Introduction/P.254
Northern Lights is the first novel of Pullman's trilogy, His Dark Materials.
It tells the story of 12-year-old of Lyra Belacqua and her epic journey north to find her missing friend Roger and her imprisoned father, Lord Asriel.
Enjoyed by adults and children alike, it is sometimes classified as a crossover novel, although its mixture of fantasy and realism, since and theology, and its use of intertexts defies easy categorization.
Pullman draws his inspiration from a number of sources as William Blake and John Milton, from whose poem paradise lost he takes the title of his trilogy.
Northern Lights examined in terms of domestic family relationships and the psychic interplay between parents and children, and its questions of belonging, parent-child relationships, personality formation and Freudian understandings of sexuality.
It reflects how deeply damaged and dysfunctional Lyra's family is and how she search for better and more loving adult role such as Iorek the bear and Serafina Pekkala.
The ambivalence of paternal adults towards growing children is a primary theme of Northern Lights.
- A person in her own right, but more as a creature serving their needs. (her family)
The college has provided love and care determined in a rough and ready way by Lyra's needs. A setting in which can grow up to be herself.
Pullman's depictions of adult\child roles and relationships negatively:
Kristine Moruzi: in Pullman's vision children must bow to adult authority and where their role is to obey and follow destiny rather than change it.
Pullman's treatment of organized religion has been particularly controversial and he has accordingly been called "the most dangerous author in Britain". \\ anti-Christian
Peter Hunt argues, is it "impossible for a children's book (especially one being read by a child) not to be educational or influential in some way; it cannot help but reflect