Christian Love

Love is quintessential theme and message in His Dark Materials. Phillip Pullman didn't approve of C.S. Lewis's Christian Chronicles of Narnia, nor of J.R.R. Tolkien's Christian Lord of the Rings, for the sole reason that they could not send a true message of Christianity without the message of love. If Christianity could be summed up in one word, it would be "love"; love is the underlying theme of Christianity. By having Will and Lyra fall in love, and additionally, sacrificing that love for the good of the world rather than themselves, Pullman sends the ultimate Christian message of love and sacrifice. This is why innocence and experience runs so thickly through the story, because experience grows of love. Although Will and Lyra underwent extreme adversity and hardships and cared deeply for each other, they were not change from innocence to experience until they loved each other. That is why the Dust stopped flowing so quickly out of the worlds. The transition from innocence to love and Christianity is of paramount importance to Will and Lyra, the rest of the world, and also to the story, and especially to the message of the story. "[Lyra] happily used to swim naked in the river Cherwell with all the other Oxford children, but it would be quite different with Will, and she blushed even to think of it" (page 866). There are a few moments, liking swimming, of transition from innocence to love. Also, their regularly just being around each other changes. "Suddenly Lyra gripped Will's arm.... Her hand was warm. he was more aware of that than of the great mass of leaves and branches above them. Pretending to gaze vacantly at the horizon, he let his attention wander" (page 885). And when their transition to love was complete, "The terrible flood of Dust in the sky had stopped flowing....The Dust pouring down from the stars had found a living home again, and these children-no-longer-children, saturated with love, were the cause of it all" (page 893). In the end, love makes the whole world right, or at least makes it possible to make it right. This is the quintessential message of Christianity that Pullman thought C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien failed to include in their literature: the message of love.

Christianity and love should be inseparable.