plans to Lyra, the importance of this connection becomes clear. Light is able to travel from one world to another, as evidenced by the aurora. Therefore, it must be possible for matter to travel between one world and another as well. This is the basis of Lord Asriel’s theory that Dust enters into their world from another.
For Lyra, the meeting with her father is of huge personal importance. For so long, the knowledge that she is Lord Asriel’s daughter has been a source of great pride for her. She thought that she loved him. However, shortly after they reunite, Lyra’s best friend tells her that Lord Asriel scares him even more than the dreaded Mrs. Coulter. What is more, Lyra soon understands perfectly well why. This forces Lyra to adjust her imagined image of her father to her actual experience of his character. In turn, Lyra finds him to be impressive but despicable, and by the end of their conversation, she feels little affection for the man.
