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Originally Posted by Lalwende
How Pullman worked on me was to show a world/worlds where the soul is disregarded; I found them immensely complex and still cannot decide the true meaning of them - yet they left me feeling utterly bereft and without hope. But yes, something fell down towards the end of the books - I shall say no more in case there are those who wish to read them without spoilers.
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It will be interesting to see how the movies handle the concept of 'evil', as Pullman seemed to me not have one. His 'philosophy' as displayed at the end in the dream of 'building the republic of Heaven' seemed (sorry) silly - how can you 'build' (construct) a metaphysical concept? He seemed to be confused about the whole thing. His position seems to be simply that organised religion is 'a bad thing' & that we'll all be happier without it.
I know this seems like I'm back on my anti-Pullman soapbox, but where I'm going with this is that Tolkien's understanding & portrayal of evil is, for me, far more grown up than Pullman's. But having said that it seems to me to correspond with Jackson's. Pullman doesn't seem to have any 'evil' character's in the sense of people who have chosen evil knowingly - they all seem to be either beaurocrats (sp?) or flawed 'idealists' who are doing what they think is best but sometimes getting it wrong. Maybe its this belief that leads Pullman to believe that we can make everything lovely if we really try & constrct Heaven out of bricks & mortar. Tolkien clearly didn't have the luxury of such a utopian belief, because once you've experienced true evil (as opposed to having read about it in Blake & Milton) you can't pretend it can be swept away if everyone will just be nice to each other.