Deconstructing His Dark Materials

Mary Malone's portal to the world of the malefa just happens to be located on Sunderland Avenue. To "sunder" means to "part", as in my heart is torn asunder, or the alternate universes were torn asunder on Sunderland Avenue! And if that isn't enough, Mary says that she "had had to locate it on a map of Oxford; she didn't know this part of town" (page 482). She doesn't know where the deconstruction begins because there is no beginning to deconstruction. There's no end; there's no middle. There is no structure because it has been deconstructed, which inherently does not include structure or absolutes. Also, each time Sunderland Avenue appears in a sentence, the following sentence is deconstructive. The second is followed by "[Mary] felt almost more foolish than she had ever felt in her life" (482). Again, she feels foolish because she does not understand the parting of the worlds on part avenue. This is very deconstructionist in nature because there is no true meaning. In a world with no true meaning, where everything is ambiguous, everything is possible. And in a world where everything is possible, a infinite number of meanings and universes are possible, with an infinite number of outcomes, like the Darwinian turn of the diamond-shaped body and absence of spine for the mulefa. "Each of those chances might have gone another way. Perhaps in another world, another Will had not seen the window in Sunderland Avenue, and had wandered on" (491). Also in a world where anything is possible, it is possible to fix the sick world, and make it whole again, to replace and repair the Dust, which is the reflection of our consciousness.