{"id":494,"date":"2011-08-18T06:00:56","date_gmt":"2011-08-18T13:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=494"},"modified":"2011-08-14T22:28:46","modified_gmt":"2011-08-15T05:28:46","slug":"mark-reads-the-amber-spyglass-chapter-24","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2011\/08\/mark-reads-the-amber-spyglass-chapter-24\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads ‘The Amber Spyglass’: Chapter 24"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the twenty-fourth chapter of The Amber Spyglass<\/em>, Mrs. Coulter arrives in Geneva, and we begin to learn just how devoted she is to Lyra. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read The Amber Spyglass<\/em>.<\/p>\n

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: MRS. COULTER IN GENEVA<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is such a weird feeling to read about Mrs. Coulter in the light that Pullman presents here in chapter twenty-four. I think I may be looking at her the wrong way, as I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m always trying to figure her out, as if there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something hidden or mysterious about her character. But this isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like Snape in the Harry Potter<\/em> series. I think Mrs. Coulter is more about a force changing before our eyes rather than someone with a secret.<\/p>\n

I believe that, more than ever, we see how Mrs. Coulter has changed her opinion of the Magisterium, and that it is not<\/em> an act just for the sake of it. Yes, it took something personal for her to have this epiphany, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still an epiphany. (Wow, she is<\/em> kind of like Snape in that regard.) So, we watch as she starts to use her ability to manipulate, charm, and beguile those in the Church. And I actually don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mind, for once. That<\/em> is a huge change from The Golden Compass<\/em> on my part. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not that I necessarily trust<\/em> Mrs. Coulter, nor do I believe that she has fully redeemed herself, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m at a point where I do believe she means to protect Lyra and subvert the Church and the Authority in the process.<\/p>\n

We meet back up with her in Geneva, where she lands the intention craft (which she has magically mastered in the course of twenty-four hours, because that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s totally reasonable and not at all weird) on the roof of the College. What I do admire about the way she deals with what happens here is that she simply walks in. Yes, her and her d\u00c3\u00a6mon do sneak around a bit at the start, but she otherwise walks right in the front door. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s part of her ingenious plan, really, to present herself as someone working for the Magisterium. She plays the part well, ordering around Brother Louis, the man who comes to see her, commanding him to take her straight to see Father MacPhail. I was completely blown away by how she is both demanding and insulting to those who deal with her, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one of the reasons I believe she has started to despise the Magisterium. Why else would she treat Brother Louis like a servant and call his manner \u00e2\u20ac\u0153abject\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? She seems to hate everything that these men represent, and actions that may have been received as pious and noble before are now mocked. I worried that Mrs. Coulter would stray too far on to one side of the spectrum, but she manages to keep the President intrigued, attentive, and, most important, willing to believe her.<\/p>\n

So she starts to give them as much information as possible (but not enough for them to actually do anything.) Through this process, I discover Lyra has turned twelve. Well. She didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t happen to mention a birthday before, did she? I mean, granted, SHE IS PRETTY GODDAMN BUSY AT THE MOMENT, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lost track of time since she is in the world of the dead<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Mrs. Coulter decides to take an interesting angle as she tells the President about Lyra: she blames the Magisterium for interfering with her plan to keep her away from Lord Asriel. I rather enjoyed her bit about being offended by releasing her daughter to those dirty, dirty men<\/em> instead of taking care of Lyra herself, and it works well. It does<\/em> make sense that Mrs. Coulter would do such a haughty, high-minded thing, and she continues to drill home the point. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have had Will if they hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t interfered. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have had the subtle knife. She would\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve kept Lyra asleep to avoid the second temptation. And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all their fault for not trusting her. Again, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s both a believable reason and a chance for her to take out her fury and disgust with these people. For example:<\/p>\n

She sipped her chocolatl, which was thin and weak; how like these wretched priests, she thought, to take their self-righteous abstinence out on their visitors, too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Why else would she think this? The very idea of what these men do now repulses her. But this is not even the worst that she thinks or does. When the President brings up the idea of the subtle knife, telling her that the cliff-ghasts call it the god-destroyer, he asks her if this is Lord Asriel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s master plan. Her response? Oh, the atheist, bitter ex-Catholic in me did not care for the lack of subtlety; I lit up with joy.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Well, where is God,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Mrs. Coulter, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153if he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s alive? And why doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t he speak anymore? At the beginning of the world, God walked in the Garden and spoke with Adam and Ever. Then he began to withdraw, and he forbade Moses to look at his face. Later, in the time of Daniel, he was aged–he was the Ancient of Days. Where is he now? Is he still alive, at some inconceivable age, decrepit and demented, unable to think or act or speak and unable to die, a rotten hulk? And if that is his condition, wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it be the most merciful thing, the truest proof of our love for God, to seek him out and give him the gift of death?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Oh, Mrs. Coulter. I never thought there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be a day when I could say such a thing, but you warm my heart so much<\/em>. I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t count how many times I asked myself and others variations of this same question, or made rhetorical arguments about the absence of God in our lives. On a personal level, I was taught that asking for God to prove himself to you was a sin as well, or, at the very least, highly revolting. That was the basis of faith, in essence, that even without God speaking to us or showing us his face, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have to believe he was real. I was told to look at the signs, but in my own life, all the signs suggested otherwise. Who was I to believe?<\/p>\n
And I think that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an important thing to recognize, at least in terms of non-believers, wherever they may fall on the spectrum. For every person who told me that the world was full of signs that God was real and loved me so much, I could look into my own life and see the signs that he was not real, or that he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really care all that much about me. The vast collection of experiences when it comes to non-believers, whether they are atheists or agnostics or combinations of those, or something outside of that, is incredibly varied. For me, though, I was hurt<\/em> by these suggestions to quell my heart\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s longing for God to be real. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Look at the whole of creation,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d people would tell me, or perhaps they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d tell me to look at the sky or the ocean or the stars at night. These things were impossible<\/em> on their own, so how else would they fit so perfectly where they belong?<\/p>\n
Even if I could conceive those sort of things and accept them, the beauty of the stars or the impossible vastness of the ocean meant nothing to me when I lived in an abusive household with parents who treated me terribly, or when I would go to school and live in fear of being beat up, called names, shamed openly in class, or any combination of small terrors that my life was. I remember bringing this up to my first priest, and he told me not to look at the worst of the world to find God. These people were the most absent of his grace, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s day, but most of them were<\/em> devout Christians who otherwise were respected by the community and by the man in the fancy robe before me. So was the priest unable to see the absence of God in these people, or was he lying to me?<\/p>\n
This idea of the vacancy of God, as Mrs. Coulter references it dryly here, is at heart of why evangelism, even on a personal, well-meaning level, tends to infuriate me. I generally get along quite well with my many Christian friends, and most know that I love talking about their religion as long as the conversation doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stray towards converting<\/em> me in any way. But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also something that, with most of them, I had to tell them in order to get them to respect me. I find the concept, especially when poorly executed as it so often is, to be rather presumptuous and rude, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s because of this very reason: I feel an intense and sometimes even painful absence of God in my life. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want him anymore, even if he was real, but it always hurt me to hear people tell me about the beauty of the world when they failed to acknowledge the ugliness in mine. By failing to acknowledge that reality, even when I told them about it, they were ignoring the fact that my life–my experiences<\/em>–are not the same as theirs, and that the moon and the stars and any of that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153perfectly perfect world\u00e2\u20ac\u009d bullshit trivialized my own life.<\/p>\n
If God is in your life, that is wonderful. You deserve that happiness and comfort. But he is not in mine, and there is nothing in my life to suggest it. And I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m perfectly happy living that way.<\/p>\n
And all of this is not just a chance for me to LOL RANT YELL OMG HERESY<\/em>, because it actually relates pretty heavily to the text. What we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re seeing here in chapter twenty-four is about interference<\/em>. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about how the Church (or God or even organized religions, in a sense) can inject themselves into the lives of others in the most presumptuous, assuming way possible. After Lord Roke reveals himself to Mrs. Coulter and agrees to keep an eye out for her, he quickly gets the chance to do so. (Side note: He mentions something<\/em> encased in impenetrable fog. WHAT IS THAT.)<\/p>\n
Brother Louis sneaks into the room, and Lord Roke watches as he takes the golden locket from Mrs. Coulter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s neck. Which is totally not weird and suspicious, and is totally done for a noble reason, right? RIGHT? Thankfully, Lord Roke, the badass spy that he is, follows Brother Louis to see why he is creeping around at night.<\/p>\n
I was not surprised to learn that Fra Pavel, the President, and Dr. Cooper from Bolvangar were all working together on whatever it was they were doing. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d forgotten that Mrs. Coulter had put a lock of Lyra\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hair inside, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s<\/em> what they needed. Um…for what?<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We place the hair in the resonating chamber. You understand, each individual is unique, and the arrangement of genetic particles quite distinct…Well, as soon as it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s analyzed, the information is coded in a series of anbaric pulses and transferred to the aiming device. That locates the origin of the material, the hair, wherever she may be. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a process that makes use of the Barnard-Stokes heresy, the many-worlds idea\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Oh. Great. GREAT. So they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be able to locate where Lyra is and in what world she is hiding BY A HAIR<\/em>. Ah, crap. This is awful. Father Gomez is definitely<\/em> going to find her now, right? But…hmm, he has no way of communicating with these men. How is this going to help?<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The force of the bomb is directed by means of the hair?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
WHAT??????<\/strong><\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yes. To each of the hairs from which these were cut. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s right.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153So when it is detonated, the child will be destroyed, wherever she is?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
There was a heavy indrawn breath from the scientist, and then a reluctant \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yes.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME???<\/strong> They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re just going to BLOW UP A CHILD???? HLKSADFJ; A;LKSDFJ A;LSKJ ;KALDJSF ;LAKSDFJ DF<\/p>\n
A;LSKDJFA;SKLDJF;ALKDSFJA;LKSDFJ;AKDFJLS<\/p>\n
oh my god WHAT.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, Lord Roke has no qualms about waiting for Dr. Cooper to leave the President\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s chambers and then stinging him, taking the envelope with Lyra\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hair as soon as he collapses. YES. LORD ROKE, YOU ARE WONDERFUL. He immediately returns to Mrs. Coulter, and all of our hopes are CRUSHED.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153This is only half the lock I cut from Lyra. He must have kept some of it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
AHHHHHHH WHHHHYYYYYYYYY<\/strong>. Oh, fucking hell, THIS IS A DISASTER. Even worse, just seconds later, the President comes rushing into the room, accusing Mrs. Coulter of harming Dr. Cooper. But honestly, bless Mrs. Coulter forever<\/em>. I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe I get to say that. She uses her wonderfully manipulative acting skills to give a beautiful performance to the President that all but proves she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been asleep the whole time, that she is horrified<\/em> to find that someone stole the hair from her locket, and that she is outraged<\/em> that the President would allow this to happen. I just love the image of the sputtering Father MacPhail, who is quickly realizing that he is up against the most difficult foe of his life, that he completely underestimated her. So he sends her off to the dungeons, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not the end of things.<\/p>\n
She looked wildly around and met Lord Roke\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s eyes for a fraction of a second, glittering in the darkness near the ceiling. He caught her expression at once and understood exactly what she meant him to do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
AHHHHH WHY ARE YOU ENDING THE CHAPTER NOW WHYYYYYYY<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n
———-<\/p>\n
If you are just\u00c2\u00a0aching<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0to discuss the many spoilery things that this chapter and others I’ll read this week,\u00c2\u00a0BridgeToTheStars is hosting a conversation about\u00c2\u00a0THE WORLD OF THE DEAD<\/strong><\/a>\u00c2\u00a0and you should probably go hang out there with other\u00c2\u00a0His Dark Materials<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0fans. You still have a chance to\u00c2\u00a0enter the contest<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0BTTS is hosting in conjunction with me to give away a signed copy of\u00c2\u00a0The Amber Spyglass<\/em>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the twenty-fourth chapter of The Amber Spyglass, Mrs. Coulter arrives in Geneva, and we begin to learn just how devoted she is to Lyra. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read The Amber Spyglass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,79],"tags":[23,81,62,61,80],"class_list":["post-494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-his-dark-materials","category-the-amber-spyglass","tag-mark-reads","tag-mark-reads-the-amber-spyglass","tag-philip-pullman","tag-religion","tag-the-amber-spyglass-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}