As I mentioned yesterday, the teen book group discussion of Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass took place last Tuesday.  Though only three teens attended, we had a great conversation about the book, and all of us walked away with a far better understanding of this contemporary classic.

It’s a tough book, so deep and intricate that the reader really needs to work hard to understand it.  Add to that the current controversy about Pullman’s religious beliefs, and there is a lot to digest when reading The Golden Compass.  I had questions about Dust, the alethiometer, and daemons coming into Tuesday’s discussion, and the fact that I had these questions really irked me.  I like to know and really understand a book before sitting down at a book group meeting – I like to have a definitive lock on my own opinions before sharing with others. 

It turned out that the teens at the meeting had similar questions, though, and so we together teased out a deeper understanding of the book.  At various points in the discussion, one or all of us had “a-ha!” moments:  for me, my biggest “a-ha!” was about the daemons; for B., it was to do with the ending of the trilogy (she’s the only one of us who had read all three books, and had initially said that the trilogy’s finale didn’t make sense to her); for K. and I., the “a-ha!” was to do with Dust and the church/book controversy.

I wish I’d had a tape recorder running to capture our conclusions, and thus to share them here, but I’ll have to rely on my memory to sum up our thoughts:  Dust is the residue of original sin, and a human cannot live without some amount of sin in them.  The daemons are an outward manifestation of the human soul, and the two have a sort of yin and yang relationship; separate the human from his daemon, and there is no Dust – no sin – but the human will die.  As for the controversy, we decided a couple of things: younger readers won’t “get” the layers of meaning within the text, and most likely will read the book for the fantasy and not the theology; and, though Pullman obviously possesses some amount of bitterness towards the Catholic church, he’s also presenting a theoretical church, one in an alternate universe, one that has no Pope, one that has become corrupt.  Does he hate God?  Based upon the first book alone, we couldn’t determine that.  Nor did it seem relevant to our discussion.  It’s an intelligent book, not a hateful one, and masterfully written.  It raises questions, certainly, but it doesn’t brainwash its readers. 

Without a doubt, this was the best book group yet, since we all left the meeting with new thoughts and a better understanding of a complex text.  In fact, I personally like the book much more after our discussion than I did before, and feel inspired to delve a bit deeper into the controversy that surrounds it, and to read its two sequels.