First entwining of nervous fingers
A blush and a flutter hiding behind a veil
The child in the womb
Hand-wringing happiness
Shoes bought one size too big
And the cookie jar with the lid on
The growth measurements on the door frame
The bike ride up the long hill
A handful of sand on summer vacation or
The sunrise on Christmas morning
Spring
A fullness filled.
Meredith hadn’t always wanted to be a librarian. In fact, she had never wanted to be a librarian. It just seemed to happen. Her whole life had just seemed to happen. She supposed she once had dreams, maybe even an adventure or two before the library. But she didn’t remember. Her life was just like the books. She had stacked the memories away somewhere, somewhere she could keep them for later when she wanted to check them out, read them one more time. Or more importantly, where she could forget them without losing them completely.
She had gotten used to being invisible. Her job was to be invisible. If people did come to the library, which wasn’t often, they didn’t come to see her. No one came to the library anymore, much less to talk to the somewhat young, somewhat pretty, somewhat short, somewhat average, somewhat altogether uninteresting woman behind the desk that sat directly in the middle of the first floor, surrounded by evenly spaced rows of composite wood shelves. Besides, she liked being invisible. Perhaps it was the reason why she had accepted the job. Things were just easier when you were somewhat invisible.
The library itself was unimportant and unnoticed to the majority of the people in the neighborhood. Built in the time before internet and amazon.com and Ebay and even Barnes and Noble, before the time of coffee shops with free wifi and cafes with comfy chairs, the library had outlived its time of mystery and adventure. The old armchairs tucked away in its corners were now lumpy and an outdated orange. The books themselves were faded and dusty, many of them put back in the wrong place and forgotten, checked out indefinitely. It wasn’t old enough to hold that mystery that is only attributed to the sort of buildings made of stone with pillars out front and marble curved staircases and light fixtures that are made to look like old gas lamps. It was square and made of brick and cheap linoleum and gray carpet and composite wood. Utilitarian does not create mystery. The library was utilitarian. The library was old, but not old enough. The library was not mysterious.
Much like Meredith.
She didn’t look up when she heard the approaching squeaking of the shoes on linoleum. No one ever saw her sitting at her desk, stamping the ten returns she received each day. Before lunch, after she had unlocked the front doors, turned on the lights, and put her brown canvas purse, the one that she always thought was too large, behind the desk beside the wicker trash can, she would go the return box and recover those titles that had been so lucky as to be found among the thousands of ignored on the shelves. Settling herself into her chair, she would then arrange the stack of books in a neat pile beside her left elbow, not the right, so that it wouldn’t interfere with her stamping.
The ink for the stamp was pink. She hated pink. She had always wanted it to be blue.
Only when she realized that the squeaks were moving in her direction did she raise her eyes, only her eyes, from her task of placing the new stamp perfectly below the last on each yellowed inside page. She saw the disheveled curly head before she heard the voice, but the person across the tall, composite wood counter from her was too short for her to see his face. She only caught a glimpse of golden freckles on a pale forehead that almost glowed in the overwhelming white of the fluorescent lighting. The squeak of his sneakers on the beige-speckled linoleum floor betrayed the hurried frustration of his miniature purpose.
The hair was the same color as hers, except that it hadn’t been dulled by an entire lifetime spent hiding from the sun. A soft, internal light radiated from the golden-hinted auburn.
Meredith didn’t stop her mechanical stamping. “Can I help you?”
The clearing of the small throat reminded Meredith of the high pitched grind her electric pencil sharpener produced, the pencil sharpener on the left side of her desk that sat at a perfect right angle to the corner and that she used everyday right after her lunch break. Even if her pencils didn’t need sharpening.
“I need an adventure.”
The stamp hesitated for a second as Meredith processed the request. Did they have a section labeled adventure? No, no of course not.
“We don’t have an adventure section,” she said, looking up from her stamping and addressing the red mop that seemed to hover at the edge of her desk. It reminded her of…she didn’t know what. “You should go to the children’s books.”
She thought that would end it. But the disembodied hair remained. She heard the squeak of the shoes again and the hair gave way to a forehead, then a set of huge blue eyes framed by long golden lashes.
“Please. I can’t find an adventure.”
The plea held the tremor of tears, but also confidence. Assertiveness. Duty. The plea of preachers at altar call. The call of patriots for liberty and judges for justice. A prince pleading for the people of his nation rise up and fight for their way of life.
Meredith sat with stamp suspended in midair above The Birdwatcher’s Guide to the Birds of North America. Her hand trembled. Only the when the stamp quaked from her fingers and bled a fatal pink stain onto the wrong side of the inside cover did she recover.
Preachers? Patriots? Judges and princes?
Leaving the desk now would mean that her stamping would be interrupted. The pile of books would be left on the desk when they should be stamped and put on the shelves. Those books were her only task. She was a librarian, and librarians put away their books. A librarian was what she was.
The blue eyes blinked once.
Her tongue rebelled against her and formed the one reluctant word of rebellion.
“Sure.”
“Jules, smile!”
Christmas morning always brings the video camera. More than birthdays, more than choir concerts, more than events like the day I learned how to tie my shoes. Every December the 25th, my dad’s hand brushes off the hard, black, twenty pound plastic case that holds the gargantuan icon of our holiday season.
Even though they all look the same, Simmons Christmases must be recorded. To miss one, even one, would be disastrous.
“Jules, say something. The camera is on. This one takes video, not pictures.”
The relatives also come out from their dusty hiding places whenever the end of the year brings the smell of Christmas cookies to our tiny kitchen. They’ll be arriving decked out in their finest lumpy, scratchy, red and green sweaters later in the afternoon, burdened with boxes of food and hurriedly wrapped packages of plastic toys destined to be torn apart by my younger brother and I.
Even though they don’t care and have never cared what our house looks like, Mom seems to think they’ll notice the dust that’s collected behind the picture frames on the entryway table. She’s been scurrying around the house with a frantic pace in her socks and gray sweat pants, vacuuming and wiping and rearranging surfaces in the house that only the resident miller moths have ever paid much attention to. Now she’s upstairs, getting the sleepy Tyler, never a morning person, to come down and open presents with his impatient sister.
I’ve been waiting for the last two hours for it to be the appropriate time to open presents. I’m always awake as soon as any hint of light makes it through the yellowed metal blinds in my room on this most anxious of mornings. The sound of mom and dad’s creaking bedroom door as it joyously announces they are finally awake sends me flying down the staircase in my footy pajamas to sit, straight-backed, on the cold tile in front of the fireplace. From here, I can have a perfect view of the tree, positioned proudly by the front windows so that all the neighbors can see our multicolored Walmart lights, the tree under which all happiness lies shrouded in pine-scented mystery.
Except that dad blocks my view. The video camera has once again emerged to interrupt my attempts at guessing what surprises the wrapped boxes might contain. And this time, it’s also ratted me out. The big black eye and the blinking red light have caught me, frozen, with my finger up my nose.
“Julie, take your finger out of your nose and smile for the camera,” Dad coaxes in a voice that only barely betrays his frustration and embarrassment for my sake. Only the fringes of his tousled curly hair are visible behind the monstrosity of the camera, so I can’t guess his expression.
The instant I realized I had been caught, I didn’t know what to do. A good scolding usually followed the revelation of the crime, especially recently, since my parents didn’t want me to pull out a big green one in front of the relatives. Putting the video camera in between me and Dad seemed to have changed something. He couldn’t scold me. And I couldn’t react in a customary pouty way, with a frown and a prominent bottom lip. Not only that, but even though I didn’t want to drop the habit, I still had some understanding that I should be embarrassed. But Dad was asking me to smile. None of it fit.
So I froze, hoping that I would fail to capture the attention of the all-seeing eye if I just did nothing long enough. With my finger up my nose, I made a defiant stand against the tyranny of the video camera like no one ever had before and no one ever has since. After those few agonizing minutes and several nervous laughs from my dad, its horrible gaze finally shifted to focus on Ty and Mom as they descended the stairs. I had won, or so I thought.
I lost in the long run. Though I resisted the demands of the camera, it had marked me as a nonconformist in the records of Simmons Christmases for the rest of time. Nearly every Christmas now, the tape of me staring blankly into the lens with my finger up my nose plays on the television for the entire family. Instead of being recognized as a picture of the beautiful realities that are not a part of our Christmas because of the tyranny of the video camera, the clip instead perpetuates the way things always have been by teaching the youngest generations what not to do when they’re asked to smile for the camera.
Even in the dim haze of muffled daylight, I recognize the shape of the man holding the rifle by the door.
“Ben,” I say just above a whisper, “put the gun away.”
“But, Rebecca, I…”
“If they want to kill us today, they can. We just have to hope. All we have is hope. Today is about that hope.” I listen to my own feeble, overused speech fall strangled into the dust on the floor.
But Ben finds the truth in it, the truth that has been there every time he’s heard it. He shuffles his booted foot on the concrete. Looks at the small spot he has cleared of grey dirt.
“Of all the days though…of all the days I would fight and die without regrets, today would be the day.”
I can’t keep from smiling despite the momentary fear that clenches my throat. No matter how long this war lasts and no matter how much hope fills my heart, I’ve never gotten rid of that instinctive fear. Not for myself, but for them.
“Thank you. Isaac and I both thank you for that.” I pause as his deep-set gray eyes meet mine. “Hope.”
“Hope.”
No more needs to be said. Our motivations have been discussed and re-discussed enough for memorization over the last two years.
The hem of the dress sends out a small rolling cloud of the dust as I turn. “Come on. They’re waiting.”
Ben still holds the rifle as he follows me through the doorway and down the staircase, his lined face a grim mixture of hard determination and anticipation. The two expressions hit against each other in his eyes, like flint and steel striking out sparks. Like always, he unconsciously rubs a sweaty palm through his already-spiky gray hair. His prematurely gray hair.
I wish I could run my hand over my hair, entwine my fingers in the dark curls, pull on the braid in agitation. But there is no braid today, no scratchy dirt. Anita would silence my excuses with her tsk tsk if I allowed my nervous habit to muss the intricate bun she has coiled on the back of my head.
It is Anita who meets us at the bottom of the stairs in the storeroom with empty shelves lit by a single, flickering fluorescent tube. I can tell she has been pacing while she prays for safety, praying as she scuffles across the tiny space, back and forth, with tired feet and back hunched under a tissue-thin shawl. The dust is kicked up and has formed a halo around the solitary light and her callused palms are pressed together so tightly that I think the bird-bone wrists might break backwards.
I see the ghostly paleness of those palms as she releases them from their position of contrition and places them softly on my blush-hinted cheeks. Her thin, cracked lips spread slowly into a smile filled with scattered yellow teeth as she examines my face.
“You look absolutely stunning, Rebecca dear,” she says. Tears fill the bloodshot black eyes.
If only I could cry. I used to be able to. That was before, when I had not spent all my tears on countless deaths, countless trespasses, countless evils. But by the burning in my chest and somewhere behind my nose I know that my body longs for that release, even if the tears have long been absent. Like clouds over a rainless desert.
“Thank you, Anita. Only you could have found a way to clean me up in a place like this.” I place my cold hands on her perpetually warm ones and smile widely so that my cheeks press into her palms.
She smiles wider and chuckles a little. There is a pause as I watch her focus shift from my face to something beyond me, from dimly lit reality to something beyond the present. Her beautiful memory. The memory that nothing could destroy.
Her voice is almost giggly as she whispers. “It was a sparkling new spring day in May. I remember being so nervous, checking my hair and my dress over and over again in the mirror. Praying that it didn’t rain, even though everyone told me that was supposed to be good luck. I told them we didn’t need luck.”
I release her hands as they leave my face to play absentmindedly with the worn gold band on her finger.
“I remember the sun being so bright that the colors from the stained glass made the whole audience glow like painted dolls in the wooden pews. I felt like I was inside a kaleidoscope, like I used to have when I was a kid. The room stopped spinning when I saw his face, though. Even from all the way down that carpeted aisle, I could see in his eyes that he thought I was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.”
A deep chuckle escapes through the gaps between her teeth.
“It never rained that day. There was sunshine then. Sunshine and stained glass.”
Her eyes come back to my face again, the tears still present but changed. Sparkling.
“Love, my dear,” she says, taking my hands in hers, “makes everything beautiful. No matter where it is.”
He had been destroyed with the stained glass windows two years ago. And yet she never remembered how his body crumpled in the shadow of the steeple, his blood staining the white limestone steps they had climbed every week together, his life blending with the shards of glass and making them all the same color. All she remembered was his face and the stained glass. Love makes everything beautiful.
Fear stabs me again, my fear of loss now that I have something to lose. I never had anything to lose before, ever since my parents and brother and almost everyone I had ever known was killed or sent to the prisons. Until now, I had fought for ideals, values, that really couldn’t be destroyed even if I lost my life like so many others before me. But now. Isaac is living, breathing. I don’t want to lose what I’ve fought so hard to gain.
But I need to remember. At the foundation of everything is the faith that it cannot be destroyed. My fear finds its way back to the bottom of my stomach where it waits to slither upwards to my heart again at the sound of one out of place footstep. The cold heaviness makes me feel as if I’ve swallowed a rock.
I let Anita wrap me in her twiggy arms, leaning down so that even with the hunched back she can rest her elbows on my shoulders.
“Show the world what love is like,” I barely catch her whisper.
The syllables contrast gratingly with the muted tapping of Ben’s finger on the barrel of his gun.
Anita releases me and I turn to him with an expression I hope resembles sternness. “Leave the gun here.”
“But…”
“Leave the gun here.”
He places it gingerly on one of the empty, dust covered shelves. Close to the door.
Ben and Anita let me lead the way. My hands are shaking as I climb the stairs again. I try to think about why, the reasons why they should even with the fear suppressed. Are the police close by? Do I feel exposed without a weapon, without a hiding place?
It almost scares me more to realize that I am giddy with anticipation, maybe even happiness. Joy. Hope, in this dusty shell of a building. I’m not used to this sort of expectation, this unknown. For such a long time, anxiety has meant nothing but pain and loss. Strange that it should be stronger when it is about a gain.
And whenever there is hope this strong in something, someone, I can see and touch and hold close, there is one more thing that will leave a raw hole when it is torn away. Haven’t I learned that I shouldn’t care? That I shouldn’t love anything living? That my hope for something good in this world will destroy my heart over and over again?
My foot hesitates on the last step before I reach the floor above.
But my hope is not on things here, not in today. This hope, this fluttering, this internal shining of colors, comes from something else, something untouched by the ever present darkness. My hope springs from that hope. That there is such thing as incorruptible. That there is such thing as love.
For the first time in the entire preparation, I wish desperately that I had a mirror to reassure me. Though I know it wouldn’t help.
There is such thing as love. There is such thing as beauty.
Sometimes, just sometimes, it’s hard to believe.
“Faith.”
Anita’s single word hits me as if she has physically pushed me with all the might her frail body can give. Though it feels heavier than it should in my worn out flats, I lift my foot and take the last stair.
The dust billows around our feet and the faded cloths covering the broken windows sigh in and out as we pass through the dead space of the empty room. Our footsteps don’t make a sound. I can hear my own breathing, the blood pounding in my ears, and nothing else.
He’s waiting for me on the other side of this door. I hold my breath and wonder if he’s been holding his. I want to know what he’s thinking.
Anita puts her hand to the door. What is the matter with me? I’ve had the cold muzzle of a gun pressed to the side of my head, insults screamed into my ears until they rang with despair. Never have my hands shaken like this. I ask myself again: is it fear? No. It’s the hope.
And then the door is open and I’m walking toward him, floating over the stains and between the dust-coated old pews toward the light that hovers above him and Rick, a single bulb.
His eyes shine even in the dimness, even with all the windows covered by particle board and the single light bulb haloed by a sphere of dust. His eyes shine blue, bluer than the lake the day we sat on the bench under the tree and talked about the future. We could never have predicted that it looked like this. We couldn’t have predicted the heartache and loss it had taken to get here. But we also couldn’t have overestimated the joy of finding a glimmer of this light in the darkness, this glimmer of hope hidden by dust.
That day by the lake in the sunshine with our bare feet in the gravely sand we had talked about fear. But we hadn’t known fear. We hadn’t yet had to run. We hadn’t yet lost home, and family, and freedom. The stained glass windows hadn’t been broken by the charismatic leaders and their men with guns. That day by the lake, beauty existed.
That beauty still exists in his eyes, luminescent in the darkness.
I want to look down and blush demurely, like I always expected I would on this day. Maybe even cry a little from the overflow of emotion that was supposed to quicken my breath and make me think of how this day marked the end of everything I had known before, the day where a new unity is formed and old ties are broken.
The old ties had been broken long ago with the windows. Now there is just particle board. My heart unified itself with the fight two years ago when the stained glass was broken.
I don’t look down. I keep his gaze, held fast and matched with mine. Neither of us smiles, but there is an understanding. Something deeper than a smile.
I take his hands. They’re cold. He smiles at me, a small smile. Half mouths, half whispers the words “you look beautiful.”
Rick begins as Anita and Ben come to stand alongside. The old Bible looks bigger than it ever used to in his weathered, large-knuckled hands.
“You both know the risks. But you also know something greater, and that’s why we’re here.” His gentle voice is muffled by the dust even in the echoing space of the sanctuary.
I can feel him scan our faces as he pauses, thinking, or maybe overcoming the hold of his own memories. He hasn’t seen his wife in seven years. He hasn’t received a letter written from her cell in dissenter prison for a year and a half. I think he asks himself whether or not he thinks we are strong enough to make the sacrifices he has made, to endure what he has endured. I wish he would tell me the conclusion he comes to, but I think I already know the answer. We have to be strong enough.
He doesn’t even need to open the Bible to read the verse. “And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.” He places a hand on each of our shoulders. The weight of the Bible sits heavy on my back.
“Today is about love. True love, the way it should be. This is how it used to be. And we can only pray that this is how it will continue to be, even if it has to be in secret.
“What you proclaim here is sacred, solemn, and binding before God. Even if the world has broken the tradition, the freedom, the family that should be surrounding you today, the foundation of the holiness on which this promise rests can never be killed, never be broken.”
I wonder what Ben thinks as I notice him begin to sob silently behind Isaac, arms hugged tightly against his chest and tears running unchecked down his scarred face. He never had this chance, this day. He, Isaac, and I are the last of the group known to be alive. Prison or an unknown fate had claimed everyone else. Giving me away means more to him than it ever would have even to my father if this day had come before the stained glass windows were broken.
Rick coughs on the dust. I keep staring into the deep, shining blue, bluer than the sky ever used to be. Bluer than the stained glass of Jonah’s whale or Mary’s robe.
“Isaac, do you accept the challenge and responsibility that is taking this woman to be your wife, being faithful to her in the face of hardship, persecution, and death, faithful to her always as God commands and this ceremony professes?”
His eyes don’t leave my face. “I do.”
A yell from outside. His hands tense in mine. Rick’s thumb twitches on my shoulder.
“Rebecca, do you accept the challenge and responsibility that is accepting this man as your husband…”
A crash muffled by thick dust tells us that the lock on the door didn’t buy us much time.
“…trusting him and being faithful to him even in the face of hardship, persecution, and death…”
Several heavily booted feet clump purposefully across the dust-covered concrete.
“…faithful to him always as God commands and this ceremony professes?”
The door to the room makes an indent in the wall as it is kicked open, revealing three rifle barrels and more behind. We can’t see the eyes of the men who hold them, their faces hidden by their all-seeing goggles. They spread efficiently and mechanically into the room. Like black cockroaches searching for food.
None of us have moved. My eyes are still locked with his.
“This ceremony is illegal under federal law!” the black-covered man who appears to be the leader barks out. His voice is forceful enough to echo despite the dust.
No one moves. Only Ben even looks his way, his hands passively at his side. I know he is thinking about the gun on the shelf in the storage room, realizing that it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Hopefully realizing that it would have been out of place, would have defeated the purpose of today. Realizing it would have made them lose the fight.
“Do you understand the implications of your action in breaking this law?” the commander spits out, sounding more than annoyed at the lack of response.
I never take my eyes from the deep blue. “I do.”
“If you stop now and profess your allegiance to the government, you might get off with a long prison sentence.” His tone lets me know that he thinks any smart person would do as he suggests. I wonder how many others he has discovered, and how many of those have taken his offer.
I look at Rick. His eyes tell me that he is ready. His eyes tell me that this is worth fighting for. His eyes are full of hope.
“Hey! Are you listening? I gave you an option. Answer!” The commander readjusts the butt of his gun against his shoulder. The other men shift nervously.
I turn my eyes back to Isaac. I know what he’s thinking. I’ve always been able to read his thoughts. He’s telling me that he loves me. And that this was worth, is worth, fighting for. Meeting my eyes, he squeezes my hands tightly and smiles another small smile. This time, I smile back.
Rick’s voice cuts through the dusty silence. It rings strangely in contrast to the voice of the police commander, like a trumpet in the distance. “I now pronounce you man and wife.”
The air is full of popping sounds, but I don’t care. I lean into Isaac and our lips touch as we fall. We have won.
The experience of love serves as one of the oldest mysteries of human existence. The loves of a friend for a friend, a parent for a child, a husband for a wife, man for God and God for man have been described as being at once both the most natural reactions of the body and most divine feelings of the soul. The love between a husband and a wife most clearly displays this natural and divine duality of the true loves. A marriage must embody both eros, romantic and sexual love, and agape, the self-sacrificing love evident in the person of God, in order to achieve true unity and life-long endurance. In the novel That Hideous Strength, C. S. Lewis uses the example of a married couple, initially distanced from each other and from God, in order to illuminate the relationship necessary between eros and agape for the complete fulfillment of both marital relationships and an individual’s relationship with God. Through the characters of Mark and Jane, Lewis not only shows that eros itself can be the means by which an individual approaches an understanding of agape, but that an understanding of God’s love is necessary for a full realization of all the blessings of eros.
The experience of eros as a means of approaching an understanding agape can be seen primarily in the progression of Jane’s conversion. Through the words of the Director and the response of Jane, Lewis reveals his view of marriage as a relationship with complete unity, but not complete equality, and how that perspective leads to an understanding of the love of God. The character of Jane longs for a world and a marriage in which she is valued, not for qualities inherent to her femininity, but for her equally intelligent and independent status. She believes that in all marriages people have equality “in their souls” (“Strength” 148) and that therefore she should be considered completely equal with her husband in all ways. The Director corrects her by introducing a new perspective concerning her relationship with her husband: “That [marriage] is the last place where they are equal. Equality before the law, equality of income—that is very well. Equality guards life; it doesn’t make it” (“Strength” 148). Lewis reiterates this view in his book The Four Loves, referring to a husband and wife as “a god and goddess between whom there is no equality—whose relations are asymmetrical” (“Strength” 104). For Lewis, unity does not exist when the parts of the whole are equal, but rather when the parts remain distinct and assume their proper places within a greater hierarchy. The wife, as the distinctive feminine part of the marriage relationship, submits to her husband, while the husband, as the distinctive masculine part, lives sacrificially for her just as Christ gave his life for the church (“Loves” 105-106).
As she begins to realize this necessity of difference and hierarchy in her marriage, Jane also begins to recognize her marriage as an image of a greater, universal hierarchy:
But she had been conceiving this world as ‘spiritual’ in the negative sense—as some neutral, or democratic, vacuum where differences disappeared, where sex and sense were not transcended but simply taken away. Now the suspicion dawned upon her that there might be differences and contrasts all the way up, richer, sharper, even fiercer, at every rung of the ascent. How if this invasion of her own being in marriage from which she had recoiled, often in the very teeth of instinct, were not, as she had supposed, merely a relic of animal life or patriarchal barbarism, but rather the lowest, the first, and the easiest form of some shocking contact with reality which would have to be repeated—but in ever larger and more disturbing modes—on the highest levels of all? (“Strength” 315)
In this way, Jane eventually connects the idea of unity through hierarchy to her understanding of the spiritual world. Though it seems at first to her to be “nonsensical” and “indecent and irreverent” to relate her marriage to Mark with “religion,” Jane comes to understand that religion is not the issue, but rather her unwillingness to give up her independence and equality for a personal relationship with both her husband and God (“Strength” 317-318). For Jane, this realization not only means a sacrifice of her belief in independence and equality with Mark, but also a submission to a God with whom she could never consider herself an equal. One can never know the agape of God unless one has acknowledged dependence on and inequality with God, a recognition that Jane is only able to reach as she begins to understand true unity in her relationship with her husband.
This ability of eros to lead to agape by means of similarity is addressed by Lewis in The Four Loves: “This love [eros] is really and truly like Love Himself…His [eros] total commitment is a paradigm or example, built into our natures, of the love we ought to exercise towards God and Man” (109-110). Through Jane’s gradual understanding of this paradigm, commitment without the expectation of equality, one can see the small-scale example of agape that eros provides through its representation of necessary sacrifice within a unified relationship. The marriage relationship, in its small part of the hierarchy of the universe, becomes “the whole Christian life seen from one particular angle,” a miniature of the sacrifice of independence required and the unity desired by God in a relationship with Him (“Loves” 115). In the words of Lewis, romantic love becomes “a sort of explosion that starts up the engine” but remains “the pie-crust, not the pie” (“Behavior” 32). The “pie” is that the top of the hierarchy himself revealed agape to the world by relinquishing his throne in heaven and coming to earth to die even for those who mocked him, not to grasp equality with God, but to show His love for humanity (Philippians 2:6-7, NIV). Jesus died so that we could have unity with Him, a magnification of the hierarchy of service visualized within human marriage. In the words of Lewis’ Screwtape the demon, “the Enemy [God] wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct” (“Letters” 46). Though she finds a small example in her marriage to Mark, Jane realizes fully the nature of true unity only when she grasps this infinitely radical picture, accomplishing Lewis’ goal of asserting the ability of eros to be a means of approach for agape.
To examine the reverse relationship between the loves, C. S. Lewis demonstrates his belief in the necessary subjection of eros to agape through the change in Mark and Jane’s understanding of their sexual relationship. Jane becomes the first to begin the change when she encounters Perelandra or Venus, the goddess of sexuality, in the garden of St. Anne’s (“Strength” 304-305). Later hearing her account of the experience, the Director explains the intensity of the meeting as a result of Jane having “rejected” the goddess and because she saw Venus separate from the hierarchy, the rule of God, to which Jane had not yet surrendered. Venus, figurative of eros, remains “raw,” “untransformed,” and “demoniac” when she serves as a deity without subjugation to the control of agape (“Strength” 314). Jane’s experience epitomizes Lewis’ understanding of the relationship between natural and divine loves: “when natural things look divine, the demoniac is just around the corner” (“Loves” 102). Here Jane’s encounter with raw eros shows that though eros can speak “like a god…it cannot, just as it stands, be the voice of God Himself. For Eros, speaking with that very grandeur and displaying that very transcendence of self, may urge to evil as well as good” (“Loves” 108). Through Jane’s example Lewis asserts the fact that romantic relationships, even marriages, fail to know complete love if eros is the only type of love present. It is the presence of the authority of agape over eros, tempering and transforming it, that directs it into what it was created to be.
When agape takes control of eros, lovers understand their obligation to give up individual pride in order to love the other person selflessly, as can be seen most vividly in the transformation of Mark. As he makes his way to see Jane after their long separation and his final defiance against N.I.C.E., Mark considers the “clumsy importunity” with which he has handled the gift of Jane’s love during in their marriage:
…all the lout and clown and clod-hopper in him was revealed to his own reluctant inspection…How had he dared? Her driven snow, her music, her sacrosanctity, the very style of all her movements…how had he dared? And dared too with no sense of daring, nonchalantly, in careless stupidity! The very thoughts that crossed her face from moment to moment, all of them beyond his reach, made (had he but had the wit to see it) a hedge about her which such as he should never have had the temerity to pass. (“Strength” 380-381)
Here Lewis gives the reader a picture of a lover who has been humbled to a newly-discovered understanding of his beloved’s virtues by an experience with agape, which Mark describes as “the normal” or “that which is sweet and straight” (“Strength” 299). When he decides to desire the good more than he desires acceptance, Mark finally understands the fearful gift of eros that Jane has given to him and appreciates it for the first time, demolishing his previous pride. In Mark, one sees that “God, admitted to the human heart, transforms…not only our Need-love of Him, but our Need-love of one another” (“Loves” 133). Agape shows Mark how he should view eros in his marriage. Through Mark’s example Lewis also asserts, however, that “the Divine Love does not substitute itself for the natural—as if we had to throw away our silver to make room for the gold. The natural loves are summoned to become modes of Charity while also remaining the natural loves they were” (“Loves” 133). The natural love of eros becomes the love through which Mark expresses his new humility towards Jane and demonstrates the new agape love present in their redeemed relationship (“Strength” 382).
Jane also experiences a change toward humility in eros through her encounter with agape. Her pride first becomes revealed to her through the words of the Director when he relates her grip on independence to both her marriage and her relationship with God:
…your trouble has been what old poets called Daungier. We call it Pride. You are offended by the masculine itself: that loud, irruptive, possessive thing…which breaks through hedges and scatters the little kingdom of your primness…The male you could have escaped, for it exists only on the biological level. But the masculine none of us can escape. (“Strength” 315-316)
This passage depicts the Director exposing Jane’s unwillingness to submit her independence to either eros or agape and names her pride as the cause. Concerning her sexual relationship with her husband, the Director even asserts that “obedience—humility—is an erotic necessity” (“Strength” 148). If she is to love either her husband or God, Jane must find humility. This humility only comes after she realizes she was “made to please Another and in Him to please all others,” an epiphany after which “the height and depth and breadth the little idea of herself which she had hitherto called me dropped down and vanished, unfluttering, into bottomless distance, like a bird in a space without air” (“Strength” 319). Through the transformation of Jane, Lewis demonstrates his view that even “the most lawless and inordinate lovers are less contrary to God’s will than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessness…Christ did not teach and suffer that we might become, even in the natural loves, more careful of our own happiness” (“Loves” 122). Jane would be closer to an understanding of true eros if she had idolized it instead of repressing it completely out of the fear that she will have to give up her pride. The example of agape in Christ shows that though humility can lead to suffering for love, eros must attain the humility of agape and shed self-protectiveness for care of the other if it is to be true and complete.
Not only does the sovereignty of agape bring about humility within eros, but it also allows for the flourishing of the beauty and pleasure of eros. In the view of Lewis, those opposed to God and His love “always try to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its Maker, and least pleasurable” (“Letters” 49). This is evidenced in the example of N.I.C.E., which believes in the eradication of all things sexual in order to purify humanity (“Strength” 173). On the other hand, under agape, eros finds its full celebration and fulfillment. Jane observes and resents this fact during the beginning of her stay at St. Anne’s:
Hers ought to have been the vivid, perilous world brought against their grey formalized one; hers the quick, vital movements and theirs the stained glass attitudes. That was the antithesis she was used to. This time, in a sudden flash of purple and crimson, she remembered what stained glass was really like. (“Strength” 316)
Jane recognizes at St. Anne’s the beauty offered by romantic love when “formalized” i.e. placed under the authority of, and therefore enhanced by, agape. Mark also comes to recognize this beauty of eros submitted to agape, though he is bitter that he has not understood earlier: “He was discovering the hedge after he had plucked the rose, and not only plucked it but torn it all to pieces and crumpled it with hot, thumb-like, greedy fingers” (“Strength” 381). Jane’s love, previously of no meaningful value to Mark, now becomes related in his mind to a beautiful flower crushed by his lack of proper appreciation. This change in the perspectives of Mark and Jane portray clearly the views of Lewis on the nature of eros, sexual love, within Christianity, the lifestyle of agape: “Christianity has glorified marriage more than any other religion: and nearly all the greatest love poetry in the world has been produced by Christians. If anyone says that sex, in itself, is bad, Christianity contradicts him at once” (“Behavior” 27). Romantic and sexual love, Lewis asserts, was created by God and therefore should be celebrated by Christians like all other good gifts from the Creator. As instituted by God, the restrictions placed upon it are not to make it less enjoyable, but rather to place it within a context where it can reveal its full beauty, because “Eros, of himself, will never be enough—will indeed survive only in so far as he is continually chastened and corroborated by higher principles” (“Loves” 110). As Jane and Mark both come to understand, agape does not demonize eros but rather allows it to come into its full power without becoming a demon, the key to the true fulfillment of its nature. The Creator of both eros and agape reveals Himself to be “a hedonist at heart…He has filled His world full of pleasures” (“Letters” 122). The story of That Hideous Strength ends with a celebration of a redeemed marriage and two individual relationships with God through the consummation of eros by the couple (“Strength” 382). Through the changed perspectives of Mark and Jane, Lewis proclaims the redemption of the rose that was crumpled and celebrates the beauty of stained glass windows.
Through the characters Mark and Jane in That Hideous Strength, the perspectives of C. S. Lewis concerning the relationship between eros and agape loves gain new clarity as the reader follows the growth of the couple’s marriage relationship. By detailing the changes of the ideas of Mark and Jane, Lewis asserts the indispensability of the connectedness of these two powerful love experiences. Eros can provide a vivid example of the type of love demonstrated by God through agape, though eros cannot function or be made into a god on its own without running the risk of becoming a demon that destroys all true love. Eros, placed under the control of agape, can be a love that flourishes and continues to grow as agape encourages the humility of the lovers and reveals the beautiful and pleasurable nature of eros as it was created to be. Above all, That Hideous Strength demonstrates clearly Lewis’ belief in God’s sovereignty over all things, most especially the loves. The relationship between eros and agape, while still mysterious, becomes less mysterious when one recognizes their common source in the Creator of the universe. Like Mark and Jane, one can see they must submit all of themselves to God, both in the natural reactions of the body and the divine feelings of the soul, in order to understand any part of love. All love only becomes true love when it remains in Love Himself.
Works Cited
Lewis, C. S. . Christian Behavior. 5. Binghamton, NY: The Macmillan Company, 1945.
---. That Hideous Strength. 1st Scribner Paperback Fiction Ed.. New York,
NY: Scribner Paperback Fiction, 1996.
---. The Four Loves. Reprint. Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 1991.
---. The Screwtape Letters and Screwtape Proposes a Toast. Reprint. New York, NY: The
Macmillan Company, 1961.
Phillip Pullman’s series His Dark Materials depicts a world that, at first glance, seems to be absent of any semblance of a traditional moral compass. Distinctions between “good” and “bad” characters are blurred, as many characters demonstrate the same strengths and weaknesses and even actions as those to whom they are opposed within the context of the plot. Lyra, the main female protagonist, exhibits this moral confusion most noticeably. Despite being a habitual liar, she still remains distinct as a sympathetic character. Upon close examination, however, Lyra’s character reveals that the author has not completely dispensed with all morality, but has rather instituted a contradictory combination of moral and amoral perspectives, particularly concerning the nature of deceit. To understand this morality, one must first examine Lyra’s purposes for lying. Secondly, Lyra’s recognition of and aversion to the lies of others also provides a source of insight. Thirdly, the morality of the author can be noted in Lyra’s defense of her own character when accused of deceitfulness. Finally, Lyra’s truthfulness in her encounter with the harpies reveals most clearly the unoriginal and contradictory reality of the author’s “new” morality. Through these illustrated attitudes of Lyra towards lying, Pullman demonstrates a positive perspective towards integrity of motive and person even while he argues contradictorily against the traditional guilt and sin associated with deceit by religion.
The purpose and motivation behind the lies of Lyra compared to the deceit of “evil” characters reveals the most obvious assertion made by the author concerning his perspective on the morality of deceit. Though Lyra, a protagonist, is herself a liar, a contrast demonstrating the differences between “good” and “bad” lies becomes apparent in those places where both Lyra and an opposing character lie in order to accomplish their respective goals. This can be most clearly seen when that opposing character is Mrs. Coulter, who like Lyra also uses deceit as her primary means of manipulating circumstances. The situation at Bolvangar in The Golden Compass provides one of these vivid examples of the similarity of method and difference of purpose between the lies of Lyra and Mrs. Coulter. Lyra must “pretend harder than she’d ever done in her life” in order to protect her friends, the gyptians who are approaching the station, from the knowledge of Mrs. Coulter (281). Until Mrs. Coulter arrived at Bolvangar, Lyra had been busy lying about her identity and her intelligence in order to find a way to rescue the other children imprisoned along with her (238). Lyra’s reasons for lying are obvious: she lies to save others and protect herself. As she explains at the end of The Amber Spyglass, “I could only survive in some places by telling lies and making up stories” (512). Mrs. Coulter also lies to Lyra at the same time Lyra lies to her, trying to convince Lyra of the benefits of intercision despite its horrifying nature (283-284). Her reasons for such deceit are revealed soon after, when it becomes evident that she has only been trying to convince Lyra of her saintliness in order to get the alethiometer and keep Lyra from running away (285). Mrs. Coulter’s motivations are also simple: she lies for the purpose of manipulating a situation to gain absolute control over those to whom she lies.
This contrast in motivation seems easily recognized when separated from the main body of the text, but such an interpretation of “good” and “bad” lying is harder to distinguish when one considers that Lyra is not a character who only lies because the situation requires her to do so. Rather, Lyra’s ability to lie is expressed as a talent that comes in handy in that particular situation, not a necessary evil that Lyra reluctantly chooses. Lying takes on definition as a strength that Lyra has practiced and appreciates: “With every second that went past, with every sentence she spoke, she felt a little strength flowing back. And now that she was doing something difficult and familiar and never quite predictable, namely lying, she felt a sort of mastery again, the same sense of complexity and control that the alethiometer gave her…she had to be an artist, in short” (Compass 281). For a reader who holds to a traditional morality, this lack of regret and the celebration of deceit on the part of a major protagonist presents difficulties when one attempts to sympathize with Lyra completely. The word “control” brings to mind the reasons for aversion toward the manipulations of Mrs. Coulter, clearly an evil antagonist. Not only does this association create an obstacle, but lying has also traditionally never been considered “right” in most cultures and religions, even if a situation forces lying for survival. In short, Lyra, though lying for obviously noble reasons, does not denounce lying through resulting guilt or regret during or after her act of deceit, a problem for traditional morality. Rather, her ability to lie is depicted by the author as a talent, only made better by the way that Lyra uses it. In this way, the only distinction between Lyra and Mrs. Coulter becomes their reasons for lying, not their deceit itself. Though their motivations remain distinct, lying still remains a helpful, amoral talent for both protagonist and antagonist.
A situation similar to that at Bolvangar occurs in Svalbard, the kingdom of the bears. Lyra skillfully deceives the bear king Iofur Raknison in order to save herself and give her bear friend and the rightful king, Iorek Byrnison, a chance to fight to recover his throne (Compass 343). Once again, her motivation is the preservation of life, both her own and that of her friends. Later in the story the reader discovers from the mouths of the bears that Mrs. Coulter also lied to Iofur Raknison, though for much different reasons than her daughter: “Little by little she [Mrs. Coulter] was going to increase her power over Iofur Raknison, and his over us, until we were her creatures running back and forth at her bidding, and our only duty to guard the abomination she was going to create” (357). Mrs. Coulter once again uses deceit in order to bring more power and control to herself, to restrict freedom, and to support her evil plans. Again, the lies of Lyra and her mother are differentiated by their motivations and purposes.
Also similar to the situation at Bolvangar, however, is the attitude of Lyra toward her talent for lying. Again, Lyra’s deceit seems disconcertingly close to what would be considered the evil of Mrs. Coulter: “The great bear was helpless. Lyra found her power over him almost intoxicating, and if Pantalaimon hadn’t nipped her hand sharply to remind her of the danger they were all in, she might have lost all her sense of proportion” (Compass 343). Though Pan bites her to keep her in check, this action does not denote the disapproval of either Pan or the author toward the act of lying itself. Rather, it serves to remind Lyra of the reasons she lies in the first place: not to gain power, but to protect Iorek and herself from certain death. Therefore, Pan’s nip does not express his disagreement with Lyra’s deceit, but instead keeps her from lapsing into the same reason for lying that motivated Mrs. Coulter. Once again, one can note the distinction between good and evil deceit residing not in method, but in motivation. This is also supported by the praise and awe Lyra receives from Iorek when he discovers her accomplishment in deceiving Iofur: “Belaqua? No. You are Lyra Silvertongue” (348). The reader wavers between being wary of Lyra’s deceit on account of the lack of reticence concerning her actions and responding to her in the same manner as Iorek, once again creating a confusing moral contradiction. In Svalbard, like Bolvangar, the author presents the morality of lying as being determined by motivation while keeping deceit itself as an amoral act, capable of being used for good or evil.
This rather confusing and occasionally disconcerting use of deceit by Pullman’s characters succeeds in demonstrating his presentation of an alternative atheistic and humanistic perspective on the morality of lying. Though obvious lines exist between the lies of Lyra and Mrs. Coulter, the author does not support the traditional view of deceit held by most major religions, making it “easy to interpret this celebration of deception as a direct challenge to traditional morality and ethics” (Bruner 115). It is true that lying in His Dark Materials incurs no guilt and has no consequences, and yet the author cannot be accused of the complete destruction of morality, as “good” and “evil” still exist in the books. One critic explains, “as an intensely moral writer, Pullman seems naturally drawn towards Biblical imagery of good and evil…yet as a humanist and a freethinker, he hates the guilt and repression that, in his view, also lie at the basis of Christianity” (Tucker 174). By presenting this humanist plurality, Pullman argues against the church’s labeling of lying as sin while still supporting the goodness of integrity of motivations, or the integrity of goals that focus on encouraging freedom. According to Pullman critics Donna Freitas and Jason King, the highest good of Pullman’s worldview is freedom, one expression of which is lying, and should be used “for the service of others” and “to love others” (56). Evil, instead of being identified as deceit itself, becomes “the suppression of freedom, the deprivation of the body, the failure to be kind” (Freitas 69). By creating a protagonist, Lyra, who uses lying for the purpose of preserving freedom and contrasting her motivations with that of an antagonist, Mrs. Coulter, who uses deceit to gain power, Pullman effectively demonstrates this new perspective. He argues that lying should not be considered inherently wrong but rather an expression of freedom, though he still retains the belief that actions such as lying can be immoral or moral, determined by the motivations behind the deceit and not the deceit itself.
A second clue to understanding Pullman’s new perspective on the morality of deceit can be noted in Lyra’s rather ironic recognition of and aversion to other liars. The most vivid example of this contradiction is Lyra’s perception of Lord Boreal, or Sir Charles as he introduces himself in Will’s world. Though too naïve to recognize his intentions upon beginning an acquaintance with her, Lyra still finds herself discerning something about the older man that she cannot explain: “She was more puzzled by this man than by anyone she’d met for a long time…from somewhere she sensed, not a smell, but the idea of a smell, and it was the smell of dung, of putrefaction. She was reminded of Iofur Raknison’s palace, where the air was perfumed but the floor was thick with filth” (Knife 79). The smell she describes brings to mind the scene at Svalbard in The Golden Compass. Iofur builds a palace, but because bears are not meant to live in houses, the place smells of the excrement of the bears unsuccessfully covered by the smell of perfume (Compass 326). If only Lyra understood what she perceived, she could have anticipated the stealing of her alethiometer by Sir Charles; she senses in him the lie of the bears, the attempt at covering bad with good. As a practiced liar, it is no surprise that Lyra can recognize other liars, even subconsciously. Less logical, however, is her reaction to the lies of Sir Charles. Considering the tone of the author in describing the lies of Lyra, one would expect that Sir Charles, though evil, would still be represented with some level of respect equal to his talent for deceit. Instead, when she does discover his use of deception to cover his evil intentions for power, Lyra’s only response is to spit in his face (Knife 163). Against basic moral logic, Lyra the liar reacts to the revelation of his lies with outrage.
Sir Charles is not the only character whose deceit Lyra perceives and to which she responds in anger. Her reaction to the lies of Mrs. Coulter at Bolvangar expresses similar feelings toward such deceit: “Oh the wicked liar, oh the shameless untruths she was telling! And even if Lyra hadn’t known them to be lies…she would have hated it with a furious passion” (Compass 284). Interestingly, Lyra’s outrage is first aimed at the fact that Mrs. Coulter is lying at all, then toward what she is lying to cover up. This reveals that Lyra does not only find fault with the evil behind the lies but also with being deceived at all, another morally confusing response from one who is herself a habitual liar. Though she views the lies of her mother with disgust, Lyra, and through her the author, never makes the connection between her lies and those of Mrs. Coulter. Despite what seems morally probable, we again see the liar, herself being the deceived, responding with righteous anger to the lies of someone else.
Once again, the author is presenting his contradictory humanist morality by maintaining a support of truth while dismantling the lines of traditional morality. Through Lyra’s outrage toward and distance from the lies of Sir Charles and Mrs. Coulter, Pullman creates distinctions between “right” and “wrong” deceit. The first distinctions between their lies mirror those presented when Lyra’s motivations for lying were contrasted with those of the antagonists. Like those situations in which Lyra chooses to lie, the situations in which Lyra becomes the victim of deceit also show that the reasons matter. As demonstrated previously, Lyra lies to survive, while those who lie to her do so in order to control her and use her for their evil plans, attempting manipulation to which she reacts in anger. In addition to purpose, however, the author also highlights the importance of the character of the person behind the lies. Lyra acts out of a care for others and a desire to do what is right and good. In other words, she acts out of a character of moral integrity. Those who lie to her, on the other hand, lie out of a hunger for power and a lack of compassion for anything besides their own interests. They lie out of character of moral corruption. In this way, Pullman effectively asserts that a good lie is one that does not hide an evil person. Lyra does not lie to cover an evil heart; she simply changes the facts of the stories she tells to divert the attention of those wishing her harm. The evil liar, on the other hand, uses “ostensibly truthful words as masks to divert attention from and justify the evil that they do” (Freitas 63). Sir Charles and Mrs. Coulter find condemnation, not in their lying, but in their use of lies to cover over the evil foundations of their lives, hiding the truth of their corrupted persons from Lyra. While still adamantly denying the sinfulness of deceit in and of itself, Pullman continues to champion the value of integrity, particularly of moral character, in the outrage of Lyra towards those who lie to hide the darkness in their hearts.
This directs the reader to the third point of major evidence to be interpreted for an understanding of Pullman’s morality of deceit. Just as Lyra’s “righteousness” in lying can be determined through an evaluation of her motivations and her distancing of her own deceit from that of the antagonists, it can also be seen in her defense when charged with being deceitful of character. Though she uses her talent for lying without hesitation and with “pleasure rising upward in her breast like the bubbles in champagne” (Spyglass 261), Lyra still becomes defensive when labeled as deceitful by the gyptians, actually a misunderstood compliment (Compass 112), and by Sir Charles (Knife 163). The best example of her defense of her character, however, comes in her arguments with the Gallivespian spies who follow her and Will into the land of the dead. Trying to convince Lyra of her misjudgment in deciding to find the ghost of her friend Roger, Tialys’ criticism is scathing: “You’re a thoughtless, irresponsible, lying child. Fantasy comes so easily to you that your whole nature is riddled with dishonesty, and you don’t even admit the truth when it stares you in the face” (Spyglass 265). Lyra responds by claiming he has misjudged her and argues against his own integrity:
“You don’t know,” she cried, “you just don’t know what I got in my head or my heart, do you?...you’re not kind, you’re not generous, you’re not considerate—you’re not cruel, even—that would be better, if you were cruel, because it’d mean you took us serious, you didn’t just go along with us when it suited you…Oh, I can’t trust you at all now! You said you’d help and we’d do it together, and now you want to stop us—you’re the dishonest one, Tialys!” (265)
Two interesting points present themselves in the course of this speech. First of all, in claiming that Tialys has wrongly judged her to be deceitful to the core just because she lies, Lyra asserts that her actions do not inevitably constitute the foundation of her character. He has only looked as what she does, not at why she lies or the character from which she lies. In this way, the author through Lyra, argues that one must look deeper than the action itself to the heart behind the action in order to judge whether a person is good or bad, their actions right or wrong.
This assertion connects to a second point of interest: Lyra uses Tialys’ own accusations to bring accusations against him. Lyra has not gone against her word or any part of her character when she lies; rather, she acts out of her character very truthfully in talent and motivation, using lies to further goals that are chosen from the heart. Tialys, on the other hand, lied against his true intentions when he told Lyra earlier that he would support her endeavor to travel to the land of the dead. He only agreed to follow her in the first place because he assumed she would fail, not because he also held to the goal that she had chosen. If he had had integrity of character, he would have taken his earlier support of Lyra as an oath and followed through with that goal, pursuing whatever means possible to see it accomplished. Lyra says it would be better if he were cruel, which, like his earlier support, would show he at least still cared about her endeavor. As demonstrated, Lyra’s accusations against Tialys emphasize the importance of integrity of character over a focus on the morality of certain types of actions.
In Lyra’s argument with Tialys, the author illustrates the major arguments between the traditional morality of religion and his own humanist moral system. The arguments of Lyra, the speaker for humanist morality, stand upon the two earlier observations concerning her lying: she lies for good reasons and out of a good heart. Tialys, representing traditional religious views of lying, makes the mistake of ignoring these two sources of action and chooses instead to only concentrate on the actions themselves, categorically judging the book by its cover. In the first part of her speech, Lyra argues that Tialys has judged her wrongly because he has not looked at her heart, asserting traditional morality to be a faulty judge when it comes to recognizing good and bad. For her second point, she uses the shifted morality of the author to judge Tialys, revealing that he himself comes up short when deep, not just superficial, honesty becomes the focus of consideration. In the perspectives of these characters, Pullman supports his own belief in the goodness of lying on the basis of motivation and character, lying itself being amoral. He not only argues motivation and character to be more important than the actions through which one expresses themselves, but also that motivation and character are the points from which one should assess the foundation of a person’s true honesty. Lying does not necessarily reveal a deceitful heart, though it can be used to conceal one, and therefore cannot be trusted as a guide for judging integrity of character.
The final and most contradictory event in the story of Lyra’s deceitfulness occurs when she must become a teller of true stories instead of a liar, revealing most clearly the contradictory foundations of Pullman’s morality of deceit. While the other contradictions of the author reveal themselves through several events, this greatest contradiction becomes unveiled through one event that significantly changes Lyra’s perspective: her encounter with the harpies. When the harpies agree to listen to a story in exchange for entrance into the land of the dead, Lyra feels as if she has “been dealt the ace of trumps” (Spyglass 292). The harpies, however, instead of being fooled, are enraged by the lies she tells and attack her. In their reaction, screaming “liar!” all around her, Lyra faces the truth of her own identity: “it sounded as if her [the harpy’s] voice were coming from everywhere, and the word echoed back from the great wall in the fog, muffled and changed, so that she seemed to be screaming Lyra’s name, so that Lyra and liar were one and the same thing” (293). For the first time, figures in the story are not fooled by Lyra’s lies, even though the lies are being told for the good purpose of releasing the dead. Interestingly, the harpies react to the lies of Lyra in the same way that she reacted to the lies of Sir Charles and Mrs. Coulter: with “rage and hatred” (293). Stripped of her strongest talent, Lyra expresses her “wild despair” to Will: “’I can’t tell lies!...it’s all I can do, and it doesn’t work!’” (294). At this point, Lyra faces a redefinition of her character. She can no longer rely on her identity as a liar; she must find a way to tell the truth though she is “sick with apprehension” (313). Eventually, she musters the strength and tells her true story to the ghosts and the harpies, leading to the institution of the truth-telling of the dead in order to have the harpies guide them out safely (314-318).
This event in the land of the dead not only sets up a contradictory combination of traditional and humanistic moralities, but also seemingly contradicts many of the assertions made by the author previously concerning the morality of deceit. Though previously the lies of Lyra were justified by the reasons behind her deceit, her good reasons do not justify her cause to the harpies. In the same way, the harpies react to Lyra like she reacted to the lies of antagonists earlier in the story, demonstrating that the character of the person telling the lies also has no pertinence in this situation. Why does the author seem to change his mind suddenly about the amoral nature of lying? He does not change his mind entirely, but neither is his perspective perfectly defined. For one, Pullman does not state that the change toward truthfulness in Lyra is a permanent one. Though she does not lie in the rest of the story that he tells, she is also never faced with another situation in which it is necessary for her to do so. When she returns to Jordan College and must tell her story to the Master, she asserts the truthfulness of her tale not out of a claim to have changed from a liar to an honest person, but in order that those listening might believe what she says (512). Therefore, though it is obvious that she matures in some way, the reader receives no assurance that Lyra will not lie again in the future. Also, Pullman does not directly assert that lying has become wrong now that Lyra has changed. Though Lyra must tell the truth in the situation with the harpies, the harpies do not find reason for their demand for truth in its moral correctness. The harpies make no statement about why they even require the truth or how they can recognize lies; they simply demand the truth with no explanation. There exists no explanation for why Lyra must now tell the truth and no longer define herself as a liar and no assertion that she gets rid of the habit forever.
In this way, Pullman reveals the truly contradictory nature of his morality of deceit. He makes it necessary for Lyra to be able to tell the truth, though he does not assert the moral depravity of her former habit of lying. He champions the goodness of true stories in the new institution of required stories in the land of the dead, but he does not assert that false stories are morally wrong. In the end, Lyra’s encounter with the harpies represents the clearest picture of the confused morality of the author. Truth is good, but lying is not bad. Truth must be told, but lying does not have to disappear. Pullman, in trying to create a new morality of deceit, has formed a confusing and contradictory combination of traditional and anti-traditional thought that results in a support of integrity while still retaining a vague support of the amorality of deceit.
Through Lyra’s purposes in lying, her reaction to the lies of others, her assertion of a character of integrity, and her telling of the truth in the land of the dead, the author of His Dark Materials reveals the mix of ironies and shifts in thought that characterize his morality of deceit, as well as his worldview on a whole. Integrity is still defended, though it is redefined. Deceit is not wrong, but being deceitful of character is a condemnable state. Religion should not restrict freedom expressed through lying, but any use of lying that restricts freedom deserves to be eliminated. Pullman demonstrates a dislike of traditional views of lying as sin, but he still seems to support the rightness of the integrity that forms the foundation of the doctrines to which he is most vehemently opposed. Biblical scholar Rodney J. Decker explains his own conclusions concerning the morality of Pullman’s work in this way: “Rather than saying that the trilogy advocates and glorifies lying, the overall picture makes best sense as demonstrating truth as a positive value” (18). But one must also ask Decker’s following questions: “Yet, why is there ‘value in truth’ in Pullman’s worldview? What basis for truth or any other value is possible apart from an absolute?” (18). These questions cannot be answered by the texts of the stories, the answers being hidden in Pullman’s soul. Like his readers, he is wrestling with the “larger questions of moral conduct” that face a world without a God to whom they can look for direction (Chrisafis). In Pullman, one can find an example of a person who has tried to run from what he thinks causes the problems of the world, only to find that the thing he runs from is that which he is defending. Pullman and Pullman’s readers find that his morality of deceit is not as new as he or they first supposed it to be. Instead, His Dark Materials become a lasting testament to the fact that truth, real truth, inevitably shines through.
Works Cited
Bruner, Kurt, and Jim Ware. Shedding Light on His Dark Materials: Exploring Hidden Spiritual
Themes in Philip Pullman’s Popular Series. Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2007.
Chrisafis, Angelique. "Pullman lays down moral challenge for writers." The Guardian 12 Aug.
2002. 23 Apr. 2009 http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/aug/12/books.humanities
Decker, Rodney J. “Reflection on the Fantasy Trilogy His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
Better Known From the Film Title, The Golden Compass.” Baptist Bible Seminary, February 4, 2008. Web access 23 Apr. 2009. http://ntresources.com/documents/GoldenCompassFF3.pdf
Freitas, Donna, and Jason King. Killing the Imposter God: Philip Pullman’s Spiritual
Imagination in His Dark Materials. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007.
Pullman, Philip. The Golden Compass. New York: Alfred A. Knoff, 1995.
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