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Originally Posted by Lalwendë
The church he depicts with hate in HDM is the church had the Reformation failed - dogmatic and untempered by Reason. I'm noting that he never once mentions Jesus and is not actually a classical Atheist, more a curious lapsed Liberal Protestant (like me). Tolkien however, certainly viewed from the perspective of Pullman, harks back to the pre-Reformation.
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I'm not sure the Church Pullman depicts in HDM bears any relation to the real Church at all. He has effectively created a twisted caricature of the Church which retains only the negative aspects & pretends the positive aspects never existed. Where are the Saints, the Mystics, the poets & artists? He fetes Milton & Blake while at the same time apparently 'ignoring' the positive aspects of Christianity which was central to their thinking. The Church (& it is the Christian Chrurch - well specifically the Catholic church - which he is attacking) is presented as cruel, ignorant & effectively 'Satanic' - which is odd in a way - by rejecting the existence of objective Evil in the form of the devil he has to turn 'God' into the devil. Effectively the death of 'God' in HDM is equivalent to the fall of Sauron in LotR (& one could compare the seperation of Will & Lyra with the seperation of Sam & Frodo in LotR).
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Strangely, for a writer who poured so much detail into his work, Tolkien deals with his issues in a poetic way, without going into the detail. He uses a big brush. Pullman on the other hand does not shy away from things which are actually quite brave things to put into a kids' book - complicated astrophysics, complicated adult relationships, complicated political machinations. He uses detail.
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I find this to be the opposite of my take on Tolkien & Pullman. I find Tolkien's focus on detail - from the physical detail of plant & landscape to the complex interrelationships of races & Politics - one of the most interesting things about his work, & rather than finding Pullman's approach complicated I find it overblown.