Mar 08 2008

Quote for Discussion: His Dark Materials

When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don’t take are snuffed out like candles, as if they’d never existed.  At the moment all Will’s choices existed at once.  But to keep them in existence meant doing nothing.  He had to choose, after all.

~Phillip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass – His Dark Materials Book 3

Reading the His Dark Materials trilogy, the oddest thing about it to me is how as characters learn that Lord Asriel’s plan is to attempt to storm heaven and overthrow God, every character who learns about it finds it natural and is immediately willing to do what they can to help.   I find this shocking, as people in general are quite willing to find most governments to be evil, including their own, but instinctively recoil from any attempt to overthrown not only their own government, but nearly all governments.

This is today’s quote for discussion.  

9 comments

Skip to comment form

  1. Having quite loved “The Golden Compass,” which did so deserve the special effects Oscar, I was going to read the trilogy.  Now — it’s more John Grisham.

    More seriously, I disagree with the quote.  Remonstration ensures that the roads not taken continue to exist, at least in memory.

  2. Specifically about this:

    At the moment all Will’s choices existed at once.  But to keep them in existence meant doing nothing.

    Doing nothing is a choice.  Each choice we make necessarily cuts off all other choices, but only for that moment in time.  In the next instant, we are presented with a whole new set of choices, dependent upon the time-space circumstances we find ourselves in.  Needless to say, we can control those circumstances, at least to some extent, by making choices.

  3. It’s not all the people.  There is, after all, an entire group devoted to keeping God in power.  (And I can’t say more than that without giving away part of the ending.)  It’s just that Pullman writes primarily from the POV of the protagonists, so we don’t get to see how potential antagonists react.

  4. …the rather heroic frame (characters for or against, immediately falling in, rather than following persuasive arc) makes sense…

  5. with Turkana’s essay about the insane press corp. And yes I agree with the quote. Not only does you choice render the alternatives nonexistent but empowers opposition, as in order to stop something you need decisive action, and there comes a point where the choice is really clear.

    People are brainwashed into thinking the anarchy will ensue if they over throw a government, the ‘devil you know’ being preferable to the chaos of change and power struggles which they cannot fathom the outcome of.

    As God is the ultimate authority figure stopping a deity from being toppled does not seem very chancy or revolutionary as your choice is limited to the supreme good vs. the forces of darkness or the opposite of ?          

    • pico on March 9, 2008 at 02:10
    • #

    When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don’t take are snuffed out like candles, as if they’d never existed.  At the moment all Will’s choices existed at once.  But to keep them in existence meant doing nothing.  He had to choose, after all.

    Sounds a lot like “The Garden of Forking Paths“, although Borges both acknowledges it and challenges it by creating a “new” sort of reality in the work of fictional Ts’ui Pên:

    In all fictional works, each time a man is confronted with several alternatives, he chooses one and eliminates the others; in the fiction of Ts’ui Pên, he chooses– simultaneously–all of them. He creates, in this way, diverse futures, diverse times which themselves also proliferate and fork. Here, then, is the explanation of the novel’s contradictions. Fang, let us say, has a secret; a stranger calls at his door; Fang resolves to kill him. Naturally, there are several possible outcomes: Fang can kill the intruder, the intruder can kill Fang, they both can escape, they both can die, and so forth. In the work of Ts’ui Pên, all possible outcomes occur; each one is the point of departure for other forkings. Sometimes, the paths of this labyrinth converge: for example, you arrive at this house, but in one of the possible pasts you are my enemy, in another, my friend.

    For Borges this is a real challenge not only to the conventions of narrative but also to our understanding of consciousness and temporality.  

    I feel like we may have had this discussion before?

Comments have been disabled.