Images of Paradise: comparisons

[littlemanpoet]

Pullman's diffusion of the souls of the dead had a (somewhat) peaceful feeling for me too. Which was disconcerting, considering Pullman's blatant anti-Christian polemic in the trilogy. Of course, Pullman is a good enough writer to set it up such that his "realm of the dead" is hopeless and dreary enough for a diffusion of the soul to be a sweet resolution.

In a sense, there is something more satisfying with Pullman's diffusion of the soul as
compared to the traditional western "bodily consistency through eternity", since, if you allow yourself to contemplate that continuance into eternity, it can be quite a fearsome, panicky thing to think about. I know that I have to stop myself and touch something four-square tangible in to stop feeling so out of control. So Pullman's idea of diffusing back into the matter of the universe, really, ceasing to exist as an individual, seems somewhat like falling asleep compared to the everlasting consciousness of Life Eternal.

(By the way, there's another thread not unlike what I've begun to talk about, called Nebulous It and Absolutes.)

That said, Pullman's diffusion of the soul feels like a copout, an escape from reality as compared to most monotheist constructions.

[davem]

(Bit of a mad rant....)

I have to say that I only vaguely remember Pullman's book, but cannot for some reason even bring myself to skim it again. I remember feeling disappointed by the hopelesseness if the ending. It was as if Pullman, in deciding to 'liberate' humanity from God felt he also had to 'liberate' us from hope as well. He disguises the hopelessness by dressing it up in 'clever' terminology about 'building' a 'republic of heaven' (though, as I've said before, how, exactly, one can physically 'build' what is a metapysical concept - 'heaven' - is beyond me).

Tolkien refuses this cop out. He leaves us with the difficult metaphysical conundrums: How can a loving God permit suffering? What happens after death? What is the meaning of our existence? What Pullman does, as I said, is kill off God & by extension kill off those very questions, leaving us with a sense of emptiness, which we may not immediately feel because we're caught up in our sadness at the eternal seperation of Will & Lyra, & in the (apparently) 'profound' nonsense about this 'republic' of heaven. Pullman has no images of Paradise, because he clearly believes 'Paradise' is one of the 'childish things' that 'grown ups' must put away.

Its perhaps strange at first sight that Tolkien, who lived through the horrors of the Somme, saw his sons go off to fight in WWII, & experienced the unbelievable made fact (the death camps & Hiroshima) could still hold to a hope beyond the circles of the world, while Pullman, product of a safe, secure society which had not known or directly experienced true horror, can dismiss such a thing as almost an 'evil' fantasy needing to be grown out of. But I don't know. Perhaps its the very security Pullman has known that has given him a kind of 'safe distance' from true horror. Certainly he happily plays with the idea of the 'devil', in the form of Lord Azriel, as a kind of Miltonic Satan, heroic anti-hero, defiant to the last, going down in a blaze of glory.

Tolkien, on the other hand, had seen true evil for what it is - his evil ones are vicious, cowardly & cruel - 'monsters' in the true sense of the word. Pullman can only imagine 'evil' in the form of an intolerant 'church' attempting to rule the world & & tell everyone what to do. A simplistic worldview. True 'good' for Pullman is everyone being sensible & grown up about things - generally everyone being nice to each other. I suppose his 'heaven' is a 'heaven on earth', bound within the circles of the world - hence not a 'heaven' at all. His 'vision' (ie the 'hope' he offers) is one stripped of the metaphysical, & so of mystery. In both Tolkien & Pullman we find an account of the end of 'magic', of the world of myth, but in Tolkien the metaphysical dimension remains, & thus so does hope, & possibility. In Pullman it is replaced by blandness & the everyday. But then his conception of 'good' & 'evil' in HDM is equally 'bland'.

(Told you...)

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by lmp

#2: paradise as home of those who have passed from this life to the next

I am currently more interested in #2.

In that vein, my interest in Valinor would therefore be limited to the Halls of Mandos. What's Tolkien's description for it? I don't recall any really thoroughgoing description in The Silmarillion. Is there in HoME?

Now I come to think of it, it is interesting that in LotR there sems to be little said of the paradise which awaits mortals, yet they do seem to be secure in its very existence, which is a particularly Christian view. What does intrigue me is that mortals in Middle Earth are obviously aware of the existence of Valinor, so how would this affect a person's view on life after death? Would this add to the certainty of knowing there is 'somewhere else'? Or might it make a mortal feel jealousy of some kind? Surely this would give rise to a number of different beliefs, even if we looked at it in terms of the theology/cosmology of Middle Earth?

Originally Posted by Lathriel

After the dead are freed they become part of the earth,trees,grass etc. This has a peaceful feeling (for me). However, Tolkien's paradise (#2) is where people are actually still in a whole form whereas in Pullman's books they go back to the earth.

We can't possibly do much more than speculate on what the ancients believed happened after death, and at any one time they possibly held the multifarious beliefs that we hold today, but one possibility is that they believed human 'souls' were returned to the earth. There is some evidence of this with the practice of excarnation, where a body would be either deliberately stripped of flesh before burial, or more interestingly in terms of this discussion, it would be left for the elements and wild animals to deal with. This would not mean just dumping the body, on the contrary, it would be placed in a special place, often an enclosure. It is quite possible to infer from this that the intention was that the 'soul' would be returned to the living world in this way by providing nutrients in its turn. The practice is not allowed today, as it would be impractical to have bodies lying about our hillsides! But there is an echo of it in the popular 'green' burial where the body is not marked with an ornate stone but with a young tree.

To me, this is all incredibly peaceful and somehow 'correct' and I can see that it is this concept which Pullman was getting at. Looking at death with physics in mind, we do go on, as we are all made of matter and energy and you cannot destroy these. But can you destroy consciousness?

That is where the traditional ideas of paradise come in. In these, humans have constructed places where consciousness survives, and identity. Each different paradise though, has a 'code', and it is ruled by the God to which it corresponds, and entry is not generally possible without acceptance of that God (though even within Christianity there are exceptions to this where acceptance is not necessary). Is this what Pullman was getting at with his Republic of Heaven? His paradise could be a democratic paradise, which allows for all faiths and beliefs and non-beliefs. He was trying to make out that there could be a possibility that Paradise could be all things to everyone. But only a possibility, as the very fact that he showed the possibility of infinite worlds might mean that there could be infinite Heavens. The Heaven his characters were waging war against was one Heaven, a particular one which was dominant.

I agree that the book finally skipped over the important and quite maddening questions which we always seek to answer. And it did seem that to 'grow up' was to resign yourself to something. But what it served to do for me was to underline how thoroughly depressing I find absolute atheism. A famous quote, but not so famous that I can remember who penned it, mentions atheism as something like a 'bright and breezy highway'. Alas, I find it to be quite the opposite.

Having experienced what can only be described as a sense of deep disappointment as what seemed certain death reared up, I now know that it is important not to waste what life is made available to us, as we cannot bank on getting another life. I feel I can delineate between the things which are truly fulfilling and those pursuits which are mere time wasting (e.g. devoting precious hours to notions of status). I think that experiences of trauma bring that cold sense of realisation to a person, and Tolkien was one of these people.

Having been through horrors he could appreciate what was worthy and what was not, and this is why he painted grim pictures of people like Grima and Saruman and Gollum, all 'trapped' by some need, whether for status, power or an object of desire. In this he did not shirk from addressing the big questions. And I think that this is the difference between Tolkien and Pullman. The former experienced horror and came out of it ready to address ideas and accept some kind of belief, while the latter has not (to my knowledge) lived through that kind of experience so is 'safe' enough to cast off what might seem to be non-pragmatic ideals. This contrast in itself could apply to the world Tolkien admires, one where the past is respected, and our modern one where we feel change is all-important. I hope this makes any sort of sense, it's way past my bedtime!